When the hell did rock music lose its sense of fun?
Sit through a block of nü metal music videos on MTV, and it’s gets pretty damn suffocating hearing how much the world doesn’t understand all these guitar-wiedling, nipple-pierced growlers.
They seriously ought to take the Zoobombs advice: “You need to get mo’ funky”.
And Zoobombs are nothing if not funky.
Put on the band’s newest album in two years, Love Is Funky, and try not to shake your rump during “Funky Movin'”. Impossible, plain impossible.
The last time Zoobombs made a peep in the States — with a pair of albums on the Emperor Jones label — the band’s brand of party funk-rock was appealing, if not a bit burnished.
Then the band signed to major label Toshiba-EMI in Japan, which shut them out of the U.S. since 1999. And that’s a shame.
Love Is Funky shows the band has made a definite leap since its indie days only a scant three years ago. The writing is tighter, the performances more confident, the party vibe so infectous, this disc won’t stop spinning in your player for days.
Even re-recordings of indie staples “Jumbo” and “Mo’ Funky” improve on their originals.
A decent studio budget certainly goes a long way in pumping up Zoobombs’ sound. A distorted, booming bass anchors the communal chants on “Mama, Gimme Ya Hot Hand”. A deeper kick drum on “Jumbo (#2)” gives that song some real guts.
When it’s just the band playing their collective ass off, the results are no less magical. “Love Bomb” and “Use Me” capture an incredibly energetic live feel.
Zoobombs aren’t any less effective when they slow things down. “Modern Creation” and “Like Into the Air (angel, bomb, universe)” are positively gorgeous. (Also check out “Pleasure Drop” from Let It Bomb.)
If Love Is Funky were a movie, reviewers would most likely tag it “the feel-good album of the year”. It’s tough not to listen to Zoobombs, and think life is great.
And it’s not anything lead singers Don or Matta say that rams this point home. “So big, it must be jumbo,” isn’t exactly a life-inspiring line.
No — Zoobombs have such a joy for making music, listeners can feel it in their bones. These four Japanese and two Australian musicians don’t need to rehash metal riffs nor middle class angst.
When Hatakeyama Miyuki covered “Dream a Little Dream of Me” on her debut solo album, she established her credibility as an interpreter.
The idea of an entire cover album by her sounded like a great idea. Releasing that album barely six months after said solo debut wasn’t.
Thanks once again to Japan’s frenzied work pace, what could have been a solid collection of interpretations instead sounds half-baked. That’s not to say Fragile, Hatakayama’s cover album, isn’t all bad.
In fact, Hatakeyama makes an admirable effort to zero in on the heart of her choices, stripping away a lot of the original arrangements down to a bare minimum.
The original version of Colin Verncomb’s “Wonderful Life” started out as a typical over-produced 80s jazz pop song, but Hatakeyama reveals a sturdy, beautiful tune through a Carole King-like piano accompaniment and her wonderful voice.
“Every Breath You Take” is a karaoke staple, but Little Creatures, who back Hatakayama on this track, preserves Sting’s distinctive bass work. When Miyuki sings the bridge of the song — “Since your gone, I’ve been lost without a trace” — it’s as great as a listener might expect.
The inclusion of current it-girl Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why” may appear to be calculated, but arranger Aoyagi Takuji does a better job of highlighting Jones’ country tinge than Jones does herself.
Hatakeyama doesn’t have the greatest English diction, but the burnished quality of her voice charges her performances with real emotion. It’s easy to overlook her pronunciation when she makes these songs her own.
Still, the best moments on Fragile are when Hatakeyama sings in her own language. “Ame no Gai wo” and “Natsu no Omoide” aren’t even typical J-pop fare — they sound much more Japanese than Hatakeyama’s own original songs.
Unfortunately, the missteps on Fragile cancel out its achievements.
Hatakeyama’s overly breathy interpretation of “The Shadow of Your Smile” meanders. The same goes for “I Love You, Porgy”.
