Aiha Higurashi makes both girls and boys swoon. Boys because they want her. Girls because they want to be her. The tight dresses and frankly erotic gaze have inspired a million wet dreams, but the strutting guitar and in-your-face f**k-you attitude are provocative, too. Higurashi's group, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, has undoubtedly prompted countless girls to pick up a guitar or leave their boyfriends.

Girl bands are so numerous in Japan that they are almost a cliche: either insipidly cute a la Puffy or, in the indie leagues, toughly sexy. Higurashi and bassist Nao Koyama are definitely cuties, but their sexiness comes with all the messiness of real life. Listening to their new single, "Sentimental Journey," is like witnessing a bad breakup. The stained sheets are still in evidence. The black and blue marks still sting.

Higurashi's music is an exploration of this narrow demarcation between vulnerability and violence. It is hard to avoid comparisons to the blues. Her voice is steeped in it, both in the honey of its timbre and in the emotional, cathartic wallop she can give to the simplest lyric. The music has the same simplicity, though distilled with punk rock's fierceness and the angular distortion of Sonic Youth.

The combination makes Higurashi a hypnotic performer. There is nothing plastic, nothing hidden, all of the passions are on display for good or ill. Few performers give this sort of personal exposure when they play, and fewer still are Japanese. It is an emotional high-wire act with a rock 'n' roll soundtrack. A Seagull's concert is a passport into Higurashi's psyche -- sensual, a little dangerous, and totally alive.