’ll be frank, and come right out and say it – I own (and enjoy) a Bis record. Yes, that’s right. With this one solitary sentence, I will gleefully demolish what shred of indie credibility I have: I think Social Dancing is a really fun album.


Okay, if you’re still reading this, I’ll assume one of two things. (1) That you, like me are a closet admirer of this band, or (2), that you’re so utterly mortified by what I just said that you just have to keep reading.


I’ll defend my position. Social Dancing is so spastically uneven and nerve-wracking; so full of jittery caffeine beats and saccharin melodies that I find it impossible not to love every infantile moment about it. Bis is so completely unironic about their music, and it shows with each energetic note they play. (So far, Social Dancing is the only record I think they’ve achieved this balance, but hey...) It’s really hard to believe this music was actually crafted by flesh-and-blood humans, and not anime characters on a cocaine rush.


Kaito, and their album, You’ve Seen Us...You Must Have Seen Us..., on the other hand, is what it does sound like when real humans try to capture that vibe. Kaito lacks Bis’ day-glo vibrancy, endless clever pop-culture references and frenetic, chaotic playing. The nervy pop of You’ve Seen Us...You’ve Seen Us... is about as flat and lifeless as you can get; a particularly damning flaw, considering what blood-boiling head-bopping this album is supposed to inspire.


Social Dancing doesn’t sound forced in the least – this is exactly the way Bis sounds like, not what they desperately want to sound like, to fit in with some scene or the other. Kaito seems desperate to carve out a semi-original sound for themselves that nearly every single note they play comes off as a half-baked genre move.


From the first moments, all the hallmarks of a Bis-wannabe are present. Crisp, new wave guitars pogo around a knee-jerk bassline and a tired dance beat. Filtered, bratty-as-they-wanna-be filtered that is, vocals recall Bis’ Manda Rin, but never bust out of the mid-range into the Nintendo Ice Princess howls that Rin has perfected. Grating keyboards rub against your ears like a cheese grater while a chorus of blooping toy ray guns (no, I’m not making this up) fire a Flash Gordon symphony of utter banality. And that’s the best track off of the album, the opener “Twipside.”


The second track, “Go,” is ever more annoying, if that’s possible, featuring a repeated refrain of “Go!” at the end, repeated until your brain threatens to dissolve into mushy pink goo. And I don’t mean that in a good way.


The sinewy, lean “Rockstuff” is exemplary of this album’s many problems. There sounds like the foundations of a decent song are lurking in there somewhere, but Kaito is too afraid to really lash out and put some soul into the video card, making the song fall utterly flat. It almost recalls Cibo Matto, but then I hestitate to tarnish their good name by mentioning them in the same review as these tosspots.


Kaito’s lyrics are hardly worth mentioning. When you can actually pull them out of the messy, incoherent mix of the album, you’ll wonder why you bothered in the first place. Where Bis chants about the virtues of 80s synthpop and tongue-in-cheek odes to daytime talk shows, Kaito rambles on about, well...nothing. Oh wait – I spoke too soon; in “Shoot Shoot,” Nikki Colks shouts “Shoot shoot shoot/Well I should kill me.” I wouldn’t go to such drastic measures as that, but the demise of Kaito would certainly not bring a tear to my eye.


Kaito’s quieter moments are even worse, such as the sluggish “Shelflife,” rife with irritating stabs of synthesizers that resemble nails on a chalkboard, and the endlessly twee “Good Is Good,” which strives for a storybook eeriness, but achieves only snores.


You’ve Seen Us...You Must Have Seen Us... does do a few things right, however. The love they have of all things new wave is obvious, and occasionally they hit upon a worthwhile groove, such as the noise-pop workout of “Thwipside.” With a tighter production, the multi-faceted instrumentation and unexpected percussion of You’ve Seen Us...You Must Have Seen Us... could have been a formidable force. But as it stands, the record can’t even decide which sort of nasal electro noise-pop it wants to be. For the most part, they just tread musical ground that Bis has already paved, and that’s territory most music listeners don’t want to traverse, anyway. As Colks says in the chittering “Succosanko,” “You’re very very simple.” Uh huh. At least you can admit it, guys.


In short – imagine everything you hate about Bis. Now, leech out all of the life and good intentions from that. You’re left with Kaito. Happy listening.