Kawaii ne

One of the guitarists of Mummy the Peepshow calls herself Youngus Akkie. A band so coy as to make a slight reference to AC/DC has got to rock.

And Mummy the Peepshow does.

The clear hit among Japanese bands at SXSW 2000, Mummy the Peepshow plays the kind of punk pop that put Shonen Knife on the international map back in the early 1990s.

An all-girl group, Mummy is the Sanrio version of the Donnas — loud and rocking but cute too.

Mummy knows how to nail its hooks, as evident on such tracks as “Dear Big Tongue,” “Jenny is Feeling Bad” and “Spring pants has come.” But they also know how to make screaming, noisy Dead Milkmen-esque punk, such as on “wonder BREAD angel SOUP” and “Annie.”

And they make such sweet harmonies too.

This is Egg Speaking, Mummy’s second album, is far and away a more solid album than it’s scattered debut, Mummy Bullion. The band embraces both its punk roots and some pop hooks on Egg, making it a wonderful, bratty find.

Two complaints, however. The album is mixed terribly. It’s as if a master for vinyl was used for the CD pressing. The two tracks on the Japan Night 2000 sampler are mixed better.

Secondly, the CD is rigged to pop up a web browser to the Sister/Benten Records web site. While effective marketing, it gets old after a while.