If something works in pop music, labels will try to ride its coattails before it becomes passé. (See Hitoto Yoo, Tsukitenshin.)
Utada Hikaru and Onitsuka Chihiro are two of the biggest pop acts in Japan, so it’s not surprise Yorico. sounds a bit like both.
Yorico.’s vocal style calls to mind Utada’s soulful earnestness, while her piano playing attempts to rival Onitsuka’s Carole King leanings.
And while namedropping may be an easy task in describing Yorico., she still possesses enough individuality to go beyond just mere copying.
Yorico.’s debut album, Aizenaha, was a scattered affair, a collection of barely-fleshed out ideas with an occassional token rock track thrown in. Her follow-up mini-album, gap, does a far better job surveying her versatility.
Sure, the six-track release doesn’t give much room to meander, but that length forces Yorico. to focus more on delivering a tight set.
The opening title track has all the sonic flourish of an Utada single. “Tori” spotlights Yorico. as an instrumentalist, something Onitsuka has yet to do. The track does smack a bit much of Enya, however.
“Life”, on the other hand, demonstrates Yorico.’s ability to handle heavy rock — not a single piano to be found in the walls of guitars.
(There seems to be an unofficial rule in J-pop that a pop artist must include one rock track. See Utada’s “Drama”, Hitoto Yoo’s “Inu”, and hal’s Mukai Shuutoku-produced “6kai no Shoojo”.)
The last half of gap features much of the piano balladry that mired Aizenaha but serves to round out Yorico.’s ability here.
“Kiyoraka na Doku” finds Yorico. aided by acoustic guitar and a drummer with an imaginative sense of timbre. Yorico. flies solo on “Nakunatta Chiisana Mori”, while a harp is her only accompaniment on “I love me no Komoriuta”.
If Yorico. can translate the tightness of gap to a full-length album, it’s quite possible she can compete against the top-selling acts she seems to be positioned for.
gap is a promising release from a pop artist with enough sense of herself to transcend comparrison.
Despite the messy playing, the deadpan vocals and the crunchy guitars, bloodthirsty butchers writes some pretty advanced songs.
On past albums, the line between verse and chorus were blurred, and on the band’s 2001 debut for Toshiba-EMI, yamane, the butchers needed anywhere from 6 to 9 minutes to lay out all their ideas.
But on Kooya ni Okeru bloodthirsty butchers, the Japanese indie rock trio has taken pruning shears to its songs. They’re simpler, faster, shorter — 4 to 5 minutes is realtively shorter than 6 to 9 minutes — and definitely catchier.
Sure, “happy end” and “Nagisa Ni Te” were decent singles off of yamane, but they don’t match the immediate appeal of “Saraba Sekai Kunshu” or “Goblin” or “Hooi” (listed simply as an arrow pointing north).
“dorama” (i.e. “drama”) possesses a playfulness, while “real/melodic” harkens back to the energy of the band’s first indie albums.
While yamane was a beautiful exploration of the band’s darker side, Kooya ni Okeru bloodthirsty butchers finds the trio kicking it out the way the always have. Coupled with some real studio finese, this album is perhaps the butchers’ most upfront and spirited performance.
There’s a lot that’s familiar on the album. Yoshimura Hideki’s guitar playing never quite locks into the beat, and Komatsu Masahiro isn’t exactly a human metronome.
But it’s that messiness which gives the bloodthirsty butchers its indie charm. Punk has never been about technical precision.
The band reigns in the momentum of the album on the final two tracks of the album, “Acacia” and “Jigoku no Locker”, by slowing down the tempo and concluding as beautifully as they did the last time around.
Still, Kooya ni Okeru bloodthirsty butchers is light years away from the lo-fi punk ambitions of the band’s earliest work 15 years ago. The butchers are still writing the same kind of off-key indie rock as before, but they’ve refined it and made it clearer.
In short, this is bloodthirsty butchers at its finest.
Missile Girl Scoot is one of those rare bands that aren’t afraid to act like clowns. Sure, they can rock out like hell but not at the expense of having fun.
Not that there’s been much to laugh about. In 2001, drummer Yosuke developed back problems which forced the group into a year and a half hiatus. The group staged a comeback in 2003, blitzing music shops with no fewer than five releases in the first quarter.
