As a songwriter, Onitsuka Chihiro is a one-trick pony.
A balladeer not far removed from Carole King or Vonda Shepard, Onitsuka’s albums pose few challenges and offer few surprises.
That’s not to say there aren’t any.
In early 2002, Onitsuka released This Armor, the follow-up to her hit debut Insomnia. In the middle of a tour to promote that album, the singer-songwriter fell ill and canceled her remaining dates.
Instead of spending her recuperation doing nothing, Onitsuka went on a songwriting tear, recording new material and releasing her third album barely nine months after her second.
The downtime did her good — Sugar High is Onitsuka’s most emotionally charged album to date.
Onitsuka has gone back to the rawness of Insomnia and jacked it up many-fold.
Yes, the piano ballads are in great supply, and yes, her earnestness can be cut with a proverbial knife. But beyond the surface, Onitsuka has tapped a direct line into an honest performance, going so far to overcome a language barrier.
The opening track, “Not Your God”, is sung in English, and Onitsuka addresses her quick and surprising rise to fame: “I’m not your God/I’m not your hero/I’m not your Messiah/Don’t break my heart”.
“Tiger In My Love”, the album’s token fast-tempo track, sounds decidedly darker than “Rollin'” from This Armor or “We Can Go” on Insomnia.
In fact, “Tiger In My Love” marks a turning a point in the album, and thereafter, Sugar High actually remains pretty dark. With only piano and cello as accompaniment, “Hyooryuu no Hane” takes baby steps into Cocco’s wrenching terrain.
The Bill Frisell-like atmospheric guitars on “Suna no Tate” evoke ghost town images, but it’s on the concluding track, “Borderline”, where Onitsuka makes her boldest statement.
The track starts off quietly with just Onitsuka and her piano. As the song progresses, a string quartet chimes in, providing an almost violent counterpoint to the singer’s simple piano pulse. By the end of the track, the string quartet is whipped into a fury with Onitsuka improvising her own vocals.
It’s shocking to think she’d have that kind of angst in her.
No, Onitsuka isn’t the most daring songwriter in the world. But she is a tremendous performer, and the saving grace on all her albums — a naked, emotional rawness — becomes the star on Sugar High.
Since its debut in 1998, the Brilliant Green’s bright and happy music has grown steadily harder and, at times, darker. In 2001, the band reached its apex with Los Angeles, a rocking album that demonstrated how aggressive the Japanese trio could get.
There were two directions the band could go after that: even darker, or back to lighter.
Singer Kawase Tomoko chose a third option — do a solo album of 80s retro new wave under the name Tommy February6.
When the band regrouped to record its fourth album in 2002, the Brilliant Green essentially started over again. The results: The Winter Album, the band’s most regressive album to date.
Everything that’s been done on a Brilliant Green album is done once again here: 60s-influenced, bouncy pop, orchestral flourishes, a haunting slow song here and there.
Some songs even sound like previous Brilliant Green works. “Forever to Me”? Try “Angel Song”. “Flowers”? Try “Nagai Tameiki no Yoo ni”.
On three tracks, the band uses drum machines instead of a live drummer. The backbeats on “Rainy Days Never Stay” feel more like latter-day Bonnie Pink, while the electric drums on “That Boy Waits For Me” show a Tommy February6 influence.
Aside from the drum machines, there’s nothing particularly distinctive about The Winter Album. By comparrison, it doesn’t even match Terra 2001 in terms of viscera.
That’s not to say the album is unpleasant.
The mix of rough guitars and backbeats on “Running So High” makes it the most adventurous track on the album. “Escape” possesses a mellow poignancy suitable as a concluding track. Strange effects and a string quartet give “The Night Has Plesant Time” a psychedelic tinge.
Even familiar-sounding tracks as “I’m Jus’ Lovin’ You” and “Holidays” are nice, tuneful fare.
Still, it’s hard to escape the impression that The Winter Album has been done before — and done better — by the same band.
With all that pressure to maintain its chart-topping track record, it would be easy to stick with what’s worked before — despite possessing a penchant for juggling three disparate forms of music (jazz, pop, rock).
And yet, what to make of “Koosooryodan”, the opening track to the band’s fourth album, True Song?
The song opens with an minimalist motif more akin to a Philip Glass movie score. After singer Van Tomiko delivers the opening verse and chorus, guitarist Owatari Ryo and an army of session musicians crash in, pounding at the motif like a jackhammer. The straight beats on the snare drum feel like punches to the head.
All the while, an overdubbed Van sings a nice melody, unaffected by the flurry of activity serving as a backdrop.
To date, it’s the most adventurous song Do As Infinity has ever written. Noisy, stubborn, loud — if it weren’t so heavily orchestrated, it might comes across as punk. (Post-punk at the most.)
If Do As Infinity continued in this vein with the rest of True Song, it would have alienated a lot of the band’s less tolerant fans.
