Restrained arrangements, programmed rhythms, tasteful acoustic guitar flourishes — Garnet Crow has AAA Radio stamped all over them. That is, of course, if Japan had such a radio format.
Garnet Crow’s first album, First Soundscope ~Mizu no Nai Hareta Sora He~, can be described with all the adjectives used somewhat derisively by non-fans of light jazz-pop — soothing, polished, unintrusive, pretty.
In this case, all those descriptive words are compliments. Garnet Crow may paint well within the lines of acceptable hit-making jazz-pop parameters, but they do it incredibly well.
That is, the band’s songwriting is strong enough to make even casual fans of so-called business jazz take notice.
“Kimi no Ie ni Tsuku Made Zutto Hashitte Yuku” sounds like an ethereal, folk-pop tune Clannad should have written around the time of Anam. Even the saxophone work doesn’t interfere.
“Natsu no Maboroshi” borrows a few of Ace of Base’s drums samples, but Garnet Crow stamps its own identity over those bouncy beats.
For the most part, Garnet Crow subscribe to a very bright, optimistic sound. Even when the band venture into dark territory, it’s more introspective than brooding.
“Rhythm” is drenched in a minor key, but it’s driving backbeat prevents it from being too dark.
“flying” starts off with an ominous hook, but when singer Nakamura Yuri reaches the chorus, a bit of sunny-ness peeks through the song’s cloudiness.
The band has an interesting split of duties. Nakamura writes most of Garnet Crow’s songs, and even though she’s the singer, the group’s lyrics are written by keyboardist Nana Azuki. Second keyboardist Furui Hirohito arranges all the tracks.
What results is a set of solidly built performances. Sure, the mostly keyboard-driven songs give Garnet Crow’s music a somewhat cold and precise feel, but the band knows how to adorn those base tracks with warmth.
Washes of strings, layers of chiming guitars, a chorus of background vocalists — First Soundscope easily avoids the cookie cutter trap of most Japanese pop music.
First Soundscope is an impressive debut by a band that does a stellar job of stretching the boundaries of pop music’s limits without breaking them.
Just on the strength of the songwriting alone, AJICO’s debut album Fukamidori positively shines.
And while the group opted to present a well-produced, professional recording drenched in reverb and deftly overdubbed, there was always a hint of an intangible chemistry underlying AJICO’s performance.
That chemistry comes to the forefront with AJICO Show, a two-CD live album.
Most of Fukamidori is represented on AJICO Show, but the album also includes a number of tunes from UA’s solo albums, one song from Asai Kenichi’s Blankey Jet City days and a cover of the jazz standard “Take Five”.
For the most part, Fukamidori was mostly a mellow affair, introspective and disturbingly quiet. AJICO Show, however, shows that UA, Asai bassist TOKIE and drummer Shiino Kyoichi can rock out.
After a somewhat slow start, the album takes off with the incredibly kinetic “Utsukushii Koto” and doesn’t let up.
Even when AJICO ventures into an incredibly haunting rendition of UA’s “Kanashimi Johnny”, the quartet hammers away with an energy only slightly hinted by Fukamidori.
In the best traditions of legendary live shows, AJICO manages to imbue its songs with alter egos. “Kin no Doro” was a genteel coupling track on the single for “Hadou”, but on AJICO Show, it becomes a hard if not bouncy rocker.
On “Kanashimi Johnny”, AJICO bring out a more unsettling somberness to an already sad song. On the original album, “Fukamidori” was a minimalist opener. On AJICO Show, it becomes one-part jam, one-part ballad for a total time of 10 minutes.
While “Pepin” may have been a great single for Blankey Jet City, it becomes a better duet with UA and Asai trading vocal calls and responses.
TOKIE is already an incredibly bass player, but with AJICO Show, it becomes clearly evidently just how intuitive she can be. She and drummer Shiino are locked in tight throughout the album, navigating through Asai’s thorny solos with ease.
But judging by the number of UA solo songs that appear on the album, it’s clear whose show this is. UA commands the music with an incredible presence. And when Asai’s Dylan-esque screech chimes in, the interplay is nothing short of electric.
