Mark Jenkins reviewed a July 2007 Half Japanese performance for The Washington Post:
The version of Half Japanese that performed Friday at the Rock & Roll Hotel was billed as the "original lineup," which isn't literally true. The group that introduced itself with the homemade "Calling All Girls" EP in 1977, and made its live debut the following year, comprised only the Maryland sibling duo of Jad and David Fair. But the Half Japanese that played Friday did include most of the band's 1980s mainstays, including guitarist Mark Jickling, drummer Rick Dreyfuss and saxophonist John Dreyfuss. More important, the sextet recaptured the spirit of its ramshackle '80s shows, which wobbled at the rim of chaos but never quite plunged -- or at least managed to rally after it did.
Essential to Half Japanese's appeal is the contrasting demeanors of the Fairs. Although no longer rail-thin, Jad was still worryingly intense as he delivered artless verses about unrequited love and make-believe sex. The larger, softer David was childlike and beatifically amused, beaming through such songs as "No Direct Line From My Brain to My Heart." Both brothers played guitar some of the time, but it was Jickling's and John Moreman's riffs that provided the foundation. Jad's big guitar moment was a playfully primitive solo during the stomping "I'll Change My Style," while David's came as he illustrated a line from "Too Much Adrenaline" that explained how the condition could "make me break my strings."
When the Fairs performed as a duo, such moments occurred in a musical vacuum. Then a succession of D.C. musicians joined, and the band built a framework -- seemingly rickety, yet reliable -- for the brothers' outbursts. Elementary blues, rockabilly and garage-rock grooves held the songs together, as they did at the Rock & Roll Hotel. Jad Fair now lives in Texas, and he's carried the Half Japanese label around the world, enlisting various musicians. Yet no band has ever done better by the Fairs than the one that powered their adolescent plaints and reveries on Friday.
