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Straightner is the kind of band I usually avoid — power-pop post-punk, loud as it wants to be, sincere when it has to be, and melodic as all get out.

Under less-skilled hands, this kind of music can be an instrument of unwitting evil. Oh what atrocities have been done in the name of Weezer.

“Emo”. Ugh.

But Straightener doesn’t fall into that trap. If anything, the way the duo — more recently, a trio — plays the hell out of its songs is enough to make naysayers shut up.

Straightener is good. The band’s full-length debut, Lost World’s Anthology, is good.

A lot of credit goes to singer Horie Atsushi — he has an appealing voice that doesn’t indulge in the usual whiny gestures of emo.

Even when the band pulls back and gets all earnest, as it does on “Kiseki no Michi” and “DJ Roll”, Horie doesn’t sound fake.

And the band can get a lot of mileage out of a doubled-up power chord.

“A Song Runs Through the World”, “Mad Pianist”, “Stained Android”, “Freezing” — all these songs start off pretty much the same. Eighth-note power chord, repeat.

On the surface, it’s not remarkable, but somehow, it sounds new. Then Horie comes in with the melody, and it all makes sense.

Lost World’s Anthology is rock ‘n’ roll — simple, loud, passionate.

It’s not an artistic statement — just good songwriting played with a lot of volume.

Hooks play an important part in the album’s appeal but not so much as the performance. Straightener demonstrates that sometimes, swagger is everything.

There’s really only one way to listen to this album.

Turn it on, put in the background, and do some work.

Alaya Vijana, like most electronica, is background music. Texture is everything, and quite frankly, there’s little to distinguish the duo’s self-titled debut from, say, a remix of Steve Reich.

That Music for Airports test this site keeps running against everything? Alaya Vijana passes with flying colors.

So does that mean it’s sonic wallpaper? No.

The improvisations of U-Zhaan (sitar player for Asa-Chang) and Yoshida Daitiki (tabla and percussion) are actually engaging. Long-winded though the album may get toward the end, it basks in quite a beautiful aural collage.

And a pulse makes all the difference.

While there may be no melodies to speak of throughout Alaya Vijana, there is rhythm, and a sense of movement, even when the music transforms slowly.

“Minami no Hikari” is all reverb, but the gentle rattle of percussion gives it life. Yoshida really burns on “Yoru no Kujira”, but his momentum is counterbalanced by the long washes of sound layered over him.

The pulse is even more insistent on “Umetaterareta Umi no Ii Bun”. The way it fades in and out is very reminiscent of Reich.

Alaya Vijana’s music probably could have stood on its own as pure instrumentals, but with UA providing improvised vocals, the music turns primitive.

UA doesn’t just hum on this album — she gets gutteral, even sexual. She adds a layer of passion from which the music definitely benefits.

Alaya Vijana, the album, may be yet another album that sounds best when it’s actively ignored, but what seeps into the subconscious is still rather nice.

When I was a kid, I hated children’s music. I distinctly remember in the second grade rolling my eyes when the teacher would put on yet another record of off-key kids singing mind-numbing tunes.

Back then, I didn’t have the vocabulary to put it like that, but my older brother and sisters played the radio all the time and schooled me in the world of pop music at a very early age. The stuff I heard outside of the classroom was far more interesting than the stuff I heard in it.

So it’s not surprising my perception of children’s music in the last 32 years would be dismissive. The deep stuff, the challenging stuff — that would have to wait till later when kids are old enough to understand it.

But there’s a flaw to that assumption — parents will have to listen to children’s music too.

So it was a happy day when news broke that UA would release Uta UUA, an album based on appearances on the Japanese children’s program Do Re Mi.

UA has, literally and figuratively, done it all — jazz, pop, rock, electronica, improvisation. Her distinctive, resonant voice was a natural for children’s music.

But UA is also a creative magnet, the kind of charismatic performer who attracts talent from all over for collaboration.

So it’s something amazing to find avant-garde improviser Otomo Yoshihide and Buffalo Daughter’s Oono Yumiko alongside UA on, of all things, an album of children’s music.

UA, however, isn’t content just to phone in her performance. The eclecticism and open-minded approach to music she applies to other albums is in full force on Uta UUA.

In a way, the album is her most diverse work yet.

Unlike the strict parameters under which all popular genres work, children’s music prioritizes simplicity over all else. It doesn’t matter whether the song is a mambo, a folk song, or a lullbuy.

And in that sense, children’s music provides an incredibly broad canvas for experimentation.

“Teinsagunu Hana” finds UA singing in an highly embellished style, whereas “Omacha no Cha Cha Cha” is, literally, a cha-cha-cha.