The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” is an incredibly easy song to mess up — see Guns N’ Roses’ version on the soundtrack to Interview With a Vampire — and the bossa nova guitar work on Hatakeyama’s version doesn’t plain work.
(The drum ‘n’ bass beat in the middle of the song, though, hints at an interpretation that could have worked.)
The reverb on “The Water Is Wide” could have been cut back a bit, but Hatakeayama’s a capella performance calls to mind Sinéad O’Connor at her best.
It would have also been nice if Hatakeyama included more Japanese-language tracks on Fragile. Her performance of “Every Breath You Take” is still great, but Sting doesn’t really need the extra income — it could have made room for something homemade.
Hatakeyama’s choice of covers is nonetheless a diverse, interesting batch, but the weak spots on the album don’t do that diversity justice. If she spent a few more months refining these interpretations, Fragile would have left a better impression.
When she recorded three albums of mellow jazz pop, UA approached each project with an international perspective, peppering her songs with influences from Latin America, the Caribbean and Hawaiʻi.
In 2001, she unveiled AJICO, a rock supergroup formed with Blankey Jet City’s Asai Kenichi. The band’s studio album Fukamidori fits well within UA’s haunting repertoire, but AJICO rocked the songs out on tour, as evidenced on the live album AJICO Show.
UA is back to her solo work, and her fourth album, Doroboo, is her most challenging yet.
Doroboo revels in contradictory aesthetics. The songs on the album are some of UA’s longest, but most of them are stripped down to the barest instrumentation. UA’s voice is still drawn to clear melodies, but her backing band conjures up some strangely beautiful accompaniment.
On “Buenos Aires”, a string instrument — could be a violin, could not be — drones on long, single notes, calling to mind the sound of crickets on a summer evening.
“Door” ambles along on a shuffle rhythm slowed down to a snail’s pace. With so much space between beats, UA’s band liberally fills them in with rough slides on the guitar neck and abrupt interjections from a string quartet.
The album’s dramatic centerpiece is “Shukan”, a three-part piece which begins with a spoken word section, transforms into a lullaby, then concludes on a swing beat. It’s the most structurally ambitious song on the album but still manages to maintain a sense of minimalism.
Even though UA sounds comfortable stretching her creative boundaries, she also knows when to anchor them.
“Sekai” follows “Shukan”, and it’s the closest thing to a single on the entire album. Strangely enough, it’s not yet slated to be released as such.
“Senkoo”, which was released as a single, gets a total overhaul for the album. Tablas, guitars and zithers replace Rei Harakami’s slick electronica beats.
“Kanata” concludes the album, keeping with the quiet instrumentation throughout the album but offering beautiful melodies as well.
Doroboo manages to balance many goals seemingly at odds with each other. It’s an epic, dramatic album but also quiet and intense. It’s a sparse work but also jam-packed with ideas.
UA’s husky alto threads everything together, and Doroboo never falls apart. Perhaps the most admirable contradiction is how UA makes all this work seem easy.
For anyone who loved the hulking bravado of fra-foa’s debut album Chuu no Fuchi, this next bit of news may come as a disappointment.
fra-foa has softened its edges.
The Japanese quartet’s second album, 13 Leaves, foregoes the megaloud, superslow sound of its predecessor for something more majestic and midtempo.
It’s a 180-degree creative turn for the band — something fans blown away by the devastatingly emotional performance of bandleader Mikami Chisako may find hard to accept.
But just because the overall tone has changed doesn’t mean it’s affected the quality of the songwriting.
13 Leaves is an entirely different album from Chuu no Fuchi, but both don’t wear thin with repeated playing. In fact, once a listener embraces fra-foa’s softer sound, 13 Leaves becomes highly addictive.
“Light of Sorrow” and “Green Day” have the trappings of ballads without ever losing their hard rock muscle. “Lily” harkens to the compound meter of “Mahiru no Himitsu”.
“Edge of Life” could have been an outtake during Smashing Pumpkins’ sessions for Gish, while “Blind Star” features Mikami stretching the upper regions of her beautiful falsetto.
