One More Time

Hang on the Box

Elysium, Saturday, March 15 Since 1997, Audrey Kimura's Tokyo-based Benten label has been responsible for bringing some of Japan's finest girl groups to SXSW, including Lolita No. 18, Mummy the Peepshow, and Petty Booka. Now Benten has stretched its empire all the way into Mainland China. Beijing's Hang on the Box is a collective pushing pop-punk sweetly skewed by hints of New Wave angularity. Formed in 1999 when vocalist Wang Yue was still in high school, the group signed with Benten in 2001 and has released two albums with the label. This was the quartet's first trek to SXSW, and it's always fun to see how young bands from around the world put their unique spin on rock music. Hang on the Box takes cues from established Japanese girl-punk bands as well as earlier American acts, although most of the group's set consisted of bop-happy, midtempo songs, Yue exuded a toughness reminiscent of the Avengers' Penelope Houston or Corin Tucker during her Heavens to Betsy days. Meanwhile, guitarist Li Yang Fan complemented the group's high-pitched harmonies with tweaked-out riffs that evoked the Lower East Side proto-New Wave of Richard Hell and the Voidoids. The group's songs were in English, which produced intriguing titles like the Ramones-style "Now I Wanna Say Apology to You." The crowd responded enthusiastically to jerk-worthy tunes such as "No Sexy" and "Di Di Di," as well as an almost-unrecognizable version of "Summertime" as performed by Janis Joplin. The highlight was the one number in which the quartet seemed to be chanting, "You're a fucking dirty fish!" They even taught the crowd how to say "Kick ass!" in Chinese (Mandarin, probably). This is cultural exchange at its finest.