Thee Michelle Gun Elephant

Though little known stateside before the turn of the millennium, Thee Michelle Gun Elephant came together in Japan during 1991 and launched into a high-volume strain of garage rock & roll shaped by the Stooges, Thee Headcoats, the Who, and MC5. Futoshi Abe’s slashing guitar lines drive the band’s rapid, aggressive material above the thick, propulsive bass lines supplied by Kouji Ueno and the weighty drumming of Kazuyuki Kuhara, while Yusuke Chiba’s mod-tinged, hoarse vocals—delivered in a mixture of sung and shouted Japanese—supply the swagger that unifies the attack.

Early material drew primarily from British punk and blues sources. The quartet committed its first EP, Wonder Style, to tape in 1995. Their debut full-length, Cult Grass Stars, followed in short order, tracked in London under Radiohead engineer Chris Brown and issued domestically the following March. Maintaining momentum, the group delivered its second album, High Time, in November 1996; the record entered the Japanese charts at number 13, prompting an immediate 21-date sold-out trek throughout the country.

Chicken Zombies appeared in 1997. The next summer found the band on the bill at Tokyo’s Fuji Rock Festival before an audience of 50,000 alongside Primal Scream, Garbage, Sonic Youth, Ian Brown, and Beck. In 1998 the quartet mounted its World Psycho Blues Tour, filling arenas across Japan. Their breakthrough release, Gear Blues, surfaced domestically that same year and reached American listeners in 2000, confirming the idiosyncratic style the group had labeled Japanese Monster R&B. Comparable to Iggy Pop and Chiba, the band fused melodic anthems with a dense barrage of sonic abrasion. Casanova Snake, the fifth album, arrived soon afterward in Japan, and the trans-Pacific impact of Gear Blues prompted the 2001 compilation Collection.