Do As Infinity does not end up alienating its less tolerant fans.
Immediately after “Koosooryodan”, True Song launches into “under the sun”, the first pre-release single for the album. And the band continues its three-genre juggling act.
But
Do As Infinity has learned the perils of its eclecticism.
The band’s second album, New World, attempted to push the boundaries of its influences to scattered effect. For its third album, Deep Forest, the duo (with absent member Nagai Dao still credited) concentrated on the pop third of its equation.
True Song is clearly the band’s “rock” record.
Power chords takes up the most sonic real estate on such tracks as “Grateful Journey” (think “Summer Days”), “One or Eight” (think “135”), or “Ai no Uta” (think “Toshikari Naru Mama ni”).
“Perfect Lady” hints at bit of country with a slide acoustic guitar lick, while “under the sun” features a guitar intro vaguely reminiscent of T.Rex.
Van still delivers catchy melodies like nobody’s business, but more often than not, Ryo is behind her, chugging away on his muted strings.
That’s not to say jazz and pop get the shaft. “Shinjitsu no Shi”, the most beautiful and exotic track on the disc, incorporates traditional Chinese instruments into its dramatic orchestral flourishes. “sense of life” combines ringing acoustic guitars with a hip-hop beat, while “Wadachi” harkens to Deep Forest’s “Tsubasa no Keikaku”.
With the break-neck pace of Japan’s pop industry, it’s impressive to find a band that can keep itself sounding fresh on each album, while still appeasing demands of fickle fans. True Song marks another successful notch in Do As Infinity’s batting record.
The last time out, The Back Horn seemed a bit too eagar to prove itself.
The band made an impressive performance with its eclectic, genre-jumping debut, Ningen Program, but some of its ideas seemed messily imagined. Punk guitars and samba rhythms aren’t exactly the easiest components to marry.
For Shinzoo Orchestra, The Back Horn tightens its focus. The wild, world beat eclecticisms have been pruned, but the overtly Japanese melodies and abrupt volume changes remain.
“Wata Booshi” sets the tone for the entire album. Singer Yamada Masashi’s whisper hints nothing about the ferocious screaming he delivers during the chorus. Yamada’s bandmates hold back as well, unleashing its full force only when he does.
On “Game”, The Back Horn offer up a straight-forward rock song. Before, they may have thrown in a Latin bass rhythm or some other exotic touch, but this time around, it’s just big chords followed by a head-banging chorus.
Yamada has become much more nuanced as a singer. When “Natsukusa no Yureru Oka” reaches its dramatic apex, Yamada doesn’t cross over into his distinctive wail as he’s usually prone to do. And when he delivers soft passages, his restraint doesn’t come across as a forced effort.
The band’s songs have gotten simpler. Tracks such as “Material” and “Yuugure” still demonstrate The Back Horn’s talent as skilled arrangers, but they’re not clouded by tangent ideas. “Dinner” could have even been an outtake from a latter-day Thee Michelle Gun Elephant album.
In a way, Shinzoo Orchestra comes across as an honest stab at mainstream attention. Although The Back Horn has a solid grip on its creative identity, it’s hard to dismiss the polish given to its second major label album.
A bit of the edge bubbling under Ningen Program gets lost on Shinzoo Orchestra, but in its place is a more cohesive, better executed sound.
On the cover of their second single, “Yuki no Furu-go”, the two members of Kicell are shown bundled up in winter gear, standing in the middle of snow-covered field.
It’s an image that’s hard to erase from the mind’s eye when listening to the Tsujimura brothers’ second album, Kinmirai.
The basics to the duo’s sound remain: falsetto vocals, shimmering guitar effects, lush arrangements.
Whereas the band’s 2001 debut Yume came across as intimate — warm, even — Kinmirai feel chilly.
And that’s not a judgment call, either — there’s nothing distant, stoic or lackluster about Kinmirai. It just reminds me of snow.
There are some sonic clues to feed this seasonal perception. This time around, the Tsujimuras put their voices through more processors, doing away with the last album’s immediacy. The robotic beats on “Nagisa no Kuni” and the echo effects on “Yuki no Furu-go” also lend a cold feeling to the music.
There’s also an economy to the arrangments on Kinmirai. Although “Haru” and “Oni” get by on just a few instruments, more expansive tracks such as “Hyaku-nen Calendar” and the title track don’t contain much in the way embellishments.
By comparrison, “Kaze to Kurage” contains much of the orchestral flourishes that marked Yume — a series of strange effects weaving in and out of the song, making it lush but keeping it lean.
Despite its wintery vibe, Kinmirai is also a kinetic album. Those beats on “Nagisa no Kuni” force the Tsujimuras’ out of their usual lethargic pace, while “Ginyama,” the album’s most appealing track, uses an honest-to-goodness running bass and backbeat.
