The United States and Japan share an affinity for each others’ pop culture. America loves Japan’s anime, Nintendo Wii, and Hello Kitty. Japan loves America’s baseball, McDonald’s and… Devo? The latter rings true for Japan’s Polysics, who pride themselves on making their own jaunty brand of American new wave, much the same way American production companies remake J-horror flicks. But before this lesson in globalization took place last night at the Horseshoe, the evening’s audience would have the privilege of witnessing yet another anthropological phenomenon: American bands making cheap knock-offs of existing American music.

Up first to the observation room was Black Gold, who came off as a poor man’s One Republic (who already sound like a poor man’s The Fray). The Brooklyn-based quartet played astonishingly ordinary rock music, replete with half-loud guitars, sob-in-throat vocals and A Charlie Brown Christmas piano tinkling. The band were somewhat bearable during their soul-inspired moments (“The Comedown”) but consistently dropped the ball with embarrassingly bad Britpop choruses falling somewhere between Keane and Jamie Cullum.

Still, middle-of-the-road pop would have sounded damn-near angelic after the aural thrashing we were exposed to courtesy of Jaguar Love. Instrumentally, the band hold their own: jagged guitar squals, snaky basslines and a drummer who can switch between 4/4 and 6/8 time like a manic depressive switches moods. But add Johnny Whitney’s helium-pumped voice to the mix, and you’ve got yourself an earsore. Whitney is like a clusterfuck of elements borrowed from various American singers: he looks like Sammy Hagar, testifies like James Brown, sings impossibly high and off-key like The Mars Volta's Cedric Bixler-Zavala and flails his arm wildly like Mariah Carey. Perhaps he intends to be a tasty concoction of all those performers, but with painfully abrasive vocals as on “Bats Over The Pacific Ocean,” Whitney sounds less like the sum of his parts and more like the actual blender.

Freshly ruptured eardrums and all, Toronto’s youth were still completely unprepared for the kamikaze attack to the senses that would soon follow. Polysics casually sauntered onto the stage early to sound check their instruments, sans sunglasses and looking completely deadpan and weary. Then, they disappeared. Moments later, the now-bespectacled quartet burst back into the spotlight all smiles and peace-signs-a’slinging. They went for the jugular with the breathtaking “Iron Rocks,” a surf-rock instrumental featuring “Wipe Out” drumming, carousel sound-effects and a reverb-laden solo that had Dick Dale written all over it. They followed suit with “Pretty Good,” a pop-rock number with a pounding piano-line, catchy chorus and a spastic, non-sequitur bridge.

Lead singer/guitarist Hiro Hayashi had the gusto of a wacky anime character, making odd faces, spinning, leaping and doing jumping jacks in a display that was part rock star showmanship, part calisthenic exercise. His voice sounded like the Japanese version of The Hives’ Pelle Almqvist, howling away with tongue-in-cheek lines that were a mixed bag of English, Japanese and gibberish. His limited between-song-banter was genuinely endearing (“We Polysics from Tokyo Japan! Enjoy show! Sweet!”) but on songs like  “Kaja Kaja Goo” he went completely Super Saiyan, wailing away at his strings with Cobain-esque abandon, spinning around like a top and clamping his Epiphone SG between his teeth.



Keyboardist Kayo, however, was like the yin to Hayashi’s yang, remaining completely expressionless throughout the entire set, making precise mechanical movements and turning towards the audience only to sing robotic lines on her vocoder. But Kayo is the member who gives the band their avant-garde quirk — with her zany synth leads,  spacey clicks and beeps and even taking a clarinet solo on “I My Me Mine.”



While half the set consisted of numbers from Polysics’ latest metal-tinged release We Ate The Machine, the loudest crowd reactions were for earlier, more noisecore-infused new-wave joints like the frenetic “Peach Pie On The Beach.” All in all, Polysics tore the roof off, managing to fuse Devo’s trademark sound with everything from Melt Banana’s spaz (“I Ate The Machine”) to AC/DC’s bar rock (“Moog is Love”) to M.I.A.’s wacky dancehall (“Rocket”). And at the end of the night, in a sincere display of affection to the energetic crowd, Hiro announced, “Toronto, you fucking crazy!”

The global village at its very finest.