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Originally from Taiwan and currently working in Meanjin/Brisbane, Australia, Matt Hsu is an award-winning musician, composer and de facto frontman of a 25-piece punk orchestra. But this short introduction doesn’t do him justice: for one thing, that word ‘punk’ needs to be understood in terms of its abstract meaning as a way of life or a mindset rather than as a form of music. That’s an important distinction to make because Hsu’s music goes well beyond that or any other genre. He is a proponent of radical inclusivity – a fact that will become more jubilantly apparent the more you hear of his music – and that entails a completely open-minded approach to the style and substance of his songs. Maybe it is for that very reason that he has been compelled to release two fearsomely eclectic albums – Noodle and Forest Party – on the same day, two albums with a mind-boggling array of collaborators, themes and moods. He has always done things his own way: his 2019 debut, The Shirt Album, was released as a run of t-shirts with a download code sewn into them. But nothing he has done in the past will prepare you for the size and scope of his new pair of releases.
Welcome to the Neighbourhood, which kicks off Forest Party, offers up warm horns and a soulful chorus offset by bleak but heartfelt verses. It turns out to be the perfect introduction to Hsu’s aesthetic, which is outwardly maximalist but deals in very particular social concerns. Immediately, a perfect balance is struck between groove and experimentation, bringing to mind the righteous fire of jazz acts like the Art Ensemble of Chicago or Tyrone Washington as well as socially conscious hip-hop and lovingly crafted indie.
Hsu’s vast musical range (and wide variety of collaborators) means that these albums sometimes feel like they’ve been blown apart into disparate fragments, a fact that aligns them, on the surface at least, with postmodernism. But listen a little closer, and you will realise that these are complete, enveloping worlds. Sure, they are fragmentary, but those fragments always seem to be pulling together, seeking to create a holistic musical universe. While this kind of music might share postmodernism’s rejection of absolute truths, and its ‘everything everywhere all at once’ attitude to creativity, it never falls into the nihilistic whirlpool that movement often seems to require. Instead, it espouses a realistic and tempered utopianism: while Welcome to the Neighbourhood might begin with enforced departure and deracination, it ends with the idea that home can exist wherever there is hope and wherever there is community.
This idea of community feels important: both of these albums are outwardly anti-colonialist and anti-racist, and Hsu’s huge cast of collaborators – many of whom are POC or queer artists, or both – is itself a statement of intent. It’s not just that marginalised voices are deserving of attention, it’s that they need to be heard. The world stagnates if variety is impeded; that’s a phenomenon which is sadly becoming more observable by the day. As Han Reardon-Smith says on Cracks Everywhere, ‘friendship is the root of freedom’, and that goes for everyone.
Later in that same song, Reardon-Smith sings – or rather whispers – ‘Joy needs sharp edges to thrive.’ It’s a call to arms, a recognition that protest is a necessary corollary of marginalisation. Forest Party (which, it could be argued, is the sharper-edged and more politically charged of these two albums), is full of these powerful moments. Every song seems to have a lyric or an instrumental passage that reaches into a place of dignity and pride and grace, and weaponises those qualities in defence of difference or otherness.
The joyous, bilingual Arakawa (featuring Kaya Tominaga) fuses elements of Japanese folk and dreamy bedroom pop, while Speaking In Dove (with Lake Kelly) is ethereal harp-laden chamber-folk, like a new age Joanna Newsom. Lotus, How Beautiful (with Tenzin Choegyal) features a transformative chanted refrain and swathes of uplifting sound, which on one level is purely (and beautifully) meditative, but also represents a wholly organic fusion of Eastern and Western musical traditions.
The decaying space-age stomp of Glitter & Gold (with Sachém & Tom Thum) is as disconcerting as it is compelling: an electronically slurred rap over slowed-down beats, it sounds like the logical endpoint of the synthetically medicated hip-hop that has become so prevalent in recent years. Tom Thum makes another appearance on Capitalism™, which also features contributions from Saro Roro, Rivermouth, Blaq Carrie & Nima Doostkhah. It’s a triumph of quiet protest, a blissed out chorus hiding a ruthless critique of a ruthless system. Rivermouth’s observation that ‘This machine is fuelled by people thinking they’ve outsmarted it/When really they’re still grinding, blindfolded at the heart of it’ feels particularly prescient, and may offer a clue to the whole of Hsu’s subversive philosophy, or at least the targets it’s taking aim at. These songs recognise the socio-economic failings of capitalism, but also its role in gender, sex and race inequality. Take, for example, Black Kings, a track which sets Blaq Carrie’s elegy for Chadwick Boseman against moody hand drums and languid keys, or Last Time That I Checc’d, which examines the legacy of rapper and activist Nipsey Hussle.
