712 (LP)

Limited vinyl LP repressing. 1991 album from the female Japanese punk/pop trio. The album was named after the contraction of the Japanese words for the numbers 7 (nana), 1 (ichi) and 2 (futatsu, technically an alternate reading than the preceding, literally meaning "two things"), which, when contracted, sound like "na-i-fu". Naifu is the imported word in Japanese for "knife". Heavily influenced by 1960s girl groups, pop bands, The Beach Boys, and early punk rock bands, such as the Ramones, Shonen Knife crafts stripped-down songs with simplistic lyrics sung both in Japanese and English. Despite their pop-oriented nature, the trio maintains a distinctly underground garage rock sound rooted in edgy instrumentation and D.I.Y. aesthetics, which over the course of their long career has earned them a solid, worldwide cult following and made avid fans out of seminal '90s alternative rock bands such as Sonic Youth, Nirvana, and Redd Kross.