Sequencing, the art of determining the track order on an album, can make or break a disc. Misplace one track, and it’ll totally throw off the momentum of a work.
In 1997, the Klezmatics released Possessed, a follow-up to the incredible Jews With Horns.
I don’t remember giving Possessed very many spins, even though I was left with the impression the music was every bit as good as Jews With Horns. Something didn’t allow me to enjoy it.
Five years later, the Klezmatics came to Austin and after the show, I bought a collection released by the band’s management company titled Between Two Worlds.
Half of the songs on the disc came from Possessed, and interspersed with other Klezmatics’ works, those songs sunk in. I came to appreciate the album I didn’t give a chance half a decade previous.
Why?
The moment happens after the emotionally wrenching “An Undoing World”. Following a wordy but beautiful cautionary tale of rootlessness, “Mizmor shir lehanef (The Reefer Song)” crashed the album.
A slow, overly-long, atmospheric fun song after a slow, concise, mournful sad song? My interest strayed.
And it couldn’t be salvaged in time for the epic, nine-track suite, “A Dybbuk: Between Two Worlds”, which was written for a Tony Kushner play.
That doesn’t mean Possessed isn’t a good album. In fact, Between Two Worlds, which is not available in music stores, proves it is — it probably shouldn’t have been sequenced the way it was.
The frentic “Sirba Sirba Matey”, which opens Between Two Worlds, is buried on track eight on Possessed. “Shprayz ikh mir”, a song which builds slowly to a joyous conclusion, works better as a second track instead of as an opener.
Many more examples abound, but ultimately, digital technology allows listeners to find a right order for them, and once you do that, the performances on Possessed really stick out.
Violinist Alicia Svigalis and trumpeter Frank London burn on “Shvarts un vays”, while reedman Matt Darriau gives his sax a workout on “Moroccan Game”.
Just don’t mess with the sequence of “A Dubbyk”.
Rounder Records has reissued Possessed, and the album should now again be available as of this writing.
Not-so-helpful superlative proclamation: this disc is the best album of 2002 so far.
No, really.
Twenty-five-year-old Minako has keyed into the same catholic cosmopolitanism UA first explored in the mid-90s. The cover of her album even bears a resemblance to UA’s turbo.
Each track on Suck It Till Your Life Ends focuses in on a different genre of music.
“Work Song” starts off with samples of Hawaiian chant, then launches into a mellow, tropical vibe. Slide guitars accentuate the “Whiter Shade of Pale” feel of “Ramen”.
Dub beats drive “Ha”, while Minako sings a vaguely Asian melody. “Run to the Blues” indulges in a bit of country, while “Please Sing Me a Song” keys into a definite alt-rock ballad feel.
Jazz veteran Don Grusin, who arranged the album, ties everything together by sticking to a house band approach. This album doesn’t indulge in multi-track studio excess. If anything, it almost feels like an old Police album, minimal but diverse.
But the real star is Minako’s incredible voice. When she belts like a torch singer, she sounds just like Linda Ronstadt. And when she decides to keep her performance rough, she comes across as Sinéad O’Connor.
Minako spent her youth attending American schools in Japan. Her English has a slight accent, but it detracts nothing from her music. If anything, it adds even a bit more exoticism to an already lush album.
Still, her command of English produces some occassionally confrontational and frank lyrics.
“Fuck you why d’you give a life to me,” she starts on “Melt Down”, later excoriating: “You never cross your fingers ’cause you don’t care about what’s gonna happen in the next 10 fucking years.”
The lyric sheet says she singing, “freaking”, but it’s pretty obvious what she’s really saying.
On “Smells Like a Lie”, Minako calls herself a “25-year-old bitch” with a plan. “Do you read me?” she asks. “My lips forming the letters L-I-E-S, and you took it as L-O-V-E. My plan has succeeded. Then how come I’m a loser again?”
Wonderfully performed and amazingly written, Suck It Till Your Life Ends hearlds the arrival of an incredible talent. Minako is definitely an artist to watch.
An average bloodthirsty butchers song can last as long as seven minutes. Some stretch as long as nine.
And while the butchers started out in 1987 as a rough-hewned, kill-the-vocal-cords kind of indie band, its dischordant, drawn-out songs always toed the line between brashness and hypnotism.
The guys in bloodthirsty butchers are a good 15 years older now, so it’s no surprise yamane doesn’t blare out of the stereo speakers as harshly as Kocorono or early songs such as “Modulator”.