But don’t let that fool you into thinking that Hsu has created an academic document. There is room for joy and celebration here too. ! (The Song Formerly Known As) sees him putting on his ugly pants and dancing in his suburban house in a song that channels the obvious funk of Prince through the unexpected gauze of dream pop. For a song about not going out, it’s an absolute blast.
The album’s instrumentals show Hsu’s highly original compositional sense: Mycelium begins like a lost classic of Japanese environmental music and sways jubilantly into film score territory, somewhere between sci-fi and samurai. Sunnybank Kid is half-asleep music-box soul. Lying On Grass is awash with the stridulations of insects and gentle Joe Hishaishi-like melodies, while the minute-ling album closer ✧ a lottle ✧ first song i wrote? almost has the feel of mediaeval court music.
Noodle is perhaps slightly the less spiky of the two albums, but it contains an even greater range of influences. Here Hsu truly justifies the Obscure Orchestra sobriquet, delighting in swirling orchestral pop in the mode of Kishi Bashi, gloopy funk, DIY experimentalism or flourishes of electronic brilliance, à la Haruomi Hosono. And the cast-list of collaborators grows ever more extensive. Lead-off track, Obscure Thought, features Lucie Pegna on joint lead vocals and is a breathless folk-pop exploration of the difficulties of being a frontman in a band as many-sided and open-ended as Hsu’s. If you wanted to, you could probably claim that there is something Deleuzian about Hsu’s decentered approach to plurality, and this song would be the place to start. But losing yourself in the sheer abundance on offer here is probably a more worthwhile exercise.
Pegna’s input is important elsewhere too: her soulful backing vocals embellish Ethan Enoch‘s adroit rap on Where’s Home, and her verses on cosy/ittekimasu add French to the ever-growing list of languages on these albums, her duet with Kaya Tominaga sounding like a gorgeous and eccentric mix of Brigitte Fontaine and Maher Shalal Hash Baz. On Morse Code, Pegna teams up with Theo Wu for a song whose glitchy surface belies an underlying nursery rhyme simplicity. Beneath the bubbling electronics are elements of the Young Marble Giants and Moldy Peaches.
But despite the fuzzier edges, the anti-racist message is still strong. Tracks like the brilliantly titled LIVE LAUGH DECOLONISE and Only Person of Colour at the Indie Hang pack a potent punch, albeit one delivered with a velvet glove (and a sly sense of humour). Then there is the Taiwanese version of Welcome to the Neighbourhood, a powerful argument for how different languages can create different perspectives. It pairs well with the delicate and spacy Make Everything, a bilingual song in English and Taiwanese Hokkien featuring verses from apadalia and Loopy! 鹿皮.
Among Noodle’s most beautiful moments is the lullaby-like Melanin Moon (with Saro Roro and Tiarn Toni sharing vocal duties), a song so sleepily immersive that you almost forget you’re listening to something made by human hand: it feels as if it has existed in the ether for centuries. It’s just one of many songs that displays a distinctly Japanese influence. Eat the World – a paean to comfort eating – sounds like it could have been written by one of the tanuki in Studio Ghibli’s Pom Poko. It comes as no surprise to learn that Hsu lists Ghibli amongst his influences.
The brief instrumental Golden Key is a soothing neoclassical delight with shades of Yann Tiersen, and Premonition combines east Asian folk with crunchy psych-rock guitars. Birdsnest Hair reaches back to the more twee elements of freak folk, with a smattering of riot grrrl camaraderie and a vocal slot from Ash Djokic that sounds like an antipodean Kero Kero Bonito. Hsu alchemises different eras, different stylistic elements, and whole different artforms, and he always manages to come up with something shiny and big and wholly unexpected.
As the rather scattershot nature of this review suggests, it’s utterly impossible to attempt to categorise Hsu’s music. Perhaps his most impressive feat is the way he dissolves genre boundaries completely, or rather the way that this dissolution brings about a destabilisation of the binary norms of race and gender while somehow strengthening Hsu’s creative position. He gets around the problem of multiplicity by conceding that it may not be a problem after all, and by not trying to piece everything together neatly. Instead, he leaves everything suspended freely, so that his songs seem to interact almost of their own volition, creating their own universe with all the randomness and beautiful chaos that implies.
Forest Party and Noodle are jointly released on 1st February 2025.
Both albums are available now via Bandcamp: https://mhoo.bandcamp.com/
There are also MHOO Bundles that include both albums on vinyl (which ships mid-April) with a comic book and sticker sheet. You can pre-order those here: https://mhoo.bandcamp.com/merch
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