Throwback Thursday: Number Girl - School Girl Bye Bye Review

Number Girl was a hugely influential band in their time, but I don't really hear anybody talk about them anymore. They released some incredible indie rock during their short seven-year lifespan. From Sonic Youth to Husker Du, they had a wide range of 80s and 90s rock influence. Today they're looked back on as a major influence on bands like ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION, tricot, and Kinoko Teikoku (who pay tribute in their song "Girl Meets NUMBER GIRL"). For this Throwback Thursday I'll be reviewing Number Girl's 1999 debut album "School Girl Bye Bye".

"School Girl Bye Bye" opens with one of the band's most well-loved and respected songs. "Omoide in My Head" is almost seven minutes of noisy yet emotionally-driven bliss. The riff is actually catchy just on its own, no vocals required. The vocals themselves are endearingly low-quality, echoing through the air of the band's cheap recording studio. It's a bit like Guided by Voices meets Pixies. Vocalist Shutoku Mukai has an impressive range in his voice, but with a bit of a harsh punk growl to it.

The energy picks up with the next song, "Ooatari no Kisetsu". I LOVE the riff on this song as well. It's all just a bit sloppy, in a good way. I also love the incredible vocals on the chorus. This is one of my favorite songs of the 90s, hands-down. It has this sort of shimmering haze of distorted beauty above it. There's a wall of noise in place of a guitar solo which explains my point quite nicely.  "Sentimental Kajou" is a bit math-y, and just a bit off-kilter. The verses here are actually the standout part, with those great lead guitar melodies capturing the spotlight. This song sounds like an early prototype of The Pillows, in a way.

I swear that the intro riff on "September Girlfriend" actually gave birth to modern indie rock. The vocals are either drenched in reverb or just really badly mixed, but I adore the tone. I'm trying not to use the phrase "lo-fi" (it doesn't mean what everyone thinks it means) but this song is the very essence of what people generally refer to as "lo-fi". The vocals evolve into a scream at times and it's super powerful. This album is already an emotional rollercoaster. Things slow back down again (ironically) with "Iggy Pop Fan Club". This is a bit more Pixies-esque garage rock. The chorus is beautiful, followed up by what would be a soaring lead solo which gets buried in the mix. It's funny; I usually hold pop music up to high production standards, but I'm enamored by the cheap punk sound of messy underground bands everywhere.

"Mizuiro Kakumei" is another piece of summer-tinged garage rock, but this band is nothing like the generic SoCal garage scene of the 2010s. Something about their punk is just a little bit bittersweet. The album is chopped in half by the short instrumental track "Nagisa Nite", then we get "Summer of California '73". This is a bit of a slower one, just kind of chugging along with one riff all the way through. It sets the stage for "Mini Grammer", which explodes right out of the gate. The vocals on this one kind of twist through lazily underneath the urgent instrumentation. The second half is a little bit like Dinosaur jr. with the lazy but endearing guitar solo of a Dead Milkmen song.

"Ware Kiritsu Yuiga Hitori" is a monster which clocks in at almost eight minutes. It's an indie rock epic masquerading as some kind of ballad. There's a ton of emotional depth to be found here, especially on the chorus. Shutoku Mukai's range is unbelieveavly high for the genre he's in. You can hear the strain on his voice in the most raw and sincere way. This would have made the perfect closing song. The closing song they chose instead is right up next. "4 Track Professional" closes out the album on a slightly faster note. The bass really shines through during the pre-chorus here. There's so much energy, I can only imagine what this band sounded like live! There's a certain tone to the vocals that makes me wonder if they would even have been the same band at all. This is a fantastic song, but I still believe it could have switched places with the prior track for a better album flow. That's just my opinion though.

For all the experimental noise and math rock gods Number Girl is emulating, there's so much sweetness embedded in these songs that it's a different beast entirely. They have a certain quality that just begs to be explored more deeply, to get all the details hiding in the buzz of the cheap tapes they recorded to. Every detail you can pick out is rewarding in its own right. The band would slowly move towards a slightly (very slightly) higher production quality over the years, but they always tonally remained a group of indie kids in a garage. These indie kids just happened to have some unbelieveable songwriting talent.

The first four songs on "School Girl Bye Bye" remain some of my favorite indie rock songs of all time, and the rest of the album is just a perfect listen if you're trying to get that nostalgic 90s hit that nobody else can cure. Number Girl caught the attention of Toshiba-EMI with this album, and their major label debut "School Girl Distortional Addict" came out later the same year. Some day I might get around to reviewing that one, too. I only wish I could have seen Number Girl while they were still around. There's something especially urgent here. This band was important to a lot of people, and they're important to me too.

-Justin

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Number Girl was:
Shutoku Mukai - Vocals, Guitar
Hisako Tabuchi - Guitar
Kentarō Nakao - Bass
Ahito Inazawa - Drums


School Girl Bye Bye:
1. Omoide in My Head
2. Ooatari no Kisetsu
3. Sentimental Kajou
4. September Girlfriend
5. Iggy Pop Fan Club
6. Mizuiro Kakumei
7. Nagisa Nite
8. Summer of California '73
9. Mini Grammer
10. Ware Kiritsu Yuiga Hitori
11. 4 Track Professional