Album: Mika Miko – We Be Xuxa

ALBUM REVIEW: Mika Miko – We Be Xuxa
words: Jamie Milton
originally scribed for gigwise

With a short attention span and a craving for a turkey sandwich, Mika Miko are most importantly, childish. They might have a few self-released records under their belt but that doesn’t imply experience whatsoever because of the edgy, raucous wall of noise they refer to every time a note is played. Forget the background information referring to The Smell and LA – chances are if you’ve heard of Mika Miko, you’ve heard it all before, right? Encouragingly, without any biographical knowledge, you’d still be eager to draw parallels with hometown buddies No Age with a listen to ‘We Be Xuxa’.

This may well be a ‘breakthrough’ record in some respects: most people who’ve heard the words Mika Miko zoom past their ear drums will most likely think of them as a new band. But breakthrough record or not, the Clavin sisters and their cronies seem to pay no attention to that potential pressure. Instead they stick to their norm of care-free, quick-fire punk delivery on an album that spans a mere 23 minutes. A worthy cover of the Urinals’ ‘Sex’ and standout album opener ‘Blues Not Speed’ are drenched in a brash attitude not entirely unique to the genre, but still enjoyable. They stampede through a restless set of harsh, obnoxious punk gems, none of them anthems for a hall of fame, none of them too unbearable for another play. Whilst they don’t drift to an extreme in scrappy, lo-fi production (a move which Times New Viking went for last year with ‘Rip It Off’), they could do with a few more rough edges in between the vocal rhythms and the stop-start pace. It would give ‘We Be Xuxa’ more of a sense of authenticity, as if you were a couple of feet away from their violent bursts of energy on The Smell’s stage.

As reckless and as direct as it may appear, Mika Miko’s first potentially head-turning release is a thought-out, rehearsed collection of rowdy numbers. And it’s there that a plausible genre classic falls flat on its face, unable to surge anywhere forward from safe, solid mediocrity.

4.7

mp3: Mika Miko – Blues Not Speed [alt]

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