But Yosuke’s ill health flared up again, and Missile Girl Scoot announced its break-up after a final tour.
Perhaps Yosuke’s misfortune fueled the band to appreciate its chemistry. Missile Girl Scoot’s eponymously titled third album brims with the energy of its earliest work.
Fiesta!, the band’s 2000 major label debut, is still its creative high point, and Missile Girl Scoot, the album, takes a while to warm up.
One thing is certain: the band’s spirited performance ties the album together far better than its prophetically-titled predecesor, Wanderland.
Missile Girl Scoot pretty much sticks to rocking out, specifically to the heavy metal variety. Sure, there’s a ska diversion with the anthemic “Happy & Song”, and the single-minded drive of “INSYNC Legend” and “The Never Ending Story” (yes, the Limahl of Kajagoogoo song) teeters on the brink of emo.
But guitarist Gak lays it on thick, coming up with riffs as thorny as Keita’s angular bass lines.
On “Voice of Mind”, Gak overdubs at least three different guitar parts, creating a backdrop as interlocked as vocalists Junn and U-Rie, who alternate between rapping and singing with ease.
He does the same on “Proud of Life”, alternating between a metallic intro and a punk verse.
On previous albums, Junn and U-Rie would sometimes get lost in the mix, but on Missile Girl Scoot, they’re squarely front and center.
After a while, the album does become a bit homogenous, and the songs start bleeding into one another. “INSYNC Legend” and “Never Ending Story” could almost be interchangeable.
Still, it’s hard to miss the fun the band seemed to have while recording Missile Girl Scoot. How often does a listener find a rap-metal band willing to cover Cyndi Lauper’s “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough”?
Missile Girl Scoot may not be the band’s best album, but it’s definitely a good way to deliver a last hurrah.
When Number Girl released its first live album, Shibuya Rocktransformed Jootai, back in 1999, it was obvious they were playing to a small but devoted crowd.
The audience noise was supportive, but it wouldn’t have reached the decibel level of, say, an ‘NSync concert from the same time frame.
The ensuing years would find the band drawing larger crowds and sold-out shows, but just as the momentum was building, Number Girl called it quits in October 2002, when bassist Nakao Kentaro announced he was leaving the band.
Sapporo Omoide In My Head Jootai, a recording of the band’s final performance in November 2002, shows how far Number Girl had gone — and how much further it could have.
This time, the audience was very much into the music. They chant as Mukai Shuutoku hammers at the opening chords of “I don’t know”. They sing along with Mukai on “Teppu Surudoku Natte”, complete with a loud “Hey!” when drummer Ahito Inazawa kicks in with a beat.
They know the lyrics to “Zegen vs. Underground”. They count down with Inazawa on “Toomei Shoojo”.
Guitarist Tabuchi Hisako is definitely a role model among the women in the audience, who call out “Hisako-chan!” after a particularly shredding performance of “Haikara Gurui”.
Few bands sound as good — if not better — than its recordings, but coupled with an enthusiastic audience, a live performance such as the one documented on Sapporo Omoide In My Head Jootai becomes an experience.
The band’s set list skews heavily toward recent works. “Omoide In My Head” and “Iggy Pop Fan Club” are the only representatives from the band’s 1997 indie debut, School Girl Bye Bye. Number Girl does include a number of single-only tracks and b-sides (“Sentimental Girl’s Violent Joke”, “Destruction Baby”). “Samurai” would have been a nice addition to that list.
There aren’t, however, any wild re-arrangements in the set — no transformations on the level of the 10-minute mindfuck “Zazenbeats Kemonostyle” from the cassette-only Kiroku Series. The band even plays “Destruction Baby” straight, no dub beats.
“Urban Guitar Sayonara” gets a bit of tweak on the count that the band didn’t bring an electric piano for Mukai to pound. (See the live DVD Sawayaka na Ensoo.)
Still, it’s sad to think Sapporo Omoide In My Head is the last album this quartet may ever release. Number Girl is — was one of the loudest, tightest bands on the planet. The fireworks Mukai, Tabuchi, Nakao and Inazawa produced was palpatable as it was special.
Cross your fingers for a reunion sometime down the line.
