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There isn’t much to say about this EP.

For fans, the rarities included on Fight Test range from strangely fascinating (a cover of Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”) to somewhat uninteresting (a techno-ish new song “The Strange Design”).

But given the range of material on the seven-track disc, it can’t escape having a stop-gap, throw-away feel.

The Lips’ cover of “Knives Out” proves Radiohead is far more interesting when other people are doing its music, but musically speaking, it shares nothing in common with the Scott Hardkiss Floating in Space Mix of “Do You Realize??”

If anything, Fight Test EP seems like a measure aimed at preventing exorbiant eBay auctions and rampant file trading — most of the tracks featured on the disc were previously released on promotional discs prior to the release of 2002’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

It’s a boon for fans, and if you set the White Stripes’ Elephant right before Fight Test EP on your CD changer (or MP3 player, as it were), you’ll find a nice congruency between the Stripes “We Just Love One Another” and the Lips’ whimsical “Thank You Jack White (For That Fiberoptic Jesus That You Gave Me)”.

It’s not, however, a disc you’d use to sell someone on the Flaming Lips. Get it if Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots made your year.

What lemmings us music reviewers are.

The White Stripes pull a music industry Horatio Alger in 2002 — while maintaining their “integrity”, mind you — and it seems only right to shower unanimous praise on the duo, just to save ourselves from paying any mind to, say, Evanesence.

Of course, I’m not an editor over at Rolling Stone, so I can’t reward the coveted five-star prize to Shiina Ringo’s Karuki Zaamen Kuri no Hana.

Still, does Jack’s and Meg’s fourth long player even deserve as much jubilant ink that’s been spilled since the album’s release? The key phrase of note is “as much”.

Elephant does deserve some praise, but don’t think it’s an instant classic yet.

(No — that would be Karuki Zaamen Kuri no Hana.)

One thing I can agree with every other music writer out there — the album is monstrous.

Forget the surprising bass line on “Seven Nation Army”. Elephant begins proper with the raging “Black Math”, a track Thee Michelle Gun Elephant has been failing to write for a good decade now.

Once you get past the fact “There’s No Home For You” uses the exact same chords as “Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground”, the overdubbed chorus of Jacks that burst in from time to time sounds really nice.

Elephant finally sells itself with a deconstructive cover of Burt Bacharach’s “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself”. Jack really gets in and around those lyrics on this one.

Then, Meg seals the deal with “Cold, Cold Night”. Kind of like how D’Arcy was thrown a bone when Smashing Pumpkins recorded Gish.

After that, the album goes hit and miss.

Hits: “I Want to Be the Boy” for being emotive, “The Hardest Button to Button” for bringing back the bass, “It’s True That We Love One Another” for bringing the album back to earth.

Misses: “Hypnotise” for being “Fell in Love with a Girl”, “Ball and Biscuit” for being seven minutes, “Little Acorns” for that introductory homily.

(Aside: I found it tough to listen to “Little Acorns” without thinking of Judy Dunaway and the Evan Gallagher Little Band’s “Squirrels”, a song positing whether squirrels fucking in a tree feel ecstacy like humans.)

Despite all the sonic acoutrements, Elephant is pretty much the same blues-rock the White Stripes were hammering out before they became neo-garage rock poster children. At the same time, there’s a sense of abandon on this album that indicates Jack and Meg are riding their 15 minutes as hard and fast as they can while it lasts.

That’s what makes Elephant good. It doesn’t make it timeless.

The Kiss Offs were great for a fling.

The band’s bratty playfulness had all the “come hither” of a quick and dirty flirt. A regular relationship was out of the question, but an occassional trick was all right.

Then the Kiss Offs went its separate ways, leading to a chance encounter with Black Lipstick. Now here’s something with a cool swagger bordering on boredom. Long-term commitment may still be out of the picture, but a few dates certainly weren’t.

It’s tough not to write about Black Lipstick without mentioning the Kiss Offs. Both bands shared the same singers/guitarists — Philip Niemeyer and Travis Higdon. Even the occassional interjection by drummer Beth Nottingham has shades of Tracey Jones’ caustic foil.

But the bands couldn’t be any more different. The Kiss Offs would drag you out on the dance floor and rub you in really sensitive places. Black Lipstick pretty much stands by the bar, eyeing you with same kind of suggestiveness.

Play the comparrison game with other music scribes, and the same predictable names would pop up: Television, Velvet Underground, Talking Heads.

Black Lipstick would probably be mugging for NME right now if they were based in New York City. (They’re from Austin, Texas.)