Instead of infusing fra-foa with the grunge-y sheen he gave Cocco, producer Takamune Negishi applies the more approachable sound he used on Shiratori Maika’s Hanazono — lots of acoustic guitars in the background, with reverb effects supplantaing straight-forward distortion.
For this set of songs, it was the right choice.
Mikami’s writing has allowed much more light into her songs, as evidenced by such sweet tracks as “Perfect Life” and “Kienai Yoru ni”. A menacing wall of guitars just wouldn’t have worked here.
fra-foa took the risky dare not to replicate its first album, and it’s succeeded in delivering an album totally different but equally engaging.
Idlewild, the Scottish band that reminded crusty listeners (namely, me) post-punk music wasn’t all about grunge, is really sounding like the Smiths now.
Roddy Woomble’s warble (say that five times fast) inherently possesses shades of Morrisey, but on the band’s fourth album, The Remote Part, so do the melodies.
“Living in a Hiding Place” is a prime example. It’s far too easy to hear Morrisey’s slurred delivery on the song’s chorus. “Tell Me Ten Words” channels its fair share of Green– and Document-era R.E.M. Although “You Held the World in Your Arms” blares with some hard guitar playing, the strings in the background scream “new wave”.
Hints of Idlewild’s charged-up tuneful punk show up now and again — “A Modern Way of Letting Go”, “I Am What I Am Not”, “Out of Routine”.
But for the most part,
The Remote Part has softer edges, friendlier songs (especially for radio), more craft — and less spunk.
That’s not to say the album isn’t enjoyable. “American English” is downright gorgeous, a wonderfully majestic tune. “The Remote Part/Scottish Fiction” makes for a tender conclusion.
But if you’re looking for the immediacy of 100 broken windows, The Remote Part might feel like a let down.
Or it might feel like a success.
Make no mistake — Idlewild does indeed stretch its songwriting chops on this album, and the band does succeed in delivering a taut album with no fillers.
After a period of adjustment, The Remote Part turns out to be just as listenable as 100 broken windows — just different. The loss of an edge hasn’t meant a descent into creative bankruptcy.
And while that spunkier Idlewild may be missed, the more crafted Idlewild is certainly welcome.
When Sugababes released its debut One Touch in the States in 2001, nothing happened.
The teenage trio from England didn’t storm the US charts, didn’t knock Destiny’s Child or TLC off their mantle, didn’t horn in on Britney’s market share.
Back home, though, it was another story. Sugababes scored a minor hit with “Overload”. One of its members ditched the group in the middle of a tour in Japan. They were dropped by their label. They covered a Gary Numan bootleg and scored a hit, followed by another No. 1 single.
In the end, Sugababes became bigger than anyone expected. The trio’s new album, Angels with Dirty Faces, shows it.
Previously dubbed as an unpolished version of their aforementioned American R&B counterparts (see second paragraph), Sugababes have left that all behind. Angels with Dirty Faces is darker, funkier, dirtier.
Keisha, Mutya and new member Heidi still have fresh-scrubbed voices with a rough-edged hewn, but this time around, the music matches their harmonies.
“Freak Like Me” buzzes with fuzzy guitars and a huge rock sound. “Blue” slithers along a fractured drum ‘n’ bass beat. “Stronger” and “Just Don’t Need This” has already drawn comparrisons to Tricky and Massive Attack, and rightly so.
“Supernatural” and “Virgin Sexy” bump and grind, while “Round and Round” recalls “Overload”‘s hook-filled immediacy.
Something about Sting’s “The Shape of My Heart” inspires R&B artists — Sugababes follows Utada Hikaru’s lead by laying beats behind Gordon Sumner’s recognizable guitar hook.
(Utada’s “Never Let Go”, though, does a better job of grafting new music on Sting’s foundation.)
“Mature” has always been an adjective bantered about when describing Sugababes, but on Angels with Dirty Faces, the word is almost an understatement.