It’s hard not to visualize Halloween images — dark nights, full moons, foggy skies — when listening to her music. It’s also hard not to use the word “Gothic”.
Go’s third album, Utaime, offers much of the same as her 2000 album, Moonbeams — generous helpings of dark guitars, ominous synthesizers, drum machines, Go’s powerhouse singing, and, of course, a lot of seething, painstakingly crafted music.
“Yorumori” sets the tone for the album, trumpeting with a dominating guitar hook only to make way for a quiet build to a grand finish.
On “Limelight”, Go combines Aikawa Nanase’s vixen attitude with the drumbeat from Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People”.
“Tapestry” is an appropriate title. A piano pulse grounds the track while all the other instruments weave through odd time signatures and difficult drum beats.
In fact, Go has a knack for creative flourishes. “Hakoniwa” starts off with an incessant beat that calls to mind either tribal drumming or Chinese water torture.
“Parade” starts off with a Middle Eastern rhythms and layers surf music drumming, before a heavy metal riff disrupts the intro and turns into ska.
The industrial clang and clatter of her synthesizers may seem a bit dated — Nine Inch Nails is so 1994 — but Go possesses a melodic sense that doesn’t indulge in very many clichés. There’s no mistaking “Yotsuba” or “Bohemian on a Tight Rope” for anime themes.
Unlike Moonbeams, Utaime is sung mostly in Japanese. Only two tracks — “Tapestry” and “Place de la Concorde” — are delievered in English. Moonbeams suffered under Go’s garbled diction, sad to say.
But for all her fancy arrangements and dramatic performances, Go has enough sense to bring herself back to earth. “Tsutsuji to Zakura” concludes the album with little more than acoustic guitar, bass, mandolin and bodhran.
Too bad she doesn’t ground herself more often.
Utaime is an impressive display of studio wizardry, but Go’s reliance on electronics gives her music something of a cold veneer.
Song like “Yotsuba” and “Parade” show there’s more heart — and maybe more heat — than she allows.
Her songs don’t suffer from all the effects, but some of them just might stand well enough on their own without them.
If the pre-release singles to Bewitch were any indication, Youjeen was being set up for a sophomore slump.
So the bad news first: Bewitch is something of a slump. The good news: it’s not as bad as those singles made it out to be.
No, J and former Foo Fighter Franz Stahl are nowhere to be seen on Bewitch’s credits, and the alternate creepy and dark vibe that imbued most of Youjeen’s debut The Doll is equally absent.
But after a few listens, there’s plenty to like about Bewitch. Get through the forced 50s bubblegum tinge of “Daydreamin'”, and the pay off waits beyond.
“Wait for You” and “Dear My Friend” show Youjeen hasn’t lost the full range of her vocal abilities — growler, banshee, belter, sweet voice — while “Vanishing” puts the digi-punk-hardcore of Mad Capsule Markets on Ritalin.
The femme balladry of “My Treasure” may come across as a bit forced, but Youjeen makes up for it in the vixen rocker “Be Bad!!”. Even the overly Alanis-like “Forbidden Things” is easy to warm up to.
Bewitch reaches its peak with “Sacrification”, a seething song that bursts into rocker half way through. It’s Youjeen recapturing her more ghoulish instincts.
The album ends on an off-kilter note with the incredibly silly “Made in Corea”. It’s a blatant pop song totally at odds with the preceeding darker tracks on the album.
Depending on your perspective, it’s either Youjeen’s biggest mistake or more brilliant move. In the former, it undermines the edge she attempts to demonstrate. In the latter, it grounds her back to reality, making her less self-indulgent.
Still, it’s hard to accept Bewitch when Youjeen has demonstrated she’s capable of far more. The album does a satisfactory job of maintaining a rock sound while taking obvious steps into more pop territory.
And while Youjeen deserves some popular recognition, she needn’t compromise anything to get there.
Shiina Ringo is no longer Japan’s answer to Courtney Love, as E!Online stated back in 2000.
No. She’s now Japan’s answer to the Flaming Lips.
On first listen, it’s easy to be blown away by the magnitude of Shiina’s fourth album, Karuki Zaamen Kurinohana. Everything is fair game — traditional Japanese instruments, found sounds, strings and lots of distortion.
