Gig review: Shonen Knife

FIRST brought to wider Western attention in the early Nineties by the patronage of Sonic Youth and Nirvana, all-girl punk rock trio Shonen Knife have forged a 30-year career as firm cult favourites through the simple formula of keeping it formulaic.

Were it not for their Velcro-catchy, childlike topline melodies – sung in charmingly imperfect English by trebly-voiced singer and songwriter Naoko Yamano, the band's only remaining original member – you could barely have distinguished between the three-chord fuzzy stew of Supergroup, or the… um… three-chord fizzy stew of Riding on the Rocket (which was introduced with grins and devil horns – there was a lot of that going on). Or for that matter any of the three Ramones covers they played during the encore (as if Shonen Knife's love for the legendary New York proto-punks wasn't obvious enough, they also occasionally moonlight as tribute band The Osaka Ramones).

But to complain that Shonen Knife's stuff is samey would be to miss the point entirely: as the people pogoing manically down the front would gladly have testified, it's first-rate party music to be enjoyed on the most basic level.

Yamano turned 50 this year, though she could easily pass for the same age as her younger bandmates, bassist Ritsuko Taneda and drummer Emi Morimoto, each of them sporting identikit shoulder-length black hair and long fringes.

Judging by their new album Free Time, even after three decades Shonen Knife remain loveably determined to put maturity on permanent hold, as typified best here by the skipping power-pop of Capybara. "It's a song about a giant mouse," explained Yamano. "It's very cute."