The butchers have even indulged in a bit of quiet introspections on the not-quite instrumental “no future”. Yoshimura Hideki’s vocals are heavily processed to sound robotic, and as a result, the undecipherable singing focuses more attention on the song’s beautiful melody.
The butchers may not be as loud as they used to be — not to say you can’t play yamane loud and piss off the neighbors — but the hypnotic elements of the band’s songwriting are still in full force.
“wagamama no hitori” and two numbered tracks both sporting the title “-100%” take a single idea and pretty much stick with it for five to seven minutes at a time.
“happy end” and “nagasinanite”, the two “singles” from yamane, follow typical verse-chorus-verse patterns — only the verses and chorus have verses, choruses and bridges within themselves.
Toward the end of “kaze”, Yoshimura flashes a Sonic Youth card, hammering away at some off-kilter chords worthy of Goo.
Even though yamane has only nine tracks and clocks in at close to an hour, those long songs never feel like they’ve taken twice the length of a standard three-minute pop song.
Yoshimura and bandmates Imoriya Takeshi (bass) and Komatsu Masahiro (drums) aren’t dramatic, wanking instrumentalists. Hell, Yoshimura’s off-key warble takes a lot of adjusting, and his guitar solos won’t give Number Girl’s Tabuchi Hisako any sleepless nights.
But the butchers are good at finding a bunch of cool-sounding chords, and they know how to fit the right melody to those chords. They don’t need much fancy arrangements, and they sure know how to make a lot out very minimal elements.
“Yume” in Japanese means “dream”. It’s an apt description for Kicell’s debut album.
Consisting of brothers Tsujimura Takefumi and Tsujimura Tomohara, Kicell has crafted one of the most dreamiest, atmospheric albums to grace a set of stereo speakers.
Yume positively floats from one track to another, propelled mostly by the brothers’ genteel guitar plucking.
The album starts with “Hanarebanare”, a track shimmering with strange synthesizer effects and glassy guitars. Takefumi’s eerie falsetto teases when he reaches the song chorus.
At first, Takefumi’s singing feels off-putting, too child-like. But set against the lush minimalism of Kicell’s picturesque music, no other voice seems suitable.
Yume almost feels like the album R.E.M. should have recorded with Up — sparse but complex, expansive but minimal, playful but introspective.
A simple drum beat propells “Yume no Ikura”, the closest thing this album has to a single. A solitary piano hook punctuates the phrases of “Horohoro”.
The Tsujimura brothers know the value of “less-is-more”, throwing in its arsenal of effects at strategic points in a song, weaving unlikely timbres together to form a nice rhythmic tapestry full of surprises.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the epic “Yakanhikoo (Rakka Double Version)”. The track moves along on a dub beat, but strange samples float in and out of the song, giving the song more depth than its restrained arrangement lets on.
On other tracks, the brothers are just plain haunting.
“Hi no Tori ~Hotani-en~” sports a dreamy, reverb-drenched vocal performance, while “Kyuujitsu no Mado” feels positively drugged out.
Put Yume on the stereo, and it’s a safe bet Kicell’s skillfull, minimalistic work will burrow itself into your subconscious.
She played an upright bass in the middle of RIZE’s heavy metal guitars, and she grounded Asai Kenichi’s atmospheric strumming in AJICO.
She has an incredibly sense of rhythm, and like the very best bass guitarists in the world, she lays a musical foundation every bit as melodic as a singer or lead guitarist.
Which of course means Foreplay, RIZE’s second album, had to work harder to impress me.
TOKIE left RIZE in March 2001, and as a result, drummer Nobuaki Kaneko and guitarist/vocalist Jesse auditioned a new bassist and a second guitarist.
The new line-up went straight to work, releasing three singles before unleashing Foreplay.
On the surface, RIZE continues to pack the rock half of its rap-rock equation with beefy riffs and aggressive vocals.
The addition of guitarist Nakao Hiro definitely injects RIZE with an extra dose of testosterone, and TOKIE’s replacement U-ZO does a fine job painting within the lines of heavy metal bass picking.
As such, RIZE brings itself closer in line with the rap-rock aesthetic ground to death by bands on a Vans Warped Tour itinerary.
Is that necessarily a good thing? TOKIE’s smart bass work made RIZE stand out. The two-guitar attack makes Foreplay far more dramatic than the accomplished debut Rookey, but it takes a bit more work to get past surface predictability and uncover the album’s true heart.
Foreplay does a great job continuing RIZE’s hook-friendly metallic muse, and as a youth-market product, the album does a fine job delivering head-banging, body-slamming music.