“Umi” features some subcontinental Indian instrumentation, “Do Re Mi Mizundo” has a North African/Middle Eastern feel, while “Yama no Ongaku Uchi” is based on Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

UA isn’t afraid to challenge her young listeners either. Some of the timbres used on Uta UUA can get mildly strange. “Shalom” starts with a dischordant horn. “Omacha no Cha Cha Cha” includes some deep tablas.

“Ringo no Hitori Goto” is Japanese melody, but UA has Oono accompany her on steel drum.

With Uta UUA, UA has stamped children’s music with her singular, eclectic vision. She found a way to inject maturity into a style of music aimed for the developing mind.

Adults will find a lot to like about the album, and it’s great for children too.

UA really doesn’t have much left to prove.

In a career that spans a decade, the adventurous Japanese jazz singer has sung in just about every conceivable genre — pop, jazz, world, rock, dub, electronica, even children’s music.

If she did an album of country covers, it would probably be one of the best country albums ever recorded.

So if Sun, UA’s fifth studio album as a solo artist, seems impenetrable, well — where else can UA go? It’s amazing she hasn’t arrived there sooner.

Despite all of her genre hopping, UA is, at heart, a jazz singer, and Sun is about as angular as be-bop can get.

She introduced a more live, organic sound with 2002’s Doroboo. Now, she’s taking it a step further, cutting her band loose to improvise, to occupy the spaces between tonality and rhythm.

In short, to get fucking noisy.

And UA herself isn’t afraid to sound, well, weird. On “papito”, barking dogs provide backing vocals. She gets pretty damn Mingus on the 7-minute “Bouga”, while on “Fatima to Semira” she babbles for two minutes before launching into the tune proper. Thing is, her band doesn’t follow, preferring instead to play arhythmically to her melody.

“Roma” evokes the kind of dark, sparse mood she explored on Doroboo, while “Ua Ua Rai Rai” finds UA singing extemporaneously over a full Indonesian orchestra.

“Strange” would be an understatement.

Even the so-called singles off the album — “Lightning” and “Odoru Tori to Kin no Ame” — don’t have much in the way of hooks. At least not on the level of “Senkoo” or “Kanashimi Johnny”.

In short, Sun is an album that can be greatly appreciated as a bold artistic statement. It doesn’t mean you actually like it.

It’s nice to see UA strive for the kind of wild artistic abandon her past work more than strongly indicated. It’s equally nice when she reigns those urges in to service a hook.

Hooks are in short supply on Sun, and the album demands a lot of thinking to appreciate fully.

But that’s OK — UA and her incredibly magnetic voice can pull it off. She makes even a thinking listener’s album seem effortless.

And that marks her greatest ability as an artist.

For all the similarities between bloodthirsty butchers and Number Girl, including a common member between the two bands, one thing separates the two.

I hate to write this next sentence, but here it goes: Number Girl had better musicians.

That’s not intended to slag Yoshimura Hideki’s singing or Komatsu Masahiro’s drumming. In fact, I’ve praised bloodthirsty butchers for not being the most technically proficient band.

But just a side-by-side comparrison is enough to show the butchers never shared Number Girl’s laser precision with rhythm, nor its nimble arrangements.

And that’s how it should be.

But a big deal was made of the fact birdy is the first studio album to feature Number Girl’s Tabuchi Hisako as a full-time member.

The live album green on red was her true debut with the band, and she fit in quite well.

In fact, she fits in so well on birdy, it’s hard to distinguish her at all. And anyone who’s ever heard Tabuchi do a solo knows that’s not something that happens — at all.

At first, I suspected it was the spiritual affinity Tabuchi’s former band has with the butchers that made her performance seem indescript. After a while, I had to admit it to myself — Yoshimura isn’t the same kind of songwriter as Mukai.

Mukai wrote in a way that often brought Tabuchi into the foreground. Yoshimura doesn’t.

And that’s how it should be also.

birdy continues the concise, melodic streak started with 2003’s Kooya ni Okeru bloodthirsty butchers. The butchers have cut the length of the songs to a relatively short 4 to 5 minutes.

And many of these tracks are as melodic as anything on the last album, despite Yoshimura’s tone-deaf vocals. Add a “y” to the title of “Sunn”, and you get an approximate description of the song’s mood.

The title track also has a sing-song melody set against some ferocious guitar work.

Yoshimura does, however, put Tabuchi in a role Mukai never did — back-up singer. She adds a tinge of sweetness to “Walkman”, “Bandwagon” and “Kooya ni Okeru bloodthirsty butchers”. (Strange that the title track of the previous album would appear as the concluding track on the following album.)

Although melodic, birdy doesn’t quite possess the same hooks as the last album, and it can get tough remembering the songs afterward.