AJICO Show shines a deserving spotlight on AJICO’s inherent collective talent. It’s a great document.
Really — there’s not point in reviewing the music on this album.
Rio turns 20 next year, and even mainstream rock music criticism begrudgingly considers this album a classic.
Duran Duran may have been pretty, and Rio is certainly a pretty album. But this music is timeless in the way it dates the 1980s.
As such, Capitol’s reissue of the album is less an attempt to reintroduce new listeners to great (old) music as it is to target the band’s initial demographic, now aging and armed with their own disposable income.
The digitally remastered Rio also contains a lot of CD-ROM extras. It’s those features on which this review will mostly concentrate. And Capitol deserve a few praises.
First off, the CD-ROM designers don’t feel it necessary to hijack a user’s computer. Putting Rio in your drive won’t result in your screen blacking out dramatically while you’re composing that very important piece of e-mail.
Instead, a polite, simple text window pops up giving users an option to listen to the album or explore the CD-ROM. A soft sell — very elegant.
The “index page” of the CD-ROM sports a floating cube that allows users to explore the rest of the disc. Handling it can be difficult, and the lack of labeling on the images doesn’t indicate those are links to the videos. The CD fails in terms of usability in that regard.
But venturing deeper into the extras is incredibly satisfying.
The gallery contains dozens of pictures, a good number of them probably never published till now. A discography section charts the myriad of discs released by the band around the world at that time. The lyric section seems a bit redundant, especially since the album contains a lyric sheet.
The disc includes three full-length videos of the album’s singles. The resolution on the clips look only marginally better than a medium-bandwidth streaming file. You get better viewing from a VHS copy of Greatest.
While the clips look spotty, the accompanying notes that pop up next to them are pretty illuminating. Imagine having to stand barefoot on hot stone, and you get a better appreciation for the ending of “Save a Prayer.”
In short, even the most lapsed Duranie will find the interactive portion of Rio an enjoyable experience.
This particular reissue comes in two covers — a regular jewelbox and a cardboard gatefold. Hardcore fans would be remiss not to get the gatefold sleeve.
Replicating an old album gatefold sleeve, the Rio packaging also includes an alternate cover painted by Patrick Nagel that appeared only in Japan. It’s a beauty. (Although not as impressive as the cloth-bound cover of AJICO’s Fukamidori.)
Capitol has set it sights on making long-time Duranies part with their cash by rehashing old material. Fortunately, this reissue of Rio does its job.
If 9 Songs had been released last fall as planned, it might seem like a different album.
Japanese band FEED released its debut EP, Make Every Stardust Shimmer!, back in March 2000, and its Lenny Kaye-produced debut album was supposed to follow approximately six months later.
But Sony underwent restructuring, and the label subsequently dropped FEED. As a result, 9 Songs arrives nearly a year late.
FEED re-recorded four of the songs from Make Every Stardust Shimmer! and placed them at the start of the album. As a result, listeners who’ve worn out their copy of FEED’s debut may feel displaced, especially since some of the last songs on Stardust open 9 Songs.
Kaye has cleaned up the band’s sound, all but banning reverb and keeping overdubs to a minimum. Some tracks, such as “Find Me” and “As You Like It”, benefit from the treatment, but others, specifically “Laughing”, suffer from it.
After 9 Songs dispenses with all the familiar material, FEED transforms from a band of solid songwriters to a psychedlic outfit.
And that’s where the album starts to suffer from an identity crisis.
The five newer tracks on 9 Songs are a total 180 degrees in mood, proportion and tone to its companion material from Stardust. It’s almost as if FEED record two halves of two albums and put them on one disc.
And given the that 2/3 of the band’s debut appears on 4/9 of the band’s debut album, that seems to be what’s happened.
Which isn’t to say the newer tracks are bad. When singer Saito Maya switches between Japanese and English on “The Bell”, it’s beautiful. “Lucifer” not only has great lyrics (“I’m losing you Lucifer/Don’t leave me now.”) but an unforgettable melody.
