Although released more than five years ago, UA’s debut album 11 still sounds incredibly new.
Sure, some of the drum programming may be a bit dated, but UA’s strong artistic vision is every bit as challenging in 2001 as it must have been in 1995.
11 is a diverse collection of internationally influenced jazz-pop. The album’s opener, “Rhythm”, could have come off a Basia or Sade album.
But when UA, whose name in Swahili means “flower” or “kill”, tears into the exuberent, flamenco-influenced “Ookina Kina Amaete”, all proverbial bets are off — wherever UA takes you next, it’s going to be exciting, and it’s going to sound good.
The Japanese soul singer who was discovered in a jazz bar in Osaka even flirted with drum ‘n’ bass way before Madonna dragged William Orbit into a studio (“Bara Iro”). The backbeat sounds a bit primitive, but even then, UA knew what would eventually become electronica was more about texture than songcraft.
UA’s smokey, sultry voice works best when she draws inward, and 11 has more than its fair share of ethereal, Homogenic-era Björk-like textures.
“Jelly” and “Himawari” specifically keyed more successfully into the sonic territory Iceland’s most famous export was trying to attempt on Post — big dance beats, atmospheric instrumentation, mellow rhythms.
While UA does create some smart, daring music, she also knows the value of a good single.
On “Kumo Ga Chigireru Toki”, UA skillfully tunes into the melancholy her deep alto can easily evoke. And on both versions of “Jounetsu”, one of which appears as a hidden 12th track, UA gives herself a workout on some jubilant music.
Although UA would go on to make more diverse and challenging albums — Ametora is even more cosmopolitan, and AJICO’s Fukamidori more haunting — 11 finds the alluring singer at a creative high.
She balances her more riskier leanings with a need for hooks, and UA doesn’t stumble one bit.
For a band as feedback-friendly as mono, they sure have some nicely melodic music.
mono specialize in the kind of long, drawn-out, repetitive instrumental that some avant-garde experts might call “post-minimalist”.
But where music of this kind can get pretty boring pretty fast, mono possesses a very keen sense of proportion.
The Japanese quartet’s debut, Hey You E.P., contains only four tracks and clocks in at 37 minutes.
The 11-minute opener “Karelia”, however, doesn’t feel like it just stole 1/6 of an hour of your life. Rather, the meticulously-crafted arc of the piece makes those 11 minutes feel more like three. (Eh — maybe five.)
mono knows never to try a listeners patience. They build to a climax gradually and organically, never sacrificing common sense to be merely clever.
The eight-minute “Finlandia” starts off slow, but by the time all the band members are playing, that slow piece has transformed itself into a hulking, kinetic wall of sound.
Unlike other Japanese underground bands, mono likes tonal harmonies. Noisy, buzzsaw distorion is a vital part of the band’s sound, make no mistake, but the foundation for their skyscrapers of overdrive are muddy triads fed through lots and lots of reverb.
With a tonal foundation set against a screeching foreground, mono creates an arresting Big Picture.
In short, it’s a tremendous piece of work from a band expert in making extremes work as a single unit.
The four members of mono — bass guitarist Tamaki, guitarists Goto Takaakira and Yoda, and drummer Takada Yasunori — are expert sound architects. They know how to make the harshest noise sound angelic.
PuffyAmiYumi is a chart-topping phenomenom in its native Japan, and just like in America, some questionable stuff reaches the top of the charts.
Puffy, who tacked on the suffix AmiYumi to avoid confusion with the Artist Formerly Known As Puff Daddy Now Known As P. Diddy, could be considered an “idol pop” group.
After all, Onuki Ami and Yoshimura Yumi were recruited by producer Okuda Tamio. He formed the group, not Ami or Yumi.
But that’s where similarities between Puffy and other idol groups ends. Ami and Yumi are in their late 20s, positively ancient in the youth-geared idol scene.
Instead of chirping to swirling techno beats and layers of over-produced, synthetic dance pop, Ami and Yumi scrape their way through guitar-driven, ’60s-inspired rock-pop that sounds positively beefy next to, say, Koyanagi Yuki or Hamasaki Ayumi.
