From ICA 268 :-
Urusei Yatsura formed in 1993. Founding members Fergus Lawrie and Graham Kemp met whilst attending the University of Glasgow. They recruited Elaine Graham as bassist, and the line-up was completed with the subsequent addition of Elaine’s brother, Ian Graham, on drums.
They took their band name from the manga Urusei Yatsura, written by Rumiko Takahashi, and contributed their first recording, “Guitars Are Boring”, to a compilation album released by the locally based Kazoo Club. This record in turn brought them to the attention of John Peel, who brought them in to do a session in 1994. They would go on to record 4 Peel Sessions in total, as well as appearing on the Evening Session for Steve Lamacq.
Over the years they released three albums: We Are Urusei Yatsura (1996), Slain By Urusei Yatsura (1998) and Everybody Loves Urusei Yatsura (2000). Albums in America and Japan were released under the name of Yatsura for legal reasons. There were also around a dozen commercially available singles, mostly on Che, a London-based indie label. Urusei Yatsura split in June 2001, but three of the members would resurface in 2009 as Project A-Ko with a really good collection of tunes on the album Yoyodyne.
The most obvious, and therefore lazy, comparisons are Pavement, Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth. As someone else has said elsewhere on t’internet, the sonic attacks of their songs were like three-minute bolts of lightning, and likewise, their debut album, snapped and crackled in a time when everything Brit-popped.
mp3: Urusei Yatsura – Hello Tiger
From Slain By Urusei Yatsura.
The closest the band ever got to commercial success. It reached #40 in the singles chart in February 1998.I wonder if things would have turned out different had they been invited to perform that week on Top of The Pops?
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
Urusei (Graham, I think?) posted recently that they supported Garbage at the Barrowlands – their one and only time to play there. I didn’t attend as I didn’t like Garbage. It was one of only a few Urusei gigs I missed in Glasgow.
The Kazoo LP was to be found, in quantity, under many beds and in storage cupboards for years after it’s release. I’ve noted before that there was much inter-band bickering given some bands took to over-dubbing their live Kazoo performance.
While they had many fantastic songs in their cannon it was, it will always be, Siamese that remains my all-time favourite. On record it was superb. Live, it could be extraordinary.
I have a fair bit of Urusei although I note that something that should be in the collection isn’t? Another pop vanishing.
When Ché began to release singles in the CD1 / CD2 format I began to have less interest. However,
a visibly dysfunctional band does not make for a comfortable performance (from band or fan perspective) – inter-personal acrimony hung in the air. I found it unpleasant and stopped going to see them live. It was no surprise that they split . For me the surprise was that they stayed together so long.
Still, what a band!
In addition to a fun daily read, this website has brought two amazing bands into my life that I had never even heard of previously: these guys and Sons and Daughters. I owe you two pints!
Is Urusei Yatsura Japanese for “Teenage Fanclub”?