But 9 Songs is split in the middle between two opposing aesthetics, and the tension is never resolved satisfactorily.
If only that “Loser” guy — you know, the one who took a slide folk guitar and hip-hop beats and rapped about termites choking on splinters? — if he never hit it big back in 1994, Shea Seger would probably be the shit right now.
It’s difficult not to think of Beck when you put Seger’s debut album, The May Street Project, for a spin.
Dallas native Seger recorded the album in London, and the results sound approximately like what would happen if Texas and England had a musical love child.
The opening track and first single, “Last Time”, sets the tone for everything else that happens musically — semi-robotic beats and eerie, atmospheric effects laying foundation for solid American, perhaps even Southern songwriting.
That overused saying (drastically paraphased) is true — you can take the woman out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the woman.
“Clutch” features some very soulful backing vocals, even while a drum machine thumps out a dirty, gritty club beat. “Shatterwall” feels like a four-track demo taped next to a campfire. (And no, I refuse to mention the name Michelle Shocked.)
If “Always” were recorded in Nashville, it would probably have been covered by Lucinda Williams or Emmylou Harris. But The May Street Project is not a southern rock record. Hardly.
The folk-rock guitars and funky bass lines of the album feel very much at home with the analog synthesizer effects and the dry, programmed beats.
Seger and producer Martin Terefe strip The May Street Project of any gloss, leaving the album to sound dusty, just like portions of Seger’s home state.
And while the southern influence in Seger’s music is strong, she does allow herself some wiggle room. On “Blind Situation,” Commissioner Gordon breaks out in a rap. “Twisted” channels into “Ironic” and “You Oughta Know” from that most predictable of comparrisons. (Alanis Morisette, if you couldn’t tell.)
“I Can’t Lie” is pure rhythm and blues, while “Isn’t It Good” goes for the “Let’s Get It On” vibe.
The May Street Project is an incredibly impressive debut, full of unlikely combinations that work seamlessly with each other. Seger has done something marvelous.
At its core, Sugababes aren’t all that different from the likes of En Vogue or Destiny’s Child or TLC.
The three 16-year-old girls from England sing about those no-good guys in their lives and finding someone else to treat them right.
And while technically Sugababes and their American counterparts cover the same thematic and musical territory, they’re on different planes spiritually.
Where a TLC or Destiny’s Child album may ooze out of a listener’s stereo, Sugababes comes across as a bit rawer.
Although touted as sounding far more mature than their adolescent age, the youthfullness of the trio’s voices significantly contribute to that rough-hewned sound.
In short, these girls don’t quite have the vocal prowess to sing Destiny’s Child under the table, but it’s that lack in techincal precision that makes them sound rather appealing.
On the surface, Sugababes’ debut album, One Touch, is a predictable collection of R&B pop. There’s nothing terribly new or ground-breaking about tracks such as “Same Old Story” or “Real Thing”.
But the Sugababes stripped-down, low-ish budget production doesn’t scream “hard sell” as badly as with American-produced girl bands. The trio’s first single, “Ovaload”, works because it doesn’t try to hit listeners over the head.
One Touch is the perfect album for people who don’t mind R&B but can’t stand most of the R&B music out there. It’s hook-filled enough to fill an hour without grating on a person’s nerves for overly long.
Let’s hope Sugababes don’t lose that rough-edge as their talent improves.
I say the following at the risk of raising some ire: Thee Michelle Gun Elephant aren’t the greatest songwriters in the world.
The Japanese garage punk band has built an entire career rehashing with complete earnestness the kind of gritty rock ‘n’ roll music that paved the way to the Sex Pistols and Ramones of the world.
We’re talking stuff like MC5 or the Who or, as most often cited by rock pundits, Blue Cheer. Thee Michelle Gun Elephant don’t indulge in the kind of Pixie-esque atonal melodicism of Number Girl, or the jackhammer, hardcore assault of Bleach.
