Viva! La Woman is the debutstudio album by the bandCibo Matto, released in 1996 by Warner Bros. Records. Two singles were released from the album: "Birthday Cake" as a promotional 7", and "Know Your Chicken" in a variety of formats. An accompanying music video for "Know Your Chicken" was produced. A video for "Sugar Water" was also produced, featuring a split-screen technique, which was directed by Michel Gondry.
Background
Warner Bros. signed Cibo Matto after their self-titled EP caught the label's attention. The tracks reflected the band's live performances, with pre-recorded samples and loops. Yuka Honda has expressed regret that she did not stand up for herself when others discouraged her from replacing the samples and loops with new recordings. The album's songs all mention food in some way, sometimes as a metaphor. Yuka Honda explains: "Food is something you can't escape. It's there every day." The band would frequently go to restaurants after rehearsal, and "Cibo Matto grew out of those restaurant times."
Composition
The music on Viva! La Woman has been described as "urban trip-hop". The album's lyrical content balances humorous lyrics in "Beef Jerky", "Birthday Cake", and "Know Your Chicken" with abstract, often emotional narrative-style wording in "Apple", "Sugar Water", and "Artichoke", as well as overall pop music fare in "White Pepper Ice Cream", "Theme", and "Le Pain Perdu". Several tracks feature the group's well-known references to food, primarily present on this release. "Theme", unusual among Cibo Matto's discography for its length, is a track which features a relatively normal song sung in English with several Italian words before shifting into instrumental passages and leading into a second half that contains entire verses in Japanese and French.
Packaging
The album booklet contains illustrations and lyrics accompanying most of the songs. The only tracks for which the booklet features no lyrics are "The Candy Man", a cover of a song from the 1971 filmWilly Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and "Jive", a hidden track with a length of 18 seconds consisting ofMiho Hatori tapping her thighs, for which she is also credited.
Reception
Viva! La Woman was acclaimed by music critics. Michele Romero of Entertainment Weekly described Cibo Matto as "sonic savants who go nutty mixing disparate ingredients, like avant-garde trumpet with bossa nova bass lines and sugary non-sequitur lyrics," summarizing the album as "kitschy club music, as kooky and lovable as Hello Kitty." Select writer Andrew Male remarked on the album's playful lyrics, while noting that the band is "far more musically adept than yer average guitar 'n' shouting comedy act". Spin named it the tenth best album of 1996 and later ranked it as the 90th best album of the decade. The album also spent six weeks at the top of CMJ's college radio charts. Some listeners perceived the album as a novelty, "partly because of the cutesy-pie assumptions attached to Asian women in pop and partly because of the band's propensity for writing songs about food", much to the band's chagrin. In a retrospective review, AllMusic's Heather Phares praised Cibo Matto as "fresh and funky", and said of the album, "Viva! La Woman is an innovative and catchy mix of eclectic samples and stream-of-consciousness lyrics. A diverse and entertaining album, Viva! La Woman leaves the listener hungry for more of their crazy food for thought."
Track listing
Personnel
From the liner notes of Viva! La Woman: Cibo Matto