But the band’s debut full length, Converted Thieves, possesses something the old and new crop of rock new wavers don’t — warmth.

Despite Black Lipstick’s attempt to sound cooler than thou, there’s a definite heart to the music.

Audiophile-wise, the band don’t resort to sounding like they recorded to 8-tracks — there’s a clean, live feel without any of the edges dulled.

Music-wise, the songs are tuneful and sometimes long-windededly deadpan. But there’s something more going on than just I, IV and V — the chords Niemeyer and Higdon won’t be easily found in a “Play Guitar in 10 Days” book.

“Voodoo Economics” starts off sounding like Sonic Youth getting rid of the effects pedals, taking Valium and trying to write songs. “Serpentz” concludes with a dissonant chord threatening to unravel the song’s momentum.

Higdon and Niemeyer complement each other vocally. When Higdon takes a vocal turn on “Corporate Happy Hour”, his straight-forward melody provides a respite from Niemeyer’s deadpan on preceding tracks. On “Serpentz”, Higdon nails the chorus after Niemeyer provides the set-up.

Converted Thieves falters toward the end with “Dirges are Downers”, a song way too good at living up to its title, and Niemeyer is hardly audible on the 9-minute “Texas Women”. Till then, the album travels at a steady pace, handing out one even-headed ditty after another.

More than anything, Black Lipstick sounds mature. There’s an obvious stab at craftwork happening on Converted Thieves that listeners wouldn’t expect on The Kiss Offs Goodbye Private Life.

It makes for the start of a beautiful relationship.

“My head is filled with sawdust.”

Singer/bassist Eric Sanko sings this refrain on the opener of his band Skeleton Key’s second album, Obtainium. It’s the perfect description for my own inability to write a decent lead for this review.

From a gut level, it’s way easy to say, “Obtainium fuckin’ rocks, dude! Get it now!” Describing Skeleton Key’s sound to qualify that utterance is a bit more difficult.

Of course, the phrases “dischordant” and “melodic” have been applied to numerous reviews on Musicwhore.org before — Luminous Orange, mono, Number Girl, downy.

Put Skeleton Key on that same list, and it’s like tacking on Red Hot Chili Peppers to a police line-up that includes My Bloody Valentine, Mogwai, the Pixies and Radiohead. Never mind Luminous Orange, et al are from Japan and Skeleton Key is from the States.

Obtanium is an album that doesn’t wear after numerous listens. If anything, the songs on the album would probably make for some decent, standard alt-rock fare if only they weren’t so angular.

A lot has been written about percussionist Rick Lee’s junkyard kit, which, seen live, adds a definite presence to the band’s music. On recording though, Lee could have been replaced by samples for how far down the mix he’s in.

(“Barker of the Dupes” is the glaring exception. There, Lee pretty much takes center stage.)

Doesn’t matter — guitarist Chris Maxwell does more than enough to keep the band’s songs off-center. Those aren’t I’s and IV’s driving the harmonic rhythm of “One Way, My Way” or “Panic Bullets”.

Sanko, however, anchors the band’s music to straight-forward melodies. For all of Lee’s frenzied timbres and Maxwell’s odd chords, it’s still easy to sing along with Sanko.

Obtanium has been criticized for being too conventional, for not expanding or matching the adventuresome nature of the band’s sole major label album, Fantastic Spikes. That’s all lost on me — I didn’t even know about the band till I caught them before labelmate eX-Girl at Emo’s pre-SXSW party back in March 2003.

But there is truth in the criticism. Obtanium does feel like it’s got a hand stretched out to the mainstream. And that’s all right — the mainstream could use a little more obtuse music.

Obtanium is a brainy album that demands attention without alienating the listener. It’s easy to sing along, so long as you don’t try to hum the guitar parts.

Tenacious D was all right if you understood the culture of metal. Grand is good, and Tenacious D made a joke of its own grandess.

Non-metal fans would probably laugh along for a while, but there wouldn’t be enough to resonante for very long.

Which probably means metal fans might have the same reaction to Liam Lynch’s “tributes” to indie rock.

To wit, Lynch’s “Fake Björk Song” rocked my world way more than 10D’s “Tribute (The Best Song in the World)”. You may not feel the same.

Lynch doesn’t take a potshot at the Icelandic princess — if anything, he’s absolutely sincere in replicating the inherent aspects of her music, from the twittering beats, right down to the drawn out growl.