But without TOKIE, RIZE loses just enough of its edge to make it stand apart from the Limp Bizkits of the world. Get this album if you don’t mind a little conformity.
If Love Psychedelico topped the charts in the States with the same brand of ’60s nostalgia that conquered the Japanese pop charts, it would still be a magnificant feat.
In a musical landscape full of packaged pop, nu metal and (worst of all) Creed, Delico’s debut album The Greatest Hits is an anamoly at worst, a miracle at best.
(Kind of like how the Strokes and Mean Machine managed to sound total new by sonically photocopying Television and the Velvet Underground — respectively.)
In reality, The Greatest Hits was little more than an after thought. Anyone who got hip to Love Psychedelico six months before the duo released the album heard most of the songs already — six of the 11 tracks are available on the singles.
As a result, Delico’s second album, Love Psychedelic Orchestra, sounds positively fresh. Only two singles preceded the release of the album, and most of the material is entirely new.
Repeated listens, however, reveals Love Psychedelic Orchestra is more of an album — a collection of songs meant to feel like a single unit.
When “green” segues seamlessly into “dry town”, Love Psychedelico demonstrate how this time around, they were thinking more ambitiously.
Although KUMI and Sato Naoki still maintain their slavishly devotion to period sounds — those same clangly klaviers, those same wheezy organs, those same jangly guitars — the songs feel darker, and they fit together more nicely.
The “House of the Rising Sun” atmospherics of “dry town” leads nicely into the mellow “I will be with you”.
The infectuous klavier hook that introduces “Standing Bird” makes a good companion to a similarly catchy intro on “Freeworld”.
“life goes on”, with its country-rock groove, makes for a suitable lead-in to the mono rocker “‘0′”.
Although Love Psychedelic Orchestra sounds like its predecessor on the surface, deep down it’s the album The Greatest Hits should have been — cohesive, tighter, focused.
Love Psychedelico has found its voice, and now the duo is refining their songwriting chops.
Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her have come a long way since Higurashi Ahia decided to form a band nearly 10 years ago.
Even as recently as 1996’s It’s Brand New, the band indulged in the usual indie gestures that toe the line between amateur preciousness and mature sophistication — angular hooks, changing tempo, sparse arrangements giving way to bombastic outbursts.
By comparrison, SSKHKH’s latest album, Future or No Future sounds tame next to It’s Brand New, and while Higurashi may be writing more conventional songs nowadays, they’re far more crafted and much more mature than her earlier work.
(Check out SSKHKH’s 2000 album, No! No! No! It’s got a bit more punch than the polished sound of Future or No Future.)
Higurashi knows now she can write a hook and still sound like she’s pushing the envelope.
“Sentimental Journey” hammers away with a dischordant guitar hook, but its primitive forcefulness is far more effective than some of her dissonant solos on It’s Brand New.
The 46-second title track is a nice, concise workout that says more in its brevity than some of the three-minute songs on the album.
“Mo’Mo’Gimi’Mo'” alternates between a quiet half-time strumming, a head-banging riff and a bombastic bridge, but this time around, Higurashi has a better handle on juggling all three elements.
When Higurashi does opt to nail a hook, she does so marvelously.
“Think It Over” shows off a Harley-riding rock ‘n’ roll swagger. Simple eight-note riffs drive “Fuck It Up and Get Hurt” and “Mo’Mo’Gimi’Mo'”.
“Evolution” sports a bittersweet melody countered by a saccharine organ line, while “Lullaby” supplements its dramatic chorus with amplified strings.
Up until Future or No Future, Higurashi sang exclusively in heavily-accented English. This time around, she’s thrown in some of her native Japanese into a few verses. It’s a nice break.
Future or No Future is a satisfying album, full of mature songwriting and incredible performances.
Boom Boom Satellites’ previous album, Out Loud, was remarkable for successfully incorporating guitars the Chemical Brothers and the Prodigy didn’t do back in the major label electronica bidding war of 1997.
But as time progressed, Out Loud revealed itself to be sonic wallpaper — interesting in the details but pretty boring in the big picture.
Umbra, however, takes far more many risks Out Loud ever dared.
The guitars are no less prevalent, but this time out, Boom Boom Satellites are showing off their jazz chops.
“Brand New Battering Ram” is pure be-bop — just heavily processed and accompanied by a stuttering drum ‘n’ bass beat having an identity crisis as a jazz drummer.
On “Ego”, a menancing vocal reverberates amidst clusters of piano chords, freaked-out flute solos and electronic effects that are nothing more than fancily-disguised be-bop solos.