Toward the end, birdy falls back on the extended, mid-tempo songs that gave yamane its tone. The instrumental “Rat Music for Rat People” is beautiful despite the title.

birdy may not highlight bloodthirsty butchers’ new member the way she was before, but that doesn’t stop the album from being enjoyable.

What the fuck?

That was my first reaction when I first played Zazen Boys’ self-titled debut. It’s the reaction I get everytime I play it.

What the fuck?

In the latter days of Number Girl, band leader Mukai Shuutoku started getting more eccentric with his songwriting. Hints of other influences cropped up in unlikely places.

“Tokyo Freeze” featured Mukai in full rap mode. “Num-Ami-Dabutz” was little more than a spoken word piece with a screaming chorus.

After the dissolution of Number Girl, Mukai spent a year experimenting. Performances with hardcore band Panic Smile and a solo acoustic tour influenced him to commandeer a previous alias, Zazen Boys, and to from a new band.

And it’s pretty much a fresh start, as evidenced on Zazen Boys’ self-titled debut album.

The album starts with Mukai doing his creepiest impression of Marvin Gaye on “Fender Telecaster”. From there, he launches into a mostly-spoken word repertoire.

“Usodarake”, “The Days of Nekomachi”, “Yureta Yureta Yureta” — all follow the basic “Num-Ami-Dabutz” template of spoken verses with sung choruses.

“Yureta Yureta Yureta” gets to so frenzied, the only way Mukai grounds it is by giving the song a straight-forward chorus.

The album crashes on the 8-minute, mid-tempo “Kaisenzenya”. The wandering song breaks down, picks up and never really finds a sense of direction.

After that, Zazen Boys ventures into Mukai’s more familiar songwriting — dischordant riffs, screaming vocals, obtuse melodies.

The conclusion of “Kimochi” layers a chaotic guitar solo over a slow beat. “Ikasama Love” chops up a compound meter beyond recognition, while “Whiskey & Unubore” is grounded on some really dissonant melodies.

Zazen Boys finds Mukai Shuutoku at his most creatively daring. He’s thrown out the book about tonality and seeks a tortured mode of expression a few steps shy of avant-garde.

It’s a challenging work. Is it likeable? Not really.

Part of Number Girl’s appeal was a tension between melody and dissonance. You could sing along with Mukai, even though he and guitarist Tabuchi Hisako cared not one whit about staying within a scale.

With Zazen Boys, that tension has dissolved into barely-controlled anarchy. While interesting, it isn’t exactly compelling.

And while Tabuchi’s axework is missing, more so is producer Dave Fridmann’s strong touch. Fridmann captured the full ferocity of Number Girl’s live show in the studio.

Zazen Boys seems to be even more powerful, but that doesn’t come across in the album’s production.

With Zazen Boys, Mukai shakes off a very successful legacy, but there’s a sense he still has a way to go before this new project possesses a clearer sense of identity.

Kinoshita Riki is a master of the hook.

When “Mizu no Naka no Knife” opens up Love/Hate, those first four chords are a paragon of utter simplicity. Once Kinoshita has reeled listeners in with that riff, there’s no way to shake off the rest of the album.

Love/Hate is an embarrassment of riches, a collection of the best hook writing assembled on one disc. From start to finish, the album hurtles at a brisk pace, tossing one perfect pop song after another.

It’s tough to single out a particular brilliant moment on this album because there’s absolutely no filler — every track is consistently strong, and it pretty much boils down to personal taste.

(My favorites: “Mizu no Naka no Knife”, “Evil”, “Skirt” and “Sonnet”)

Art-School borrows a lot from the Weezer playbook, from the big, doubled-up guitar sound to Kinoshita’s off-key holler. And of course, the loud-soft dynamic so intrinsic in 90s-era alt-rock is in full force.

But the comparrisons end there — if anything, Kinoshita is a better writer than Rivers Cuomo.

The chemistry between the band members, however, is an equally forceful presence. Kinoshita, drummer Sakurai Yuuichi, guitarist Ooyama Jun and bassist Hinata Hideki perform with an uncommon rock-solid timing.

On “Apathy’s Last Night”, the band plays interlocking parts during the verses, only to come together rhythmically in chorus. “Butterfly Kiss” seethes with a passion that builds as the song progresses.

The most dramatic moment on Love/Hate happens during “Skirt”. The song whittles down to just acoustic guitar and bass, but little by little, more instruments enter in till the entire song explodes.

Not since Number Girl have four people produced such a precise, dynamic sound. Oddly enough, Hinata left Art-School to join Number Girl’s Mukai Shuutoku in Zazen Boys. Ooyama quit due to exhaustion.

It’s no exaggeration to call Love/Hate one of the best albums to be released in the last 12 months. (It’s going on my 2004 favorite list, even if it was released in December 2003.)

For one set of songs to be consistently excellent from the first note to the last is a rarity to be hearlded.