Overlooked Classics: Cibo Matto-Viva!La Woman

Cibo Matto never got their dues, I think. The Japanese -American duo, who recently reformed, made one of my favourite nineties albums with the debut, Viva! La Woman.. I think humour is often dismissed in music, and there is a lot of humour here, but it’s simply brilliant avant – pop.

For a pair obsessed with food (their name translates as “crazy food”) all the songs were snack or dinner related. Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori would go out to nice restaurants after recording, and felt food was a universal theme.

The diverse influences (ingredients if you like) are what set the album apart from other mid-nineties artists. There’s psychedelia; lounge, jazz, pop, punk, funk and hip hop in there. Yet the press too often reduced them to the “trip hop” label- a bit lazy, methinks.

Know Your Chicken, Birthday Cake and Beef Jerky are quite jolly, and throwaway, but Sugar Water is gorgeous, a melancholic tune with a suitably inventive video from Michel Gondry. One half of the screen goes backwards, the other forwards, then the video meets in the middle.

Such clever innovation is a nice metaphor for the album, with its endless genre twists and leftfield ideas. There’s even a take on The Candy Man, twisted out of shape like a pretzel, from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Hatori went on to provide the original voice of Noodle for Gorillaz, while Honda worked with lots of different bands, but I will always appreciate Cibo Matto. I can happily bimge on this fun, “sweet or spicy * album, and never get sick.