Many Birthdays, Emptiness Is Forever

With the music market now offering paths that circumvent the mechanisms of the music industry entirely, bands have the option of sidestepping the dog-and-pony show of glossy 8x10s and vapid music videos. By the same token, it doesn’t hurt to have some quirk, kink, or outright gimmick to prick up the overstimulated ears of Joe Bloglete, who now possesses more promotional clout than half a dozen A&R dupes. Austin’s Many Birthdays more than cut it with instrumental and songwriting chops, but they have one such ear-turning advantage, to boot.

Lead singer Sarah Luce is a fluent speaker and active teacher of Japanese (the band logged some time in Osaka, Japan in years past), and there are several songs on Emptiness Is Forever sung in that language. Listening to Luce belt it out on “Minnawa” and “Tsugi ni Kuru Koto” in indecipherable syllables brings to mind Saint Augustine’s observation that even unknown tongues retain the strength of pure intentionality. The energy and passion of Luce’s and John Dixon’s voices translate perfectly, even when the words do not.

Musically, Many Birthdays takes a similarly macaronic approach. Though other reviewers might describe Emptiness Is Forever as post-punk, the music comes closer to a late-noughties updating of New Wave acts like Oingo Boingo and The Vapors. Thankfully, Many Birthdays ditches the kitschy sonic (and visual — not a spot of American Apparel neon-pastel casualty on these kids) tropes, retaining the pogo-ready progressions and tempos that made those bands so damn catchy. An undeniable and infectious bounce propels “Rock It,” before “Good Luck” struts its way down a post-disco path that may induce involuntary head-bobbing and toe-tapping. Even when the band slows it down a bit, on “Electro Fantastic,” there’s enough of a human touch to the programming to keep you paying attention.

As with many bands from the Houndstooth Era, Many Birthdays builds songs with drum machines and synthesizers as often as they employ the garage-rock triad of guitars, bass, and drums. However, this instrumentation also indicates their indebtedness to electronic and experimental bands (indeed, guitarist Henna Chou has also played with avant-garders Fiction & My Education). Both halves of the musical equation behave as correctives on the potential excesses of the other — not too slick, not too strange.

Emptiness Is Forever is the fifth release from Many Birthdays, and while it clocks in only slightly over twenty minutes, it belongs on the Top Forty of some alternate universe, where Bis are famous for much more than the Powerpuff Girls theme song and the refrain of “Hey Mickey” reverberates in perfect hyojungo.