Does all this matter to the anime-loving Asiaphiles to which Puffy’s U.S. debut, Spike, is evidently geared? Maybe.
Sony is banking on college airplay, not mainstream radio, to introduce bands from Japan to America. In short, the Discman/Wega makers want a piece of the Pizzicato Five-Shonen Knife action.
But PuffyAmiYumi is a pretty risky means to an end. Although Spike is rife with bouncy hooks and straight-ahead headbanger guitar riffs, it’s still first and foremost an album geared for Japan’s pop audience.
In other words, this music is so sweet, it can make a listener develop some awful cavities. “Boogie Woogie No. 5”, the album’s opener, should have included a dentist’s warning.
Other tracks could have come straight off a really bad anime soundtrack. The cheesy analog drum machine and synthesizer effects of “Cosmic Nagaretabi” sounds like an outtake from Macross or the ending theme of an episode of Urutsei Yatsuura.
But for the most part, Spike really isn’t that bad. (At least for folks who listen to too much Number Girl and Shiina Ringo and were expecting the worse.)
“Sumire” contains the kind of uplifting melody that comes across as sincere instead of crass. “Mondo Muyo” does a great job of pounding into your subconscious.
“Destruction Pancake” really lays heavy on the distortion, while “Sakura no hana ga saku amai amai kisetsu no uta” tones down the exuberence for a slightly introspective mood.
Vocally, Ami and Yumi are just one voice short and a few notes shy of being Bananarama, but their earnest delivery has more personality than, say, the technical polish of any member of Eden’s Crush.
In all, Spike is an indulgent guilty pleasure, an album that takes its lack of seriousness so seriously, it comes across as fun as it should.
So. Let’s compare notes. How many listens did it take for you to realize that Radiohead’s Amnesiac doesn’t suck after all?
Although rumours about the album’s content hinted it would feature more of the band’s signature guitar rock, Amnesiac pretty much continues in the same vein as Kid A.
Ethereal effects, cryptic vocal processing, fluid song structures — Amnesiac is every bit as unconventional as Kid A.
So why is Amnesiac’s predecessor still a better recording?
First off, this album sounds like it really was recorded at the same time as Kid A. This is not a band who recorded a collection of sonically challenging, atmospheric instrumental music, then was told by its label to go back into the studio and do something more conventional. (Like, say, Café Tacuba did with Reves/Yosoy.)
Amnesiac are the leftovers of the Kid A sessions, plain and simple. If the album really did live up to its rumors and stood out in contrast from Kid A, evaluating it would be a much fairer task. That’s just not the case.
Whereas Kid A managed to seep into listeners’ consciences without their knowing it, Amnesiac struggles to make its grotesque sound seem more interesting and beautiful than it is.
The album starts off promisingly enough with “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box” and the Brian-Eno-by-way-of-Steve Reich piano chords of “Pyramid Song.”
Then “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” starts up … and goes nowhere. The cacophonic, stuttering of the song’s instrumentation comes across as flashy instead unsettling.
And that’s how the rest of the album plays out. Songs start, songs meander, songs attempt to stretch into some sort of dramatic arc, songs end.
Like a colleague of mine said, “It’s no Kid A,” which is unfortunate — Amnesiac is still a daring, strangely pretty set of songs. It just has to contend with a predecessor that lived up to the press it generated.
And as the beginning sentence of this review implies — after a few listens, Amnesiac reveals some nice moments.
“Like Spinning Plates” paces itself on so many different levels, the title is pretty appropriate. The conventionally structured “Knives Out” provides the album a much needed break from its experimentalism. And the re-working of “Morning Bell” from Kid A brings out a pleasant eerieness not evident in its other form.
Once that beauty reveals itself, then Amnesiac doesn’t feel so much like leftovers.
Back in 1998, Rufus Wainwright somehow managed to make every critic on the face of the planet trip over themselves in desparate high praise.
Like Kelly Willis’ What I Deserve from 1999, Wainwright’s eponymous debut yielded many more accolades than it probably deserved.
I speak only for myself, but Wainwright struck me as impenetrable and overly smart, his nasal deadpan sounding like the alien love child of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Japanese rock diva Shiina Ringo.
