Locced Down

It seems only fitting that Polysics, a visually driven electro-punk band from Japan now on a tour sponsored by the website behemoth MySpace, found its inspiration by watching videos. Devo videos, to be exact.

“I was blown away when I first saw Devo’s music in high school, and they totally changed my recognition for what rock music should be,” says Polysics singer-guitarist-programmer Hiroyuki Hayashi, speaking in Japanese through a translator.

“Before that, my notion of rock music was music like Bon Jovi or Aerosmith. But when I saw Devo, I thought, ‘Wow, these guys have a great sense of humor, but they totally rock with a punk spirit. So, the reason why I wanted to start my own band was that I wanted to play music like Devo. Also, I wanted to wear the jumpsuit.”

Both Devo’s influence and those jumpsuits - bright orange boiler suits that closely resemble the new wave band’s uniform (Polysics wisely passed on the matching potted plant headwear) - are very much a key part of the Tokyo foursome’s approach and appeal. However, its highly energized style of “Technicolor pogo punk,” as the band has described it, extends beyond Devo’s late-’70s and early-’80s heyday into the hyper-caffeinated garage-punk of acts like the Hives and the Rogers Sisters.

The group’s new CD/DVD compilation of new and older tracks, “Polysics or Die!!!! Vista” (out on the new MySpace Records label), is ear candy for a generation raised on DJ mash-ups, Ladytron downloads, Japanese anime, and text messaging. As if to affirm the group’s of-the-moment niche, Polysics has signed on for the first 30-date MySpace Music Tour, sharing the bill with other MySpace-bred band phenoms such as coheadliners Hellogoodbye and Say Anything. The tour hits Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel in Providence tomorrow for an all-ages show. So far, the tour - Polysics’s most extensive in the United States so far - has been an eye-opener.

“The difference that I notice between audiences in Japan and America is that in Japan, people like to blend in, and they will shy away from dancing to live music if the people around them are not dancing,” says Hayashi. “Whereas with the US audience, they don’t care what other people are doing. Even if there’s no one around you dancing, if you like the music, you just dance like crazy. We’ve been playing in front of a lot of audiences who have never been exposed to our music, and at first they’re shocked because the music is new. But as the show goes on, they understand us and get fired up.”

MySpace cofounder and president Tom Anderson had a similar reaction when he first came across the band on - where else? - MySpace. He later caught shows in Japan and Los Angeles and was immediately impressed.

“People go nuts for this band,” says Anderson via e-mail. “I’ve literally never seen a crowd react to a band the way they react to the Polysics. Signing them to MySpace Records was an obvious choice. I wanted to be the person to bring this seasoned band to a new culture and audience. I’m really proud of them.”

Part of the audiences’ ability to understand Polysics (named after the “Polysix” model of Hayashi’s first Korg synthesizer), Hayashi explains, has more to do with feeling its music than it does with understanding the band’s hybrid mix of Japanese, English, and what he calls the foursome’s made-up “space” language. The band’s robotic, synth-heavy version of the Knack’s “My Sharona” - an analog to Devo’s archly mechanical take on the Stones’s “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” - is a recognizable touchstone.

But other selections, with titles such as “Coelakanth Is Android,” “Shizuka Is a Machine Doctor,” or “Kaja Kaja Goo,” are meant as little more than communicative shorthand: action and reaction, something to shout out to an audience and hear yelled back in unison. Instant communication, instant community.

“When I was listening to my favorite rock music, the lyrics really didn’t matter to me,” Hayashi says. “What mattered to me was the vocal style or the mood that a song had. So when I started making my music, I wanted my audience to feel the same thing. I had no intention of conveying any message through my music. So this ’space language’ came out of that impulse. ‘Kaja Kaja Goo’ doesn’t have any meaning at all. It was just falling down from heaven. The meaning of the word isn’t important, but the power that the sound of the word has is important.”© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.More from Boston.comMore:Globe Living/Arts stories

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