25 Phew: Our Likeness

Do you feel like checking in on Phew? I feel like checking in on Phew.

You know how I’ve been slowly chronicling Prince’s studio career album by album, year by year since 2018? Well, I never announced this before – or even ever consciously accepted that I was doing it before – but I’ve actually been doing something similar with one of the most exceptionally avant-garde musical artists of the last 40+ years: Hiromi Moritani AKA Phew formally known as Twitter.

Of course, it would be an insult to Phew – they would spit in my face, they would! – were I to approach this apparent career retrospective in anything approaching a (spit!) conventional or (spiiiiiiit!) chronological fashion. Phew has spent their entire career defying convention and evading any sorts of tropes or expectations. So when I embarked on this dedicated and meticulously planned – if entirely, by traditional standards, completely unintentional – journey through their back catalogue I knew that it had to respect their disregard for conventional rules.

So I decided to also start in 2018, with her album from

2018. Then in 2020 I continued – in much, as you might say, in similar fashion – with the 2020 collection of home recordings. I next went on to cover – again, very much as you would expect were this journey progressing in a linear manner – their 2021 album in 2021. Then! However, then! Then I took us waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back to 1979 to cover the exceptionally singular sounds of the debut album by Hiromi Moritani’s punk band Aunt Sally. And…

…

…

…

…yeah! So now we’re up to their 1992 debit solo album, rereleased this year by Mute, and…

OK, so I admit I have no idea what’s going on here, I have no idea what form this career retrospective is taking, or even if it’s a career retrospective in the first place. I’m sure Phew would approve.

There’s no need for a retrospective anyhow, I pretty much covered it in my 2021 review:

In 1982 she teamed up with a Colombian farm hand to record the week long staring competition she had with one of the yaks on their ranch over several cassettes . In 1986 she asked the wind what makes it think it’s so fucking special and released its answer as a double LP. In 1990 she recorded a duet with Shaun Ryder that was released on digital compact cassette but whom neither singers remember for the life of them. I could go on. So I will. In 1994 she released the map to a tiny village in Belgium on 8 Track. In early 2001 she released detailed plans to fly aeroplanes into the Twin Towers, but it was on MiniDisc, which was pretty much over by that point, so she got away with it. In 2010 she released Waka Waka, the theme tune to the 2010 World Cup, on a singular compact disc, which she later consumed in a mukbang video. In 2015, she just took a photo of a Sony DualDisc and said it was her new album, charging people £15.99 for a black and white photocopy. Aaaaaaaand, that pretty much takes us up to 2017’s ‘Voice Hardcore’, so you know the complete history now.

Yeah, ‘Our Likeness’ is probably their best album.

2021 #62, 2020 #84, 2017 #72 (Phew) 2022 #76 (Aunt Sally)