Nah. Yusuke Chiba and pals love their 1-4-5 progressions. Which isn’t to say Collection is a bad disc. Rather the contrary.
Thee Michelle Gun Elephant do such a great job at capturing that rock ‘n’ roll essence, they can be forgiven for not crafting great songwriting masterpieces.
If anything, Collection demonstrates that a band as loud and as brash as Thee Michelle Gun Elephant can’t be captured accurately on aluminum. This band probably puts on one helluva live show. (TMGE canceled it’s only Austin, Texas appearance at SXSW 1999.)
From start to finish, Collection brings together the best bits from TMGE’s many albums, and while the disc on the whole sounds incredibly homogenous, no one can deny these guys work hard for their cover charges.
“Young Jaguar”, “Hi! China!”, “Smokin’ Billy”, “Black Tambourine”, “The Birdmen” — all great tracks not for having tremendous hooks but for capturing some great, raw energy.
Collection does a great job of keeping listeners interested in a style of garage rock that might otherwise come across as somewhat retread.
LFO’s self-titled debut album from 1999 was the poster child for everything wrong with the boy band craze.
At its best, it was inane; at its worst, dismal. The rushly recorded album was nothing more than a cookie cutter collection of ballads, dance pop and white boy R&B. It came across as calculated as it was.
In an interview with SonicNet, Rich Cronin vowed to incorporate more rock into LFO’s next album. The first step in accomplishing this endeavor, however, was ditching boy band svengali Louis J. Pearlman as executive producer.
Cronin takes the reigns of LFO’s second album, Life Is Good, and it certain deserves high marks in the effort category.
The band keeps its promise — the guitars on the album aren’t buried under slick R&B beats. The power ballads and dance numbers have given way to a more diverse approach, where hip-hop, pop, rock and a bit of dub meet.
Life Is Good is nothing if not ambitious.
“6 Minutes”, which I hope doesn’t refer to any of the members’ bedroom proficiency, jumps from a dancehall chant to a thump-whack rock ‘n’ roll backbeat between verse and chorus.
“Erase Her” shows the trio channeling a bit of Depeche Mode. “Where You Are” attempts to horn in on the Goo Goo Dolls-meet-Backstreet Boys action BBMak has going.
“Gravity” sounds like an ‘NSync outtake, while “That’s The Way It Is” targets the grunge-lite audience that digs Vertical Horizon and 3 Doors Down.
But those are the exceptions.
For the most part, LFO stays well within their trademark pop/hip-hop sound, even accomodating De La Soul and MOP on a few tracks.
With the musical breadth covered by Life Is Good, it’s almost criminal the guys in the band don’t quite have the singing talent to pull it all off.
Devon Lima, whose soulful voice dominated the last album, is mostly absent here, and his fellow members Cronin and Brad Young don’t have the same kind of vocal strength.
Then there’s that irritating habit of name-dropping current cultural icons. Guys — all that’ll do is make your music terribly dated a decade from now. Will teenage girls in 2011 really care about Ben Affleck? Will the grown women who listened to your music in 2001 still care?
It’s nice to see that LFO really does care that it’s perceived as something more than a get-rich-quick scheme, and the members definitely attempt to wriggle free from the constraints to big business pop.
But there’s a huge gulf between concept and execution. LFO secured the musical material to break out of the mold, but it doesn’t have the talent to hold up its creds.
Shimada Aiko’s Blue Marble has a lot of downtown New York muscle behind it.
There’s Evyind Kang twiddling the recording console knobs as producer. There’s fellow Seattle-ite Bill Frisell popping in for a track. There’s John Zorn putting the album out on his Tzadik label.
Shimada’s angular, haunting melodies lend themselves well to the catholic interests of a downtown aesthetic, and as a result, Blue Marble is one of the most strangely beautiful recordings of the year.
Shimada’s clear alto never obscures her melodies, which sometimes stray a half-step here and there from their tonal center. And while she sings entirely in Japanese — not even including a throw-away English word as is common practice in Japanese pop music — listeners don’t need a lyric sheet to feel the longing in her voice.
