The temptation to apply homemade (and half-baked) descriptive phrases like “fiercer than King Ghidorah” or “riffs sharper than a samurai sword” to this U.S. debut disc from Japanese punk ladies Gito Gito Hustler is almost too strong to resist, so I’m simply gonna say that the Hustler-ettes sling the Super Rock with a heavy dose of go-go and ‘60s pop, and that’s more than okay in my book. They’re also refreshingly free of the cutie-pie mannerisms that sink a lot of Japanese girl bands (at least in my book – I won’t speak for all guys), though I could’ve lived without with the 5,6,7,8s-style surfin’ swing of “Hyper” – it’s not done badly, it’s just been done far too often, and things like it occasionally inspire idiots to start doing that Pulp Fiction dance. And yeah, the whole album is in Japanese, but that doesn’t dampen the fact that the songs are infectious as hell, especially the manic “Natural Love Love Star,” and will buzz around in your brainpan like bees in stiletto heels long after the disc stops spinning.

Gito Gito Hustler web site: gitogito.org