Otoboke Beaver to Open for Foo Fighters at Anfield
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- Otoboke Beaver will support Foo Fighters at Liverpool's Anfield stadium next week, what the band calls their biggest UK gig yet, a leap from the 300-capacity O-Nest club in Tokyo where they played the night before the interview
- Dave Grohl met the band at an overseas festival and again in Japan, then personally introduced them to industry contacts; vocalist Accorinrin says his evangelism helped a "nobody band" get a foothold
- Otoboke Beaver has opened for Green Day, Idles, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jack White, Eddie Vedder and Oasis, but Accorinrin says they were never allowed to meet the Gallaghers — "lots of restricted areas and black curtains were hung up when the Oasis members passed by"
- Accorinrin's lyrics tackle harassment, Japan's Jasrac royalties agency, and her lack of maternal instinct (songs titled Dirty Old Fart Is Waiting for My Reaction and I Am Not Maternal), though she says she never considered the material feminist until outsiders labelled it that way
- Kahokiss, the band's longtime drummer, has departed and been replaced by Emi "Leo" Morimoto, formerly of veteran Osaka punk outfit Shonen Knife; the band debuted four new songs written with Leo at the O-Nest show
- Super Champon, Otoboke Beaver's 18-song, 21-minute most recent album, came out four years ago, and the band has leaned into fan impatience with a new single track titled Is the New Album Out Yet?
Why it matters: An Anfield support slot — a venue that holds roughly 50,000 — represents a dramatic step up for a 17-year-old underground band that has only released around a dozen records and whose last album dropped in 2021, while the Grohl connection explains how a Japanese quartet with no major-label push crossed over to Western festival lineups.