On other tracks, the Satellites lay heavy with the effects the same way Billy Corgan would lay heavy on multitracking metal guitars or Enya would on creating a 500-member chorus of one.
“Sinker” gets dirty with a blues backbeat, but it’s those sliding sirens that give this track its edge.
Public Enemy’s Chuck D sounds totally at home amid the Satellites’ sonic tapesty on the wordily-titled “You’re Reality Is a Fantasy But You’re Fantasy Is Killing Me”.
The album reaches its dramatic apex on “Solilquy”. Over the course of 5’37”, the track builds to an incessant guitar riff hammering away till a loud thud from an echo-y snare drum brings Umbra crashing down.
Out Loud only hinted at what Boom Boom Satellites were truly capable of. Umbra realizes it.
This album goes far beyond what casual listeners may perceive as “electronica”. Although synthesizer effects lay the foundation for the album, its heart totally belongs to jazz, blues and rock.
Those awkward square wave timbres, those robotic preset beats. How wonderous to think a synthesizer with 64K of RAM was considered state-of-the-art.
The Prima Donnas remember. Oh, hell — they were there. At least that’s what the liner notes say.
The English-bred trio started out in 1980 as child stars whose fame ended when they all turned seven. A career resurgence in the late 80s resulted in a slew of No. 1 UK albums before scandal forced the group into exile, where they ended up in — of all places — Austin, Texas.
And if you believe that, then the Prima Donnas’ Drugs, Sex, Discotechque will make a perfect addition to your Gorillaz, Spinal Tap and Tenacious D albums.
In reality, the Prima Donnas aren’t from England, but getting them to fess up to their true Texas roots will take a bit of effort. It doesn’t stop them from sounding like they came straight from the ’80s.
Drugs, Sex, Discotechque is beautifully dated, steeped in Reagan-era decadence when a Yamaha DX-7 was supposed to usher the end of a bloated studio budget.
Otto Matik’s nasal whine infuses the band’s primitive cool synth-pop with a punk brattiness mostly devoid in the hey day of New Wave. (Not counting Frankie Goes to Hollywood, of course.)
When Otto screams “F-U-K! F-U-K! U-K!” on the approrpriately-titled “F.U.K.”, it’s an 8-MIDI track analog orchestra backing him, not power chords and wanking solos.
The Prima Donnas actually make a pretty convincing case against the coldness of digital. There’s just something warm about how the bass lines in their songs fart more than they growl — which means the Sussex-by-way-of-Austin trio need to navigate a third resurgence of its career with some delicacy.
Pop culture follows a 20-year rejuvination cycle, and Drugs, Sex, Discotechque’s utter lack of sampled patches makes the Prima Donnas sound tres cool.
(For further proof, jump on your favorite file-sharing network and search for “*Kiss* One More Time” by Tommy February6.)
Children of the 80s will wonder how they ever missed the Prima Donnas the first time around.
I’m curious — with all the Velvet Underground and Television comparrisons flying around Black Lipstick, would they have eclipsed the Strokes if they were signed to some major label?
Maybe Black Lipstick ought to tour the UK and engage in a Backstreet Boys-vs.-‘NSync type of battle with the current critics darlings from New Yawk City.
Sure, the Strokes have some pretty good, hook-filled songs — makes up for their total lack of stage presence, by the way — but Black Lipstick has two members from the defunct-but-always-great Kiss Offs.
At their best, the Kiss Offs came across as a raunchier, less brainy Waitresses — Katey Jones building up an indelible sexual tension with frontman Philip Niemeyer.
Black Lipstick strips away the Kiss Offs’ fuzzy pedal effects and Jones’ Casio keyboard artistry, leaving a more human, more obviously dischordant sound.
With a piano supplementing the cool strumming of Niemeyer and fellow singer/guitarist Travis Higdon, Black Lipstick comes across as more textured than the two guitarists’ previous band.
Niemeyer’s familiar, off-key, deadpan vocals infuse Black Lipstick’s music with a comforting swagger. “I don’t care about shit except for getting on and getting lit,” he sings on “White Jazz”. Amen.
As for all the Velvet Underground/Television/Talking Heads/Modern Lovers comparrisons — yeah, they’re true.
But unlike the Strokes or even another VU-like band from Japan called Mean Machine, Black Lipstick doesn’t sound like they need a banana peel on the cover of its EP.
Whatever hero worship Black Lipstick engages in, it’s mixed up well enough not to be too blatant.