THE AGE OF THE MOLE



Perhaps if my mother had been a better Catholic she would have kept me on track towards Confirmation, ignoring my tear-strewn face and heated opinions concerning the morality of abortion after she picked me up one day; as it were, she wasn’t and isn’t. Instead, she listened to my pleas and pulled me out of class, granting me a laptop for my thirteenth birthday that led to a very different kind of transcendence: the music of Shiina Ringo.

Shiina Ringo, born Shiina Yumiko in 1978, is a Japanese singer-songwriter who for the large part of her career has remained unconstrained by the genre’s strictures. The first three albums of her solo career – Muzai Moratorium (1999, “Innocence Moratorium”), Shouso Strip (2000, “Lawsuit Winning Strip”), and Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana (2003, “Chalk Semen Chestnut Flower”) – are exercises in genre-fusion, running the gamut of experimental pop conventions; they stutter, shake, stomp, and sing out with abandon, mixing Western and Eastern instrumentations, ideas, and languages. Her talent has proven to be a source of inspiration even for me, a white American with little knowledge of Japanese customs and culture.

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