But Wainwright struck a chord with listeners, and even if he didn’t topple the Backstreet Boys from their chart-topping perch, the very few people who bought his first album really, really loved it.
So now Wainwright returns with Poses, and somewhat self-mockingly, he told Rolling Stone his aim with this album was to sell out.
He did, and thank goodness for that.
Poses lives up to the hype critics heaped on him three years ago. It’s a solid collection of lush, dramatic pop songs that veers from crooner ditties to quasi-folk pop.
When Wainwright “sells out,” he does so marvelously, nailing radio-friendly hooks that scream “injustice” if program directors summarily ignore these songs.
“California” feels like an update of Burt Bacharach’s “San Jose” and Petula Clark’s “Downtown”, only with jangle guitar rock that Michael Stipe would have done if he came out a decade earlier.
“Grey Gardens” is a straight-forward pop song, the kind with an immediate melody and enough restraint to come across as revelatory and not flashy.
On other tracks, Wainwright still indulges in the brainy, literate muse that made his first album somewhat inaccessible, but this time around, he’s gotten moodier, holding back on hitting people over the head with his songwriting prowess.
“Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk”, “Rebel Prince” and “Greek Song” sound like excerpts from a work-in-progress stage production — three-minute minature dramas with their own start, middle and ending.
“The Consort” builds slowly, depending on long notes to stretch the momentum of the song to a comfortable pace.
And on a cover of his dad Loudon’s “One Man Guy,” Wainwright cleverly confounds the song’s theme. The title should indicate how it might be construed but ultimately isn’t.
In all, Poses shows Wainwright being smarter with his smartness. He’s letting his music and not his talent speak for him, and what emerges is a beautiful album that makes doubters into believers.
Hate to admit this, but when I see the name “Everything But the Girl”, I usually expect to hear Tracey Thorn somewhere.
Thorn’s rich voice gives Everything But the Girl’s music a distinctly human touch, especially now that the pair has lept two feet into the cold, synthetic world of electronica.
Back to Mine, a series of remix recordings, is devoid of Thorn, but her presence isn’t entirely missed. Thorn and musical co-hort Ben Watt still manage to find that essential bit soul in the pieces they selected to remix for Back to Mine.
Beth Orton’s “Stars All Seem to Fall” epitomizes Everything But the Girl’s mastery at bringing humanity to technical wizardry.
Orton’s ruddy voice keys into the same emotional realm as Thorn’s, and Watt provides Orton with a restrained backdrop, letting Orton do what she does well.
At its core, Model 500’s “Flow” and the Ananda Project’s “Cascades of Colour” traffics in the same kind of dance floor-driven soul jazz that marked Everything But the Girl’s pre-DJ work.
Even some of the song’s themes, such as Slick Rick’s cautionary tale “All Alone (No One to Be With)” and the Roots’ “Silent Treatment”, parallel the love-lost longing in Thorn’s lyrics.
But Back to Mine is all about mood, one that shakes your hips, even if your heart does some twists and turns.
To that end, Everything But the Girl includes Margaret Mary O’Hara’s “To Cry About,” a folk-pop tune given a spare, ethereal arrangement that’s haunting as anything the duo has ever written.
It’s a terrific move, and O’Hara’s un-slick voice gives the collection a nice break from all the back beats and electro-effects.
If anything, Back to Mine feels like a really cool mixed tape given by friend. Except this mixed tape is threaded together by a single aesthetic that makes it feel personalized and person.
It’s as much your tape as it is the person who made it for you.
So, uh, when did Depeche Mode become such a texturally interesing band? And when did David Gahan learn how to croon?
It must be producer Mark Bell, the guy partly responsible for turning Björk from a punk party-band chanteuse to an electronica pop diva.
A lot of the ethereal effects that made Björk’s Homogenic a fascinating listen informs a lot of Exciter.
And with songwriter Martin L. Gore trading larger-than-life dance beats for more subtle rhythms and more mellow fare, Bell manages to keep Exciter from sinking into the filler boredom of most Depeche Mode album tracks.
