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Used to be, electronica had no use for words.

A sampled one-liner here, maybe a verse of freestyle there — vocals were subjugated as music, never intended to convey a very detailed message.

Boom Boom Satellites, by virtue of its heavily electronic sound, has been lumped in with the techno crowd, but for a band filed under that genre, it certainly uses a lot of guitars.

In the past, the duo didn’t have much need for vocals either. And seriously? Kawashima Michiyuki wouldn’t give Kusano Masamune, Kishida Shigeru or Fujimaki Ryouta any sleepless nights.

But electronica in 2005 doesn’t have the kind of cachet it had in 1995, and Boom Boom Satellites are cognizant of the change in hipster taste.

Full of Elevating Pleasures, Boom Boom Satellites newest album in three years, finds the band remodeled for the new indie rock world order. Yes, the band still relies heavily on electronic effects, and yes, it still integrates a healthy dose of guitars into its highly kinetic music.

But now the band is writing actual songs.

“Let It All Come Down” sees Kawashima singing verses and choruses. He almost delivers a scream worthy of Mukai Shuutoku on “Moment I Count”, while “Dive for You” could almost eschew its electronic components to be a straight-forward rock song.

Some tracks effectively employ some soulful backing vocals. A gospel chorus blares out during the chorus of “Rise and Fall”, while “Back in the Night” goes so far as to “testify”.

A few tracks still fall back on the heavy-handed rhythms of its past work. “Spine” gets batshit crazy with the drum machines, and Kawashima doesn’t have much to offer aside from the one-liner, “Wake up and check your pulse.”

“Anthem” is not much more than an exercise of echo effects, but a compelling one at that, while “Echo Tail” goes so far as to use a lot of found sounds.

“Stride” concludes the album with a guest vocalist delivering a spoken word piece over the band’s more ethereal music.

Full of Elevating Pleasures is both Boom Boom Satellites most mainstream album and its most daring work. Of course, to fall back on traditional song structure after avoiding it on its first few albums is something of zag to the normal zig.

But the ease with which the duo flexes its rock muscle — while still maintaining its juice as far as electronic wizardry goes — reveals depths to the band’s music only previously hinted.

Boom Boom Satellites asserts itself as the rock band it always considered itself to be, but with Full of Elevating Pleasures, listeners will be very hard pressed to file them back under electronica again.

What makes Kicell a compelling listening experience is the way the duo creates lush but economical music. The brothers are fearless in incorporating all manner of strings, percussion and special effects, but their songs feel wide open.

On the pair’s last album, Mado ni Chikyuu, they eased a bit on the quirkiness of their arrangements, and it worked well for them.

But this time with its latest album, Tabi, the loosened grip results in less stellar results.

A number of the flourishes added to the song feel more predictable. The string work on “Kimi to Tabi” sounds closer to Paul McCartney than to Kronos Quartet.

“Charry” is a thematically busy song, thoroughly orchestrated with a relatively traditional band of organ, guitars and drums. It’s a feast for the ears, but it feels like Kicell could have done something more — or weirder — with it.

Other songs on the album are performed straight, with little of the band’s eclectic aural vision. “Niji wo Mita” comes as close to a rocker as Kicell gets, while “Hana ga Kudasai” has all the flourish but little of the flash of the band’s richest songs.

The nearly six-minute instrumental “Michi ga Massugu” doesn’t do much more than pulse, and in an odd way, it’s one of the most interesting tracks on the album.

It also marks the turning point — after that track, the songwriting doesn’t have the kind of forcefullness of Mado ni Chikyuu or Yume.

Would these songs have come off stronger if Kicell kept with its usual modus operandi and went crazy with the effects? Maybe not, but it would have given something on which the ears could latch.

Strangely enough, the most stripped down track on the album is also one Kicell’s best performances. “Yuki ni Kieru” is little more than guitar and a pair of voices. This time, the Tsujimarus invite female singer Kudo Hazuna to offer a contrasting timbre.

Kudo is obviously an untrained singer, and her harmonizing with Tsujimaru Takefumi is slightly out of tune. It’s that bit of grit that makes the performance riveting.

Tabi, in a way, is a reflection of the band’s second album, Kinmirai. The less cluttered arrangements on Tabi conjure a feeling of warmth, in the same way Kinmirai felt like winter. The idea of summer seems to weave itself into the songs.

While Tabi emphasizes more human performances — and less reliance on cold electronics — the songs themselves seem tepid and uninivting. Mark Twain once said the coldest winter he spent was a summer in San Francisco.

Kicell may not have had the City by the Bay in mind when recording Tabi, but for its next album, the should try to keep its heart where it’s been.

When TV chef Alton Brown adds salt to his dessert recipies, he always explains that salt is a flavor enhancer.

“You won’t know it’s there, until it’s not,” he says.

The “salt” was definitely missing from bloodthirsty butchers’ previous album, birdy. On the surface, birdy has all the hallmarks that makes the butchers such a reknowned punk band.

It was hard to find fault with the album, but it wasn’t easy to praise it either. (And my meandering review of birdy certainly demonstrates it.)

Whatever was missing from birdy is found again on banging the drum. In fact, repeat listens of banging the drum become more satisfying.

Having played with the butchers as a full-time member for two years now, ex-Number Girl guitarist Tabuchi Hisako makes a significant mark on the music. She serves as Lee Renaldo to Yoshimura Hideki’s Thurston Moore.

In fact, “Sanzan” and “B2” indulge in a bit of Goo-era Sonic Youth interplay. When “B2” concludes with a pair of guitar riffs entirely new to the song, I half-expected it to go on for another 10 minutes, awash in an ocean of distortion.

“Sanzan”, on the other hand, is one of the catchiest songs the butchers have written. The screaming chorus almost harkens to Number Girl, while the harmonizing conclusion offers a nice contrast.

“Yamaha-1” features Tabuchi on the chorus, and the sweetness of her vocals adds a pleasantly shocking shade to a buoyant song.

When the butchers pull back, its songs sound more like the extended, introspective workouts predominant on 2001’s yamane. “Plus/Minus” and the title track could have fit well on that previous album.

Instrumentals also take a big chunk of the program. “Maruzen House” and “This Is Music” are essentially karaoke tracks, hinting at melody and lyrics where there are really none. And the opening track, “Jushoo”, finds the band literally banging the drum — one full kit and a set of taiko drums.

Early reports described banging the drum as experimental, which it is — the butchers sound like they’re stretching themselves creatively and enjoying the results. Oddly enough, the album is also one of the most melodic the band has produced.

Maybe the experimentation brought back that intangible missing thing. More likely, the butchers stumbled onto their salt by simply playing hard and fast. Whatever the case, it’s nice to have it back.