“I live in a little city,” Lynch sings, exaggerting “leeeve”, “leeetle” and “citaaay”. When he delivers the line, “You give up too easily,” he hits on phrasing used in every Björk song imaginable.

Lynch’s full length album, Fake Songs, has the same, programless feel of the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs. Here’s an album immune to the jarring effects of a CD player’s random button.

(If anything, a version of the album floating around the Internet file sharing networks flows better than what eventually showed up in stores.)

Over the course of 20 songs averaging 90 seconds in length, Lynch skewers the last three decades of rock history with little hint of mockery.

He’s not satirizing indie rock’s preciousness, but he certainly brings the genre’s more lofty ambitions back down to earth.

The best moments of the album are the specific fake songs themselves. On “Fake Pixies Song”, Lynch bravely apes Frank Black’s exaggerated diction, while parodying the Pixies’ often ghostly backing vocals.

His impersonation of David Gahan on “Fake Depeche Mode Song” needs some work, but he’s got the Martin L. Gore part of it pretty good. “Fake Bowie Song”, meanwhile, has some convincing lyrics: “I’ve got 3-D stereo laser love/You’re on my TV”.

Too bad “Fake Jane’s Addiction Song” got cut in favor of “Fake Talking Heads Song”, which is just a re-write of “Wild, Wild Life”.

Some of the non-fake songs work just as well.

“Electrician’s Day” imagines what the Lord thinks about white guys pretending to be black. (“Honkey, I said get your white ass off the stage!”)

Then, of course, there’s the album’s “hit single”, “United States of Whatever”, a thirtysomething anthem if there ever was one.

Tenacious D’s Jack Black shows up on “Rock ‘n’ Roll Whore”, which is fun but loses an earlier version of the song’s viscera, when Lynch transforms himself into a Frankenstein mix of Robert Plant and W. Axl Rose.

And why did Lynch edit out the cussin’ on “Rapbot 2000”, huh?

Although it might seem like effort to sit through the less interesting tracks, they’re short enough not to belabor the album. If “I’m All Bloody Inside” lasted longer than 1’16”, the joke would have been lost.

Fake Songs works because of its sincerity. Lynch may be poking fun at music, but it’s music he cares for as well.

Call it bias on my part, but the electronica tracks on Sony Music’s Japan for Sale series have never really interested me.

The inclusion of L’Arc~en~Ciel, Chara and ACO sold me on Japan for Sale, Vol. 2, but on the whole, electronica occupies the most real estate in the series’ programming.

On Japan for Sale, Vol. 3, though, it’s the electronica tracks that are more interesting than the rock tracks.

DJ Krush’s success with hip-hop collaborations have definitely set the tone for the third installment of the series — the first half of Japan for Sale, Vol. 3 pretty much delivers one great electronica collaboration after another.

Goku starts things off strongly with “Time”. With the B.M.Q’s sultry anonymous female singer contrasting against Goku’s raps, “Time” is a brighter answer to Krush’s “Tragicomic” single with Twigy and ACO.

Krush once again makes an appearance in the series with the Sly & Robbie collaboration, “The Lost Voices”. “Aletheuo” from Krush’s latest album, Shinsou, would have been a nice addition to Japan for Sale, but “The Lost Voices” contributes to the flow much better.

Dub finds its ambassador on Matally’s “Four Seasons vs Yo-Yo C”, an imaginative track which pits the reggae genre’s ethereal sound against electronica’s frenzied beats.

After Loop Junktion’s hip-hop/electronica hybrid “Ja:Pon”, the album ventures off to other genres.

Polysics have consistently provided the weakest points in the series, but the electro-clash-y “Black Out Fall Out” actually doesn’t suck. Guitar Vader, meanwhile, provides the collection’s most whimsical rocker, “Super Brothers”.

After that, Japan for Sale, Vol. 3 loses steam.

Hoshimura Mai represents Japan’s more mainstream tastes, but “Stay With You”, while accomplished, is somewhat bland.

Kitaki Mayu still thinks she can match Nomiya Maki being a fashion chameleon, but the most you can say about “Latata” is it’s a good effort.

The Brilliant Green’s “I’m a player of T.V. games” rocks the collection out one last time before the album finally peters out. (Why couldn’t BuriGuri rock this hard on The Winter Album?)

Takkyu Isshino and Sunahara Yoshinori are all right, but Kyoto Jazz Massive is best described by my coworker’s description of the Thievery Corporation — loops for housewives.

I’m just thankful there’s no Puffy AmiYumi on this volume.

