Acclaimed Japanese punk-rock-garage quartet Otoboke Beaver share their newest snarling track “PARDON?,” the biting lead single from their new album Super Champon, out May 6 via Damnably. A jokey recounting of a situation that the band often finds themselves in with unrelenting miscommunication of unsolicited and overzealous points of views, the simple lyrical refrains pose as an extreme contrast to the stop-start time changes and dizzying pace. The band says, “Sometimes, the more you insist, the harder it is to understand you. We don’t have time to understand if you don’t have time to understand.” Otoboke Beaver also unveiled four custom AR-filters on their Instagram page, available in the app version, that allow fans to recreate their signature makeup.

Super Champon follows 2019’s critically acclaimed Itekoma Hits. ‘Champon’ is a Japanese noun meaning a mixture or jumble of things of different types, as the band explains, “It’s a mixture of songs from love to food, life and JASRAC. Our music is genreless and has various elements. We hope that it will be our masterpiece of chaos music. It also sounds like champion.” Previously released singles “I am not maternal”, “Don’t call me mojo,” and “Dirty old fart is waiting for my reaction” see the band pushing back on societal pressure to reproduce, calling out ridiculous judgements on what gives a woman value, and reacting to uninvited counsel from patronising people. 

Across 18 songs, chief singer-songwriter Acco expands the band’s possibilities and pushes their musical skills to the limit. Acco has remarked previously that she is more influenced by ‘manzai,’ a traditional style of comedy in Japanese culture comparable to double act comedy or stand-up comedy exemplified by its use of slang puns and wordplay, speedy back-and-forth dialogue and impeccable timing in delivering a punchline — characteristics of which Otoboke Beaver’s music shares in droves. 

Otoboke Beaver, formed at Kyoto University’s music club, consists of Accorinrin (lead vocal & guitar), Yoyoyoshie (guitar & vocals), Hirochan (bass & vocals), and Kahokiss (drums & vocals). Acco’s off-kilter self-taught compositional and confrontational performance skills, together with the band’s incredible musicianship, make for a thrilling and unmissable live act. The band will tour North America in the fall of 2022, dates and tickets are available here.