BORIS WITH MICHIO KURIHARA Issue #32

Rainbow

By Dom Sinacola
Published: June 1st, 2007 | 12:00am

There’s a good chance that by the time you read this, another Boris album will have already eclipsed Rainbow. Don’t try to keep up; in six years, the Tokyo trio has released four full-lengths in America (depending on how you’re counting), and in the last three, put out a collaboration with Merzbow, one with Sunn 0))), and probably some split EPs in there. As the band’s drawn careful lines between albums and hues of experimentation, they’ve sounded more careless with their means, slipping from 70-minute feedback climbs into something like 2005’s Pink, where an opening shoegazing suite is finished, pushed aside, and forgotten for nubbed suckers of speed metal.

With Rainbow, the band’s recent effort with Ghost guitarist Michio Kurihara, Boris has found an indulgent focus. Kurihara assigns restraint to the songs, can parse Rainbow into passages of gauze just by sitting on a grinding tone, stepping in to kick Atsuo’s croon in the guts, and pierce whatever din bassist Takeshi’s got simmering. The album’s possibly more whorled with psychedelic thrush than anything Boris has done before, and Atsuo’s voice is understandably favored over his devil-horn drumming, but searing sprees like “Starship Narrator” and “Sweet No. 1” sustain the now-familiar grind.

When Rainbow stumbles into a lull, it’s only because “My Rain” or “Shine” dilly-dally too willingly through pastiche and closed-chord fits of folky mope. Sure, Boris mopes well, even rehashing the gimmicky power “Rafflesia” let loose in its first two bars, but the energy’s dry, and only “You Laughed Like a Water Mark’s” breakdown can restore order. By now, the yin and yang deal, light from darkness — an old hat for Boris (Merzbow spits out comparable racket daily). Where Pink was an enormous step, Rainbow’s just plain gorgeous, but for the second-hardest working noise outfit in Japan, what’s one more awesome collaboration gonna matter?