Like its predecessors, Japan for Sale, Vol. 3 provides a nice overview of Japan’s incredibly diverse music scene. And with so much material competing for attention, it’s inevitable some things come across better than others.

On this volume, hip-hop is the clear winner.

I work at a record store where garage rock is king. My co-workers worship at its altar and play it day in and day out. I’ve really come to hate garage rock.

My record store is located in a city with a strong country and roots scene. Even though we sell lots of garage rock, our reputation is built on selling country and roots music. I hear it day in and day out. I don’t mind it so much.

What does any of this have to do with Yuki’s second solo album, Commune? Simply put — when you listen to this album, you’re listening to the soundtrack of my day at work.

Like her solo debut Prismic, Commune wanders all over the musical map, albeit not as widely traveled.

Whereas Prismic felt like a mixed tape fronted by one singer, Commune focuses on more a specific set of styles.

There’s garage rock Yuki, as exeplified early on the album with “Naki Soo Da” and “Good Times”.

The former captures the essence of Yuki’s collaboration with Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her’s Higurashi Aiha on “The End of Shite”. The latter contains a shocking conclusion that really forces listeners to take notice.

There’s fifth Beatle Yuki, as featured on “Strawberry” and “Funky Fruits”.

“Strawberry” has an ending familiar to anyone who’s listened to “A Day in the Life”, and those sitars on “Funky Fruits” scream George Harrison.

Oddly enough, there’s alt-country Yuki, as demonstrated on the three singles from the album, “Stand Up! Sister”, “Sentimental Journey” and “Hummingbird”.

The slide guitars on “Sentimental Journey” alone are enough to run Onitsuka Chihiro’s Nashville leanings out of town.

In those few tracks, Yuki has manage to chart the course of in-store play at my workplace — rock, country, country, rock.

Every so often, someone in the store will put something different on, much like how Yuki throws in dub (“Koibito Yo”) or a sparse instrumental (“Swells on the Earth”) or some folk or world music (“Sabaku ni Saita Hana”, written by Kicell to sound like a lost Japanese folk song).

After a full day at work, I will have listened to a lot of stuff. Yuki, somehow, has managed to summarize those eight hours into 51 minutes.

Yuki’s raspy voice may not appeal to everyone, but there’s no denying how well it fits into a myriad of contexts. “Koibito Yo” stands out not only for being the only dub track on the album, but also for how nicely Yuki handles it.

Once again, Yuki has managed to thread a wide range of styles into a confederacy of music. Much a like commune, no?

Let’s get one thing clear: Chara has an amazing voice.

Her fragile, child-like whisper is off-putting on first introduction, but eventually, the expressiveness and range of that voice feels comfortable, familiar even.

Too bad her most recent albums have been really boring.

The last time out with Madrigal, Chara delivered a very non-descript performance in which her band nearly drowned her out for most of the album. A mix of incongruent material didn’t help either.

Yoake Mae addresses most of those problems, keeping mostly mellow throughout, and allowing enough room for Chara to take over. But is it enough to make it worth a listener’s while?

On the first half of the album, she really makes her presence known. “Beautiful Day” doesn’t attempt to hide its “Perfect Day” lineage, and Chara sounds great posing as a modern day Lou Reed. “Mieru wa” possesses a subtle charm that lingers long after.

“sweety” demonstrates Chara’s under-utlizied ability to get dramatic without using too much volume, and on “Hatsu Koi”, she lets her roar come out.

Chara manages to hold onto the momentum of Yoake Mae as the tracks progress, but right around the half way mark — specifically, “Hello” — the momentum deflates.

“Hello” is the most drawn-out, meandering song on the album, and after that, Chara sounds too bored to put up the effort. If anything, “Heart no Hi wo Tsukete” led into “Hello”‘s deflation by allowing Chara too much room to whisper.

The next two tracks somehow manage to erase the memory that Yoake Mae even had movement.

The sparse “Beautiful Scarlet” does shine a very soft but intimate spotline on Chara’s voice, and “I wanna freely love you” makes a vailiant effort to recover some of that motion.

But by the end, the same problem which hindered Madrigal makes itself apparant on Yoake Mae — these songs just aren’t memorable enough for Chara’s unique perforamnce to make a dent.

Sort of like a line from Haruki Murakami’s Hear the Wind Sing: ” … the dreams of her seventy-nine years dispersed like a summer shower on a shopping street, leaving not a thing behind.”

Unfortunately, that just about describes the effect of listening to Yoake Mae — you don’t remember you just had.