But it’s hard to shake the feeling there’s something familiar about it, something precedented about the way Ringö-chan weaves dreamy symphonies with rumbling rock beats.
And it has been done before — with the Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin back in 1999 and again in 2001 with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. (And again this year with The Delgados’ Hate and at any time with any number of Mercury Rev albums.)
But Shiina isn’t merely following in Dave Fridmann’s footsteps — she’s upping the fucking ante.
Karuki Zaamen Kurinohana goes far beyond weaving orchestral textures into pop songs. The rock band becomes the orchestra.
Shiina has always possessed a penchant for heaping layers upon layers of sound in her music. This album is no different, but the sonic pallete from which she draws is far broader.
In the opening track “Shuukyoo” alone, listeners can expect to hear a full-size orchestra, a complement of Japanese koto, tortured guitars, sitar, mandolin, drum samples and a thundering drum kit.
“Doppelganger” starts off with the minimal textures of Björk’s Vespertine-era work, only to be disrupted midway by a manic double-time beat.
“Yattsuke Shigoto”, which appeared as a rocker on the single box set Zechoshuu, turns into movie musical number complete with a disco beat. Meanwhile, the human beat box on “Torikoshi Kuroo” gets an intermitent rude awakening by a full band.
The album loses steam when it ventures into more standard arrangements. “Okonomi de” and “Ishiki” may have set out to ground Karuki Zaamen Kurinohana from its more indulgent moments, but instead, they deflate the momentum established in the first half of the album.
Thankfully, Shiina reclaims her eclecticism on the concluding track, “Sooretsu”, perhaps the best song to sum up the album. It starts off with a nice, rhythmic feel but concludes with a grandiose organ straight off the Akira Symphonic Suite.
It’s difficult not to put Karuki Zaamen Kurinohana on repeat. The album offers so much sonically, it would take all year to digest it. The heap of accolades rained on the likes of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and Wilco’s Yankee Foxtrot Hotel seem pretty pale by comparrison.
Dave Fridmann and Wayne Coyne — take note. (And get your buddies in Number Girl to hook you up.)
So here’s the real question: has Billy Corgan finally loosened up his sphincter?
Toward the end of his reign as Smashing Pumpkins’ creative svengali, Corgan’s belief in his own press got pretty durned tiring.
Now three years after the Pumpkins disbanded, Corgan returns with Zwan, a project purported to possess little of his former band’s gravitas.
But let’s call Mary Star of the Sea, Zwan’s debut album, for what it is — the next Smashing Pumpkins album.
Sure, Corgan’s familiar whine and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain’s octopus-armed drumming wrap Zwan in a familiar aural blanket. And even with three guitarists in the band, Corgan gives them the same interplay he did when overdubbing himself and James Iha back in the Pumpkin days.
Right from the start of “Lyric”, you can predict when the band will strum its first power chord, when Chamberlain will switch to a different drumming pattern, when all the guitarists will jump in at one time for the bridge.
Hell, you can even sing the lyrics of “Today” over most of “Honestly”.
But some things are definitely different with Zwan — mercifully so. The rainbows, suns and clouds on the album’s cover are definitely reflected in the music, a sunniness the Pumpkins were never really reknowned for.
(When it comes to sunny pop, Iha is the hands-down master — check out “Skirt,” a song Iha wrote for Japanese pop chanteuse Chara.)
In fact, Mary Star of the Sea shows a heavy New Order influence.
The bass line for “Declaration of Faith” owes a huge debt to Peter Hook. The disco beat of “El Sol” and the simple guitar lines on “Settle Down” sound more like Get Ready (New Order’s 2001 comeback album) than Mellon Collie. Strip away the distortion of “Ride a Black Swan”, and it would probably sound like the thick chords of early New Order.
Even though Zwan feels incredibly familiar, the lighter songs are actually a nice break. Smashing Pumpkins became a victim of its own success, a beacon for angst that became obsolete when Britney Spears and ‘NSync became the pop culture narcotic of choice.
Zwan may not completely unshakle Corgan from the wall of guitars he so adores, but there’s a significant difference in tone to allow for more flexibility — even when Corgan indulges his inner prog-rocker on the 14-minute “Jesus, I/Mary Star of the Sea”.
