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Constraining though the 3-minute pop song may be, it has its usefulness — especially when you collect about 9 of them together.

Not that there’s anything wrong with pop songs longer than 3 minutes. Mathematically speaking, …

Wait a minute. I’ve said this before, haven’t I? (See, Love Psychedelico, Love Psychedelico III.)

Walrus writes the kind of a dreamy, atmospheric music that inhabits a lot of temporal real estate. That doesn’t mean the groups shouldn’t at least try a hand at conciseness.

During the four years since releasing its last album, 2000’s Hikari no Kakera, Walrus recorded a set of demos, which was later released as 20012002.

Although 20012002 was only six tracks long, the band’s expansive music filled out the disc well. The interpretation of Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria” was downright fascinating.

But on the band’s self-titled third album, that expansiveness can get incredibly tiring in a full-length format — especially when there’s little difference between songs.

“Corn Flakes” has a lot activity going on in terms of rhythm and tempo, but the same cannot be said for the rest of the album.

Walrus’ songs do one of two things — start softly and develop slowly; or start at one texture and repeat for long stretches.

“Blind”, “Tears” and “Drab” fit in the former category; “Glide” and “Lastly” in the latter.

Although Walrus’ liberal use of effects produces some beautiful textures, the band’s writing is too locked into traditional song structures to make its sonic excursions anything but long-winded.

Buffalo Daughter could get away with writing a 50-minute, 5-track album (Pshychic) because the band de-emphasized the role of lyrics.

Walrus could learn a valuable lesson from Buffalo Daughter — if you’re going to take up that much time, the structure of your music had better justify it.

Too, singer Akitomo is barely audible in the mix.

Walrus is a beautiful-sounding album, but it also drowns in that beauty.

Long ago, someone posted a question to the pure-japanese-rock mailing list on Yahoo!Groups — did any bands in Japan play shoegazer music?

It was a tough question to answer at first, but eventually, a few names emerged — Walrus, mono, Luminous Orange, downy.

Response is another name to add to the list.

The quartet performed at Japan Nite during SXSW 2004 in Austin, Texas, and Response’s self-titled debut finds the band standing toe-to-toe with the aforementioned groups.

Response, the album, starts off with a dissonant hook that dissolves into a wash of heavily distorted guitar on “Jet Kids”.

From there, the band veers from cryptic to substantial.

“Slip” and “Jaguarnaut” are the two most accessible songs on the album — the former with its four-on-the-floor beat, the latter for its agitated beat.

“Wait to Know” and “Air”, on the other hand, feature free-floating, unanchored vocal melodies against ethereal backgrounds.

Response can get pretty inscrutible as well — half the length of “Revival” is spent on disjointed, random samples, while “Sound Response” has an odd, clumsy riff.

The album concludes with the token, albeit nice, acoustic track, “Superb View”.

Although still a relatively new band, Response’s self-titled album displays a rare maturity. Response has written some strong material for its first time out.

The more crytpic moments deaden the pace of the album a bit, but on the whole, Response is a band with a promising future.

At this point, it’s pretty easy to chart the course of a mono album.

Quiet. Loud. Quiet. Quiet. Loud. Quiet. Loud. Loud. Quiet.

You get the drift.

So does the Japanese quartet do anything different on the mouthily-titled Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined that it hadn’t done previously?

The band added a string quartet.

It doesn’t sound like a big development, but it’s a subtle one.

In the beginning, mono was willing to craft melody from a wash of dischord, but not before building it up with tiny blocks of beauty.

On more recent works, the band has shifted its emphasis from the dischord to the beauty. Instead of creating a tonal blur, mono now brings its melodies forward and oftentimes quietly.

Hence, the string quartet — it’s easier to hear the quartet’s contributions so long as a wall of feedback doesn’t get in the way. Not that it actually stops the quartet.

On the dramatic conclusion of “Halcyon (beautiful days)”, the quartet is in the background, offering the contra-melody usually provided by an amplified instrument.

On “mere your pathetique light”, the quartet slowly takes over the piece, until it’s the only thing remaining.

Like “mopish morning, halation wiper” before it, “The sky remains the same as ever” imagines the quartet as an ages-old phonograph record, this time submerged in the deep sea.

Maybe it was budget constraints that didn’t allow use of an entire string orchestra — ‘cos that would have been, well, cool — but the lean tone of quartet offers a constrast to mono’s thick sound.

For all the fuzzy and ethereal pedal effects, it’s nice to hear clear tones cut through it all.

Unlike mono’s previous album One Step More and You Die, the pacing of Walking Cloud feels much more organic.

Both ends of the album are anchored by its longest tracks — the 11-minute “16.12” at the start; the 15-minute “Lost snow” at the end — with shorter tracks breaking the average 7-minute pieces.

It’s hard to tell different tracks from each with the way the album effortless flows, which is distracting in a home environment. Performed live, though, the contrast between loud and soft highlights the distinctiveness of each piece.

If you’re neighbors don’t mind, crank this album up to get the true effect.

mono pretty much delivers the same kind of music it has been delivering for the last few years, but the added instruments provide a terrific flourish.

Japan is the second largest music market in the world, and there isn’t a single genre musicians from the country haven’t mastered and made their own. Except one.

Country.

More specifically, twang.

Annoying though the habit of finding “Japan’s answer” to Björk or Courtney Love or Radiohead may be — something other Japanophile sites have accused Musicwhore.org of doing too often — it’s pretty much not an issue where country is concerned.

Because really — who qualifies as Japan’s answer to Patsy Cline or Johnny Cash?

Shinohara Rika isn’t the most striking songwriter in Japan, and the fact she lists Sheryl Crow as a reference point in her English-language press material isn’t much of a selling point.

But she is incredibly brave for one reason — she’s not afraid of the twang.

“Stay on the line”, from 2002’s Daylight, is up front and unabashed about it. “Waste Beer” starts off with the kind of folk guitar strumming you’d find on murder ballads. “Short Song” barely disguises its 2/2 country beat.

Even when Shinohara offers more straight-forward singer-songwriter fare, the sound of the proverbial lost highway isn’t too far away.

“Vegas 66”, one of Daylight‘s overtly rock tracks, gives just a hint of country during the song’s bridge. And the only thing separating “Rest of the Night” from its southern rock origins is Shinohara herself — ‘cos this song would sound very different with Gretchen Wilson or Sara Evans singing it.

The idea of a Japanese singer-songwriting penning country-influenced music sounds, well, wrong, and sometimes, some things do get lost in translation. (Witness: visual kei.)

But Shinohara manages to pull it off. She’s assimilated the writing style of Crow and Suzanne Vega, and her folk-ready voice doesn’t sound entirely out of place.

Personally, I’m no fan of singer-songwriter folk-rock, but Shinohara doesn’t strike me as bland, unlike a lot of the genre in which works.

Factor in the fact she sings in her own language, and what emerges is a picture of musician with a strong creative identity.