OOIOO – Armonico Hewa (2009) [Thrill Jockey] // Grade: B

Trace OOIOO back 11 years to their self-titled debut and you realize pretty quickly that Yoshimi P-We & Co. might be the ultimate shapeshifters. Newborn OOIOO were provocative to the point of being unlistenable; a simultaneously bright and sludgy head-on collision of so much hysterical screaming. They were, of course, an awful lot like the Boredoms, or at least an obvious side project.

Now, five albums and full decade later, OOIOO are less provocative than intricate; not drowning but waving. I mean, you could actually call Armonico Hewa “beautiful” and not mean it in an eye-of-the-beholder way—and though they’ve been flirting with all that cascading beauty since 2005’s pseudo-psych Gold And Green, only now has it transformed from pretty experiment to pure fact. The older, more sophisticated sister to 2006’s African-jazzy Taiga, Armonico is all about rhythm: the guitars feel like percussion, the vocals feel like percussion, the rests and breaths and sighs feel like percussion. It’s equal parts feral and sugary (a pretty classic OOIOO combo, no matter the sound specifics) and especially exciting on tracks like the thunderous “Irorun”, the happy Nintendo interlude “Konjo” and the warm, almost Knife-like “Ulda”.

But is it any good? Objectively, yes. Winding, loopy, lush: Armonico is definitely good. But how often you listen to it—or whether you listen to it all—depends entirely on which version of OOIOO you heart most. If, like me, you loved OOIOO best in their early years (especially the synthed-up avant-pop of Feather Float), you may not find yourself gravitating toward an album that often feels like free jazz. But if OOIOO truly started for you at Gold And Green and you adore the hypnotic tribal loops of Kila Kila Kila, Armonico might just strike you as their most stunning, and conceptually sophisticated, work yet.

- Rue Sauvage