Although now in their late teens, Sugababes perform well beyond their age. Their voices sound young, but their music definitely isn’t. Alicia Keys, nothing — here’s a group that gives R&B the kind of grit it seldom ever possesses.
Angels with Dirty Faces is available in the UK. No US release date has been set.
When BBMak first debuted in 2000, the notion of a teen pop band writing its own songs seemed, well, forward-thinking.
Now that nu metal and neo-garage rock has stolen teen pop’s thunder, BBMak looks pretty anachronistic. The English trio was a link to the future; now, it’s a link to the past.
Nothing much has changed since BBMak’s impressive first album, Sooner or Later — Christian Burns, Mark Barry and Ste McNally still have syrup-coated voices; they’re still strumming shiny, happy guitars; and they’re still dealing with the weighty topics of romance and women.
BBMak knows it struck a pretty nice balance the last time out, and the band is wise not to pretend they’re more of a rock band nor less of a pop band.
On the surface, Into Your Head sounds like a carbon copy of Sooner or Later, but after time, some significant differences reveal themselves.
Into Your Head is definitely a summer album. There’s barely a minor chord strummed on the entire disc. Even when they sing about love done gone (“Sympathy”, “After All Is Said and Done”), the trio’s sunny harmonies hint at a brighter day on the proverbial horizon.
“Staring Into Space” is so uplifting, the trite lyrics are pretty much a given: “Give yourself a chance to be free/You got to give yourself away/In the end the love you receive/Is equal to the love you take.”
Problem with summer albums, though, is they don’t fare well in other seasons. Sooner or Later had enough gravity to feel like more than just a clever gimmick. (“Ghost of You and Me” — it’s beautiful, man!)
Into Your Head, however, is nothing but surface, even when it aims for depth. The band’s songwriting hit all the right notes and strums all the right chords, but none of it can quite surpass that pop music hump between “generic” and “credible”.
What few pop fans out there still jonesing for NSync and the Backstreet Boys will definitely enjoy this album, but rockers with blood sugar issues of the ear might not find respite in BBMak from all the “serious” r’n’r out there.
BBMak still represents a marvelous bridge between rock and pop — but just not on this album.
“Chamber music” refers to a specific type of classical music performed by a small ensemble in a concert hall or theater.
But the spirit of chamber music lies in its original purpose — to entertain amateur musicians who wanted to perform at home among friends.
If that’s the case, Hem’s debut album Rabbit Songs is chamber music — in both the modern and historical sense. It’s also the most beautiful album of 2002.
Hem formed in 1999 when keyboardist Dan Messé and producer/guitarist Gary Maurer set out to record an album influenced by traditional American music. After drafting Steve Curtis on guitar and mandolin, the trio placed an ad in the Village Voice for a singer and found Sally Ellyson.
As the band recorded Rabbit Songs, Messé sold his own possessions to fund the sessions, allowing the group to add strings, woodwinds and percussion to its music.
What results is an album as intimate as four people gathered around a campfire with a guitar, but as lush as a recital by an eight-piece classical ensemble.
On “Half Acre”, Messé keeps the band in time with an insistent piano rhythm, while mandolin, clarinet, violin and cello weave in and out behind Ellyson’s warm singing.
“Burying Song,” a folk-like tune arranged for winds, piano and strings, would fit well on a concert hall program.
“All That I’m Good For” and “Idle (The Rabbit Song)” feel like a standard pop tunes complete with a rhythm section, but the small string orchestra give these tracks an extra push.
Even at its most symphonic, Hem never loses its intimacy. The band is smart enough not to let all the instruments speak at one time, creating a sonic tapestry uncommon where orchestral arrangments are involved.
Ellyson’s inviting voice also grounds the band’s music, her quiet, unassuming delivery a magnet onto itself. Think Cowboy Junkies’ Margo Timmis, only awake.
Hem is a study in constrasts — timeless but timely, simple but complex, accomplished but warm — and Rabbit Songs is chamber music in the purest sense of the term.
On first listen, Maná’s most recent studio work isn’t terribly remarkable.