Yes, Mary Star of the Sea is a Smashing Pumpkins record — one the band never let itself record. And yeah, Billy Corgan has finally lightened the fuck up.
It’s been said before right here on this very web site: bad reviews are born of high expectations.
Lukewarm ones as well.
Quite a number of publications weighing in on the eponymous debut of Audioslave reached the same conclusion: pretty good but nowhere near the level of the members’ original bands.
Of course, those bands would be Rage Against the Machine and Soundgarden. The latter’s former singer joining the former’s instrumental core was an event of Frankensteinian proportions. And no less dramatic with news of management disputes, aborted tour plans and Internet purloining preceding the album’s release.
But now the project has been unveiled, the hype machine barely putting in a day’s work to get expectations ridiculously high.
And it’s all true — Audioslave really doesn’t rise up to Rage Against the Machine’s tension or Soundgarden’s bombast. If anything, Cornell and the former Rage guys cancel each other out.
That doesn’t mean Audioslave, the album, isn’t at least entertaining.
And here’s where the lowered expectations come in.
Audioslave is big rock record. Heck, it could even be called a big, dumb rock record.
Cornell’s larger-than-fucking-life voice was wasted on the acoustic singer-songwriter schlep he passed off on his solo album years back. He sounds far more at home with Tom Morello’s huge riffing.
Morello himself has made more interesting sonic wizardry — although he does perform some fascinating solos on “Bring ‘Em Back Alive” and “Hypnotize” — but with Cornell’s voice in the foreground, Morello opens himself up to more “non-pyrotechnical” options.
Like the acoustic guitar strumming on “I Am the Highway”. Or the stoner quiet of “The Last Remaining Light”. Or the almost Delta blues of “Getaway Car”.
The rhythm section of Brad Wilk and Tim Commerford do a fine job of grounding everything, but there isn’t much that shows either go above and beyond. This is pretty much Morello’s and Cornell’s show.
And Cornell does his part to push the band into writing for a singer. If anything, it’s what tamed Morello into playing more conventional riffs.
Even if the combined power of Soundgarden’s singer and Rage Against the Machine’s instrumentalists didn’t add up to the sum of its parts, it still resulted in a hulking rock ‘n’ roll record.
Silence is golden. Not very many rock bands know that.
Never mind all the other attributes that made Queens of the Stone Age’s Songs for the Deaf a 2002 favorite among music writers, record store clerks and, oh, the general public. The most striking thing the Queens of the Stone Age do on its third album is to shut up.
Granted, only two tracks out of the 14 on the album have significant pauses — “You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar But I Feel Like A Millionaire” even includes a fake ending — but it’s that willingness to get out of the way that pushes Songs for the Deaf from good to excellent.
Maybe that’s overstatement.
But memorable melodies, muscular riffs and rock solid playing — all of which can be found on Songs for the Deaf — are everywhere (although not nearly as prolific as they ought to be). Hell, those phrases could be used to describe Weezer’s Maladroit.
And in those ways, Songs for the Deaf can get lost among other albums of the same ilk.
But that silence — or rather, the common sense to know when to stop hammering a listener with the same fucking power chord — makes the album distinct.
Given that Homme can shred and that guest drummer Dave Grohl can pound the hell out of a drum kit makes those silences even more meaningful. It’s all too easy for musicians as expert as Homme, Oliveri and Grohl to shove their talents in listeners’ faces.
Not to diminish the other things that do make Songs for the Deaf a real keeper …
“Song for the Dead” epitomizes the adjective “concise” — it gets a lot of mileage out of only two distinct riffs. “No One Knows” is a durable enough tune to withstand even overexposure on MTV.
In fact, all the songs on the album benefit from economic writing. The Queens take a pinch of material and fashion out complete works with it.
Other listeners may call it “repetitive”. Repetitive is Philip Glass. This is not Einstein on the Beach.
Thank the A&R dieties that Homme isn’t another muddle-voiced, Clorox-gargling singer. It would have been ridiculous to hear another Vedder clone caw over the headbanging grunge of “Go With the Flow” or “Gonna Leave You”.
If anything, Songs for the Deaf takes the idea of keeping it simple to an extreme level. Call it “keeping it frugal”.
That, and some strategically placed silences go a long way to make an album both good and unique.