Most of the songs on Exciter writhe and seethe without ever exploding into a grand chorus or bridge, and they work because of it.
Bell and the band build to climaxes that never come and always back off before anything gets to crowded.
“Dream On”, “I Am You” and “Shine” capitalize on this technique most effectively.
Other times, DM is content to soak in a sea of ethereal effects on such tracks as “Comatose”, “Breathe” and “The Sweetest Condition.” In the past, these excursions often tended to be the most boring moments on a Depeche Mode album, but with Bell’s arrangement expertise, they never lose interest.
“When the Body Speaks” is perhaps one of the more beautiful DM songs. Driven by a throbbing bass but never getting louder than a quiet whisper, this restrained ballad absolves the band for ever writing “Somebody”.
Despite drug problems and a suicide attempt — or maybe because of them — Gahan has become a stronger singer, not by becoming more powerful but by exercising tremendous control. On this album, Gahan has mastered the concept of “less is more.”
Exciter makes some very forgiveable missteps when it tries to dredge up the past. “The Dead of Night” sounds like an outtake from Songs of Faith and Devotion that should have remained an outtake. But even a lyrically weak song as “Breathe” still possesses an insanely catchy melody.
“I Feel Loved”, on the other hand, is a nice return to Depeche Mode’s more dance-floor friendly work.
Exciter is perhaps one of the most coherent albums Depeche Mode has ever recorded, and it never has to resort to overstatement to make that point.
Paul McCartney casts a large shadow over Mead’s work. On “Girl on a Roof” from Mead’s second album Mine and Yours, he starts the song with an “Ob-Li-Di”-like coo that leads into an “Ob-Li-Da”-like verse. “No One Left to Blame” features some harmonizing that could have been lifted from Revolver.
On “Figure of Eight”, Mead channels Elton John and John Lennon, right down to the “Imagine”-like piano and “Rocket Man”-like chorus.
That’s a lot of name-dropping, and it’s not difficult to pick these influences out of his songs. Does that detract from Mead’s own music? Most certainly not.
If anything, Mead reminds listeners of what gave that previous generation of songwriters such creds — a slavish devotion to melody, an apparent professionalism in performance, and voices that could alternately seduce and inspire.
Producer Adam Schlesinger from Fountains of Wayne has deemed fit to cast Mead’s songs in a variety of textures.
The opening “Flamin’ Angel” might mislead listeners into thinking Mead is an ethereal male Enya-type, but then the album’s title track crashes in with a solid rock back beat and muted electric guitars.
For the remainder of the album, Mead balances crafted pop songwriting, Eno-era U2 atmospherics and straight-forward rock rhythms.
A listener could use the adjective “sensitive” to describe “Comfort” and “Echoes of the Heart” without having to snicker or imply any preciousness on Mead’s part.
Mead soars on the choruses of “Standing Here in Front of Me” and “No One Left to Blame,” and on the concluding “Only in the Movies,” he perfectly captures the cognitive dissonance between romantic fantasy and reality.
Like Dan Wilson’s work on Semisonic’s All About Chemistry, Mead takes the best bits from rock’s songwriting past to make a contemporary album full of treasure.
A music fan raised on healthy doses of post-punk won’t feel too self-conscious about liking an album so steeped in the past as in the present. Mead does a remarkable job of transcending time and getting to the heart of good songwriting.
When L’Arc~en~Ciel announced it would let fans vote for the track listing for its singles collections on Yahoo! Japan, the band broke music industry rules on many levels.
First, sales, not fans, are supposed to determine what appears on hits collections. Repacking old material is a time-honored technique in the music industry to bleed the proverbial turnip. If it sold well before, it will sell well again, ergo producing income for labels, publishers and maybe the band.
Second, fans don’t know better — at least in music criticism circles. A band’s best work may never be released as a single, and if a popular vote shuts out artistically worthy material, then it’s really a rigged race. Of course, music journalism arrogance dictates that critics — and no one else — knows what’s best, even for the band.
So, does Clicked Singles Best 13 really represent L’Arc~en~Ciel well? Yes and no.