On some level, it’s this coldness that makes Kinmirai hard to warm up to at first. (Pun sort of intended.) Although no less sonically challenging as Yume, it’s not as inviting either. But after adjusting to the album’s “climate”, it’s easy to hear the beauty in it as well.
Toward the end of the album, signs of spring appear — the hints of tropical slack key guitars on “Picnic”, the cabaret feel of “Hawaiian”.
But before a listener delves in Kinmirai, it’s best to fish out the winter gear in your mind’s ear.
Fifteen minutes is a long time for a band to cram a lot of dumb ideas into one track, and when that happens, it’s usually a sport to come up with adjectives to describe the results (“bloated”, “pompous”, “unnecessary”).
Then there’s “Philadelphia,” the center point of Japanese quintet WINO’s fourth album, Everlast. The track is something of an anomaly for the band, the least of which is the lack of vocals.
WINO specializes in melody-friendly, Beatles-inspired alternative rock. Most of the band’s songs last as long as four to six minutes — one to three minutes beyond the standard three — but they’re usually dependable for delivering the basic tennets of a textbook pop song.
“Philadelphia”, on the other hand, rocks harder than anything on the album, perhaps even in WINO’s entire repetoire. Even more surprising is the restraint with which WINO exercises on the track.
Instead of dividing the track into movements or belaboring it with millions of riffs, “Philadelphia” takes a simple verse-bridge-chorus, builds to a climax, breaks down and repeats.
Just when it seems the song has reached its conclusion, the band bursts in with a wall of distortion more characteristic of Mogwai or mono. Rather than fade out or build to another coda, “Philadelphia” abruptly stops at the 15-minute mark.
“Philadelphia” reveals a fury and a daring the hook-friendly WINO has never really flaunted. With the news of the band’s dissolution in November 2002, the track almost comes across as too little, too late.
Still, the subsequent tracks on Everlast take on a whole new context after that epic display of virtuosity. WINO wisely places the simple, acoustic-strummer “Chelsea Girl” after “Philadelphia” to reign in the momentum of the album.
The fake arena sing-along at the end of “Not Alone” feels a bit contrived, but “Forever Young” grounds the album back on melody, while “Go Straight Song!” hurtles it to a pumping conclusion.
The first half of Everlast contains much of its catchier material.
“Love Is Here” offers up the same rock balladry as “Taiyoo wa Yoru mo Kagayaku” from WINO’s Dirge No. 9 album. The title track feels like the hit single it never was, while “Jesus” possesses the kind of extroverted introspection indicative of its title.
But it’s “Philadelphia” which casts a large shadow over Everlast. Without it, the album would have been a shade of WINO’s brilliant 1999 debut Useless Music. With it, Everlast shows how well the band can paint within the lines of its previous work — and how much better it would sound blurring them.
It’s not often that a garage band can upgrade its studio sound and still maintain the grittiness that makes it a garage band.
Then again, to call Electric Eel Shock a garage band is like calling the Flaming Lips an alternative rock band — not entirely precise.
Beneath the usual, apparant garage rock references — Stooges, Thee Michelle Gun Elephant — is a Led Zeppelin/Black Sabbath tribute band wanting to burst out.
The song titles on the Japanese trio’s latest album, Go America!, are indicative enough: “Do the Metal”, “I Wanna Be a Black Sabbath Guy But I Should Be Black Bass”.
On the former, vocalist/guitarist Morimoto Akihito delivers the kind of solo that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Loudness album. On the latter, he sings like a young Robert Plant.
Those dashes of metal do a lot to loosen up garage rock’s creative limitations, and thankfully, Electric Eel Shock’s songs don’t feel at all derivative. (Even though your ears tell you they should.)
Tracks such as “S.O.S.”, “Speedy Joe”, “Nothing” and “Rock N’ Roll Can Rescue the World” feel familiar but could never be mistaken for, say, the Flamin’ Groovies.
Compared to the lo-fi sludge of 2001’s Slayer’s Bay Blues, Go America! sounds pristine. And yet, the slicker engineering does nothing to dull Electric Eel Shock’s ear-splitting live energy.
This recording rocks as hard as the guys do on stage.
Clocking in at a brisk 34 minutes, Go America! doesn’t mess around. Electric Eel Shock delivers one punch after the next on an album that epitomizes rock ‘n’ roll at its simplest and fiercest.
If Thee Michelle Gun Elephant were put in a Celebrity Deathmatch ring with any of the bands touted as part of the “garage revival”, I’d put my money on TMGE. (Well, so long as the Hives stay out of it.)
Few bands play garage rock louder and dirtier than Thee Michelle Gun Elephant. Chiba Yusuke’s raspy growl is a love/hate kind of voice — you either love it or you hate it.
