A lazy way to summarise Half Japanese for someone who's never heard of them is that they're sort of like a really low-fi, really DIY Violent Femmes. Jad Fair would probably hate me for drawing that comparison, but I call 'em as I see 'em (or hear 'em, as the case may be).
They've put out about 1,000,000 records, not all of which are completely listenable. Some of them, in fact, deliberately not. Jad's vocals can get pretty whiney and - again, sorry, but it's true - like the Violent Femmes, they're in some ways such a boy's band that it's not always easy for those of us with two X chromosomes to really "get" them. That's not necessarily a bad thing, per se; I don't think many men really "get" PJ Harvey either (although some of them probably think they do!). But it does go some way toward explaining why I've never gotten quite as into them as a lot of my indie friends have.
Anyway, some of their stuff is really quite good, so I do own a few of their records. This is from 1988's Charmed Life.
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