And while Shimada could have felt at home with more traditional instrumentation — say, an acoustic guitar and a brush drum kit — her songs take on a larger sense of proportion with the unconventional approach she and Kang employs.
Toy pianos mimic a gamelan ensemble on “Busy Rabbit,” the closest thing to a single on the album. A string quartet that could have come from Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3 backs Shimada on “Toki Wa Sugi”, while Björk-like drum patterns drive “Wakare”.
Every track offers something distinct — an Enya-meets-Meredith Monk chorale on “Hikari (Morning Part II)”; no vocals and all strings on “Silent”; Frisell’s chiming tones on “Song for Mark.”
But the overall mood of Blue Marble is introspective and disturbing. Shimada isn’t content to produce music that’s calm and soothing. Blue Marble looks inward but is never afraid to peek into the dark corner of the mind’s ear.
The 41-minute album concludes with the 10-minute “Asa (Morning Part 3)”, a piece that combines all the techniques introduced in the preceding tracks, even reprising the opening guitar lick.
Blue Marble is a quiet, unsettling collection of songs propelled by a singular vision. It’s a challenging listening experience that doesn’t leave a person worn down.
This album is a lot more interesting if you take it literally.
In other words, you have to believe an 11-year-old Japanese martial artist is playing guitar, a drummer possessed by the ghost of his hip-hop friends is hammering out those phat beats and a guy with two fractured eyes is singing those deadpan lyrics.
If you believe the animated characters of Gorillaz really are playing their instruments — ignore those musicians behind the curtain! — then Gorillaz the album comes across as pretty cool.
Which it is … for the most part.
IRL (translation: “in real life,” for you beginning Internet surfers), Gorillaz consists of Blur singer Damon Albran and producer Dan “The Automater” Nakamura, with a revolving door of guest musicians including Del tha Funky Homosapien, Hatori Miho of Cibo Matto and Ibrahim Ferrer from Buena Vista Social Club.
A supergroup of that magnitude has got to produce one helluva recording, right? A few tracks support that assumption.
“Re-hash” certainly harkens back to 1994, when some guy named Beck layed an acoustic guitar riff over a hefty backbeat, but this time Albran and co. — I mean, 2D and co. deliver an off-kilter sing-song melody that’s as every bit stoner as it is childplay.
“Tomorrow Comes Today”, one of three incredibly appealing singles off the album, quietly rumbles with a mournful harmonica line and watery bass line. “19-2000” blips and bleeps along, propelled by a catchy chorus delivered by Hatori.
And of course, there’s “Clint Eastwood”. Every music journalist reviewing this disc is required to mention “Clint Eastwood”, a spooky-sounding song that combines dub and hip-hop in a way that’s supposed to be cool and new but comes across as pretty lethargic (to mine ears at least).
From track to track, Gorillaz produces moments of ear-catching cleverness. Like the eerie greeting that opens “M1 A1”. Or the slow-motion Latin rhythms of “Latin Simone”. Or the concise “Hey ho, let’s go”-ness of “Punk.” Or the cool trumpet hook of “Rock the House.”
But all these great, little moments don’t add up to any brilliant whole. If anything, Gorillaz sounds like Nakamura and Albran took one tempo, changed a bunch of preset patterns on a drum machine, then let the rest of the musicians just lay all sorts of different stuff on top of it.
It gets boring after a while listening to one song after another trot along at the same tempo, booming and buzzing with much of the same sonic effects.
If real people were put to task for producing a work this non-descript, they would be raked over the proverbial coals.
But these real people are giving voice to a conceit. Gorillaz is the ultimate concept group, and Gorillaz is a might fine concept album.
Hatori’s broken English enuniciation comes across far more intersting if channeled through Noodle. Del tha Funky Homosapien does an excellent job getting into the character of Russel. And Albran reins in his heavy Cockney accent on enough tracks to give 2D some real humanity and versatility.
Makes you almost wonder what the hell Murdoch does.
If the aim of Gorillaz is to take rock music drama to its extreme, it does a fucking good job.