Certainly, the Mexican quartet’s mix of classic and modern rock with Latin rhythms requires much more musicianship than, say, emo or nu metal. But boil down 1997’s Sueños Liquidos and 2002’s Revolución de Amor to hooks, and Maná doesn’t quite score where immediacy is concerned.
But they do rank high when it comes to making a slow burner.
Like its predecessor,
Revolución de Amor was custom-made for arena play. The kind of majestic, big guitar rock Maná traffics gets stiffled on recording but expands greatly in live performance.
“Ay, doctor”, “Eres mi religion” and “Justicia, Tierra y Libertad” could very well allow for some great jamming, and it’s not a stretch to imagine thousands of rabid fans singing along with the lyrics. “Pobre Juan,” on the other hand, posseses the kind of introspection conducive to waving lit candles.
Besides, lead singer Fher has a voice that can’t be restrained by the confines of a studio.
After a while, Revolución de Amor sinks in, and the individual songs reveal their smarts.
“Sabanas Frias” starts off with a melancholy guitar line, but as more rhythms get layered, it gains an exuberant momentum. “Fe” follows a similar route — it starts of quietly with minimal percussion and ends in double time.
“Mariposa Tracionera” is the album’s most Latin track and Maná at its least showy. It’s a nice break from the band’s constant need to demonstrate just how damn skilled they are.
The middle of Revolución de Amor loses its momentum by indulging in a lot of mid-tempo tracks, but Maná makes it up toward the end with a trilogy of up-tempo keepers, ending with the effusive “Nada que perder”.
If Maná wrote more songs along the lines of those last three tracks, then perhaps Revolució de Amor wouldn’t be such a mixed bag.
As it stands, the album is a competent work, skillfully performed and meticulously crafted. But until these songs get their turn on stage, they won’t reveal just how good they might be.
Even if your only point of reference is the band’s previous album All Hands on the Bad One [insert guilty look here], one thing is pretty obvious with Sleater-Kinney’s new disc, One Beat.
It’s damn ferocious.
Sleater-Kinney has already established itself as one of the most passionate rock bands in the world, interlocking their parts to make the largest sound three people can produce.
It’s not enough drummer Janet Weiss pounds the life out of her kit — her beats are woven into the dynamic exchange between Corin Tucker and Carrie Bowenstein.
“Tight” doesn’t begin to describe Sleater-Kinney.
On One Beat, the trio cranks everything up.
In addition to playing the hell out of its instruments, Sleater-Kinney expands its musical vocabulary.
The base of the band’s creative stew is still punk rock, delivered with same kind of primordial savagery Igor Stravinsky keyed into with Le Sacre du Printemps. (I made the same comparrison on the last album. It applies even more so here.)
But on “Light Rail Coyote”, Bowenstein and Tucker channel Jimmy Page with a hulking, mid-tempo, Zeppelin-esque riff. “Step Aside” indulges in a bit of classic R&B, complete with horns.
Although the trio has no need for a bass guitar, they’re not above including some keyboards, as evident on such tracks as “Combat Rock”, “Oh!” and “Prisstina”.
These added parts might seem unnecessary, especially with Bowenstein and Tucker occupying so much sonic real estate on these songs. But somehow, the organs and horns don’t get in the way, nor do they detract from anything.
Everywhere else, Sleater-Kinney lets volume and density determine the album’s aural course. Right from the opening beats of the title track, the group makes its agenda obvious — this album won’t let up one fuckin’ bit.
Even without paying attention to the lyrics of “Far Away”, which deals with 9/11 without any hint of rhetoric, the track is a blistering display of thunderous drumming and menancing guitar work.
Speaking of the newly dubbed Patriot’s Day, Sleater-Kinney won’t let a national tragedy blunt its skepticism: “Show you love your country go out and spend some cash.”
With a bigger sound and more flexible writing, Sleater-Kinney has produced an overwhelming album. One Beat is an exhausting 43 minute-listen, satisfying if you like the shit getting kicked out of your ears.