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SEATTLE TIMES ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS
By, Tom Scanlon
Seattle Times, December 17, 2004
Night Watch / Tom Scanlon
Who says punk rockers don't giggle?
"Cute" and "punk rock" normally go together about as congruously as "poetic" and "brawl"; in the case of the Amazombies, however, an exception can be made.
Noriko Kaji and Kim Kelly seem like the cute girls from the neighborhood who suddenly grew up and became punk rockers. Even drinking beers inside a haze of tobacco smoke at Seattle's definitive punk rock-bar the Funhouse, Kaji and Kelly come across as endearing and charming. They tend to finish each other's sentences, giggle about working at the same ultra-conservative software company ("one time we played a company meeting it was hysterical!") and, in what perhaps defines "punk-rock cute," have matching tattoos.
It's a different scene when Kelly straps on her guitar and Kaji plugs in her bass, when they put on their game faces and crank out hard-edged, fast, '70s-style punk. The Amazombies rock.
The Amazombies' sound isn't as angry-all-the-time, intense and/or over-the-top as some of Seattle's hardcore/punk scene, which is part of the charm.
"We have our own description for it, which is kind of sissy: 'punk lite,' " says Kelly, cringing slightly and looking to Kaji for affirmation.
"Good melodies, good vocals," the bass player adds, nodding and punctuating with a swig of beer.
Kaji was raised in Japan, though you'd have to be a linguist to detect a hint of an accent. "I started this band because I moved here from Tokyo, and I didn't know anybody," Kaji says. "I was like, 'I need friends!' "
She got both a bandmate and close friend when she met Kelly, who spent her formative years in San Diego before migrating to the Northwest. The Amazombies started in late 2000 as an all-female band, then went through a few lineup changes and added a male drummer. Josh Kramer recently left the band and has been replaced on drums by Everett native Rob Olsen.
Led by Kelly's clear, sharp singing, catchy lyrics ("frustrate me/irate me/I love you/can't stand you") and pedal-to-the-floor speed, the band has been compared to the Ramones and Joan Jett. They have a certain something that's hard to put your finger on; perhaps it's just easygoing stage charisma, as they keep things pretty simple, musically which, when they first started, was a survival technique. "We know how to play our instruments, now," Kelly says, sharing a laugh with Kaji. "We're finally becoming musicians we don't have to fake it, anymore."
The band is not nearly as well-known as Pretty Girls Make Graves, the Rotten Apples, Visqueen and a few other of Seattle's new wave of female-led rock bands. That could change over the next year, as the Amazombies are just starting to hit the road, and feel they had strong response in places like Las Vegas, San Francisco and Phoenix at the latter, they played on cheap beer night at a place called the Rogue, where patrons built walls of empty beer cans.
"Some bands have 'the hometown curse,' they're really big here but not anywhere else. We do really well on tour, but we're not with the scenester crowd here right?" Kelly says, asking the latter to Kaji, who nods in agreement.
"Seattle's big on garage rock, and we're not like that," says Kaji in agreement.
Kelly and Kaji have released an EP and an album, and plan to record again in the coming months.
