REVIEW: Kero Kero Bonito @ Paradise Rock Club 10/10

By Jack Beck

Kero Kero kicked off the long weekend with a great show at the Paradise Rock Club this past Thursday, the sort of show that proves just how much they’ve grown as a band in only the past two years. For the unfamiliar, Kero Kero Bonito started out with vocalist Sarah Bonito fronting a pop band in a super bouncy guilty pleasure J-pop influenced sort of way, only they were so on point that the songs became less guilty pleasures and more just genuinely pretty stellar. Hearing a snippet of their earlier material can give you an idea of what they were all about; super upbeat, kitchy, manic vocals, the whole works — it’s really good. But since last year’s Time ‘n’ Place and TOTEP and last month’s EP, Civilisation I, the band fleshed out their sound and added some noisy guitars, introspective lyrics, and just an overall fuller sound, like they were more of an actual band than just a hyper-kitsch pop machine. 

The change definitely shows live. Now that the band can do their whole manic pop styling and it’s crazy energetic and fun, but then when that starts to go on for a bit there’s a guitar solo. It’s crazy! It starts as a really fun dance club sort of vibe, but then there’s guitars, and they fit perfectly but also do a totally different thing. Look at it like this, they did two covers in the encore, both of which were super old school: Vertigo by U2 and More Than a Feeling by Boston. Both of them were wild choices, because the band definitely didn’t have a dad rock sort of vibe, but they really nailed these. You don’t realize how easy it is to turn Bono and The Edge into hyper twee synth-pop until you actually see it done right in front of you. 

When I was a kid, the first thing I ever got super into was roller coasters. I was always a strange kid growing up too, so the big appeal of roller coasters wasn’t just that they were these huge awesome machines that went super fast, I was also into thinking of them like art, like a symphony or movie or anything along those lines. I was really into rides that progressed and had a narrative and saved the crazy drops or loops for the end (I was strange). Throwing me upside down is great, but when you can make me feel something while I’m upside down then you’re really knocking it out of the park. Kero Kero Bonito are starting to do that for their brand of dance pop; it’s absolutely fantastic seeing the lead singer dance with a plush flamingo belting their biggest hit flamingo, but when they can do that and put something as legitimately moving as the climactic guitar solo to the dreamy ballad “Time Today,” then it really feels special. They started out as something kinda kitschy and niche, but this show makes it seems like Kero Kero Bonito are on their way to becoming a complete package.