As demonstrated on the retrospective TMGE 106 (released as Collection in the U.S.), Thee Michelle Gun Elephant has slowly graduated to bigger studio budgets over the years. Studio sheen is anathema to garage rock’s lo-fi aesthetic.
Not so on Rodeo Tandem Beat Specter, the band’s most recent studio album to be released in the U.S.
The crisper sound loses none of the band’s live immediacy. Chiba and company actually sound stronger.
On the surface, Rodeo Tandem Beat Specter serves up much of the same rough-hewned, headache-inducing rawk ‘n’ roll as previous albums. The quartet could never be accused of “growing” as songwriters.
And yet, there’s something subtly different about Rodeo Tandem Beat Specter.
Maybe it’s the way Chiba makes the songs’ melodies clearer. Perhaps it’s the powerful guitar work of Abe Futoshi. Could be the versatility of drummer Kuhara Kazuyuki. (Spot the almost be-bop drumming on “Citroen no Kodoku” or the tribal beats of “Baby Stardust”.) Or maybe it’s the “Beat Specter” interludes, which show the band can actually play a slow song, let alone an instrumental.
It could be all of those things.
Or it could just be that tracks such as “God Jazz Time”, “Abaraketa Sekai” and “Akage no Kelly” are some of the best songs the band has written within its limited parameters.
Regardless, Rodeo Tandem Beat Specter is the tightest Thee Michelle Gun Elephant album Alive/Total Energy has so far reissued.
Over the course of 10 years, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her has produced a body of work ranging from youthfully amateur to brashly seasoned.
Although the group has toured internationally, only now has its music become available outside of Japan, thanks to UK label Arriverdeci Baby and its retrospective, Red Talk.
Like most career-spanning collections — especially one covering a decade — a bit of history has been rewritten.
Red Talk contains SSKHKH’s more accessible tracks, from the catchy but dischordant opener “Sentimental Journey” to the garage rock simplicity of “Pretty In Pink”.
Sure, some tracks demonstrate Higurashi Ahia’s more ambitious songwriting chops — the swing-to-swagger of “Pink Soda”, the freaked-out intro of “Grapefruit”, the three-part juggling act on “Mo’Mo’Gimi’Mo'”.
But for the most part, Red Talk showcases Higurashi as a hook writer more than as an intuitive rock composer. Some of the band’s more experimental leanings — most of It’s Brand New, for instance — are glossed over to create an easier listening experience.
Hey — whatever works, right?
Thankfully, Red Talk doesn’t attempt to revise the sonic evolution of the band. Seagull’s lo-fi beginnings are offered without any dressing, making later works stick out by virtue of their fidelity. It’s obvious “A Guitar for Me and Milk for Her” and “Asking for It” weren’t written in the same period.
Satisfying though Red Talk may be, the packaging leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. Alive/Total Energy saw fit to include at least a short essay on why Thee Michelle Gun Elephant deserved a label deal outside of Japan. Red Talk doesn’t even bother to list which albums each of the tracks come from.
Forget about the video for “Sister Sister” included as a CD-ROM extra — grainy encoding and shoddy sound quality don’t “enhance” a CD.
As far as retrospectives go, Red Talk does a decent job respresenting Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her in some respects — the songs on the album really are good — and not so in others.
Despite any missteps, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her deserve this kind of attention outside of Japan. The music on Red Talk makes up for any shortcomings in presentation.
When Joni Mitchell announced her retirement from the music industry, she cited overwrought pop singers as one of many reasons for her disdain of the business.
There’s a nugget of truth in Mitchell’s criticism — restraint isn’t exactly a hallmark of R&B. If anything, it’s anathema to the expression of soul.
But sometimes, a whisper is louder than a scream, something Ashanti seems to have mastered.
The young R&B singer is already a hitmaker, but even elitist rock snobs (such as myself) can find something to like in Ashanti’s self-titled debut. Specifically: she’s got a great voice, and she doesn’t shove it in your face.
Like Sade but not nearly as lethargic, Ashanti knows the virtue of a slow burning, sensual love song. Even when she dealing with a neglectful lover (“Foolish”) or extolling the qualities of her proverbial knight (“Rescue”), Ashanti never emotes excessively.
Which doesn’t mean she couldn’t if she wanted to.
As such, the music feeds off of Ashanti’s tasteful performance. At times, it can get clichéd (the soft-porn feel of “Movies”); other times, it’s haunting (the ethereal “Voodoo”).
On tracks where Ashanti lets loose, the music never crowds in. “Happy” and “Leaving (Always on Time Part II)” are about as excited as the album gets.
After a while, Ashanti, the album, does become homogenous, and the skits between songs barely string the album together as a concept. When did it become a requirement for all R&B albums to impose a dramatic arc where there should be none?
But Ashanti, the singer, keeps things grounded, teasing instead of flaunting, seducing instead of macking.
And what better way to say “come hither” than with a quiet coo.