L’Arc~en~Ciel is an incredibly flexible band, able to switch between rock genres at a drop of a hat.
One minute, they’re sentimental balladeers supported by oceans of strings, the next minute, they’re a stripped-down rock ensemble with grunge-y guitars.
With such a diverse output, it’s possible for the band to miss as many times as it hits. Clicked Singles Best 13 is not the collection for people who like the rougher moments in L’Arc~en~Ciel’s repetoire.
The disc’s voting constituency has determined that up-tempo, bouncy songs such as “flower”, “winter fall” and “Blurry Eyes” set the tenor for the rest of the disc.
“Lies and Truth,” a song that should have been recorded in the 70s but unfortunately wasn’t, epitomizes the worst of said consituency’s taste. Strings? A disco beat? Oy.
But are the fans totally wrong? Toward the end of Clicked Singles Best 13, they get a fair share right.
“Dive to Blue”, with its ringing Edge-like guitar riffs, shows Laruku personalizing U2’s The Unforgettable Fire. “Honey” is the grunge-meets-new wave hit Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins were too serious to write.
“Neo Universe” sports some of the best synthesizer work in a mainstream rock song ever, while “Heaven’s Drive” has the one of the greatest opening drum licks.
In other words, not every fan is going to be satisfied with the votes, especially when North American fans [hand raised] never got a chance to participate.
Critically? Clicked Singles Best 13 misses the boat. Many times.
How is it that absolutely nothing from heavenly and only one song from ray made it on the album, while one of the band’s weakest albums, ark, gets represented by four singles? The omission of “Snow Drop” is nearly criminal.
As a means of introducing the States to the band — Clicked Singles Best 13 is one of the first albums released on the new Sony Music Imports imprint — the album may not be dark enough for American rockers and too rock-like for pop audiences.
That, and “Lies and Truth” does nothing to establish L’Arc~en~Ciel’s credibility.
Clicked Singles Best 13 is gift for fans all over the world, but it’s a hard sell for folks yet to be swayed by the band’s incredible talent.
There are reasons Colombia’s Aterciopelados sells out stadiums in South America.
Mostly, it’s singer Andrea Echiverri’s mesmerizing voice, a bittersweet, husky instrument that hypnotizes listeners in the same way a snake charmer keeps a viper at bay.
But also, it’s the duo’s mellow, Latin-tinged rock that floats somewhere between dreaming and waking. Aterciopelados has been labeled as a trip-hop band, and that may have been appropriate for 1998’s Caribe Atomico.
Gozo Poderoso finds the band with more up-tempo numbers and a stronger sense of its Latin identity.
Certainly, the more ethereal quality of Aterciopelados’ recent work remains, as evidenced by the ghostly vocal samples on “Luz azul” and the chiming guitars on “Uno lo mio y lo tuyo.”
But unlike Caribe Atomico, Gozo Poderoso starts out energetically and doesn’t let up till the middle of the album.
Latin rhythm drives such tracks as “Rompecabezas”, “Esmerealda”, “El album” and “La misma tijera”. The rumbling, super-slow trip-hop beats of Caribe Atomico are mostly tempered.
Aterciopelados still manage to use a sparse instrumentation to create a big sound. Even with the faster tempos, the overall mood of Gozo Pederoso is mellow, thanks to the subtle touch of instrumentalist Hector Buitrago. He doesn’t overdo it with the ethereal synthesizer effects or the Latin percussion.
“Restrained” might be the correct adjective to describe this album, but it would also be incredibly inaccurate. There’s nothing restrained about Gozo Poderso’s brighter, more energetic sound. At the same time, it’s not a return to the band’s “Florecita rockera” days.
Gozo Podersos, then, could be considered an amalgam of Aterciopelados’ various styles. Exuberiant but soothing, driven but calm.
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Before Gozo Poderso was released in the States, Aterciopelados was given the Serie 2000 treatment with a collection of the band’s hits.
Serie 2000 does an incredible job of providing a brief but detailed history of the band’s work. From its more rock days to its trip-hoppy work on Caribe Atomico, the best of the best is there.
Bring Serie 2000 with you when you take Gozo Poderoso to the register.