The last time around, farida’s cafe decided to be direct about what it specializes in — introspective rock songs that aren’t afraid to get loud.
The band’s first album, Hear Nothing, started off with two tracks that epitomized that aesthetic, and while the Japanese quartet does a fine job with its specialty, quiet starts don’t make as much of a big impression as loud ones.
Besides, farida’s cafe sounds really good when it’s rocking out.
On its second album, mile a minute, farida’s cafe have done a flip — they start out with a big splash, then draw in as the album progresses.
It works to the band’s advantage, but it’s not the only thing which makes mile a minute a stronger album.
This new set of songs possess subtle touches which nudge them over the fine line from good to excellent — an odd meter on “Iine”, psychedelic horns on “Hanare Banare”, an accordion on “Loop”.
Rei Sekine once again delivers a fine performance in both English and Japanese, her voice every bit as powerful on the faster tracks as they are on the quieter ones.
But guitarist Andre Sakai is no slouch either. His solos on “Sanso” and “mile a minute” venture into some really dissonant territory, giving farida’s cafe songs some real bite.
Stronger songs, more flourishes, tight performances — mile a minute shows this young band has a lot of great potential.
Only one thing holds them back — a strong mix. Like its predecessor, mile a minute feels like it demands a punchier sound. The organs on the title track barely register, and the keyboard work on “Amber” gets buried.
Hopefully, farida’s cafe will reach a point where it can afford the bigger sound it deserves. For now, the group is doing a lot with what it has.
In a perfect world, Super Junky Monkey would still be recording and touring, and singer Takahashi Mutsumi would still be regaling audiences with her aggressive growl.
This is not a perfect world. Mutsumi died in 1999, and Super Junky Monkey split up.
In its brief five-year existence, Super Junky Monkey released two studio albums, a live album, two EPs and a number of videos, most of which is now out of print.
Thankfully, 3rd Stones, Ltd., Super Junky Monkey’s management, spun off its operations into a label, Condor Records, and released an EP of rarities, E*Kiss*O, and a best-of collection, Songs Are Our Universe.
Billboard Asia Bureau Chief Steve McClure summed it up best in the liner notes for Songs Are Our Universe — Super Junky Monkey is a band that demands attention.
The quartet’s songs were packed tight with a plethora of influences — rock, punk, funk, hip-hop. Although the band’s albums tended to sound homogenous, the songs themselves veered all over the place, threatening to fall apart at any moment but never doing so.
Super Junky Monkey could distill its sound into three-minute punches (“Nani”, “Zakuro no Hone”, “If”), then turn around and occupy an eight-minute epic space (“Popobar”, “Seven”). It could lay angry chants over funky rhythms (“Blah,Blah,Blah”), then deliver a singable melody over heavy, crunching thrash riffage (“R.P.G.”)
Through all the musical twists and turns, Super Junky Monkey remained a tight unit. Matsudaaaaah!’s octopus-like drumming locked in with Kawai Shinobu’s muscular bass, while Keiko’s frantic guitar picking filled in all the remaining spaces. Mutsumi’s masculine vocals belied her gender while weaving the whole package together.
Super Junky Monkey created music that would get even the quietest person in the audience flailing about in a mosh pit.
But Songs Are Our Universe doesn’t just stop at exhaustively documenting Super Junky Monkey’s aural legacy.
The two-disc collection also includes two videos of the group’s live performances, an overview of its touring activities (what I would’ve given to be at the show with eX-Girl!) and a compelte discography.
A lot of care went into this package, and it shows.
In a perfect world, Songs Are Our Universe would be spinning in the CD player of anyone who remotely likes hard and fast music. It would reach into the furthest reaches of society and shake listeners up like a martini.
This isn’t a perfect world. Amazon.com took three goddamn months to send my disc, even after my sister ordered it from my wish list a month before my birthday.
Help make this world a better place. Do what you can to own this collection.
Chances are you may not like Hajime Chitose’s singing if you don’t fit one of these criteria:
You dig Bulgarian women’s choirs.
You listen to traditional Japanese music.
You are an ethnomusicologist.
(All the power to you if you don’t fit any of these points but still like Hajime anyway.)
Trained in performing a form of traditional Japanese music called shimauta (“island songs”), Hajime embellishes her singing with short trills and employs a stratospheric falsetto that’s both heavenly and piercing. When she overdubs her voice, she can sound just like a Bulgarian women’s choir.
But rather than forge a career solely on traditional music — or even enka — Hajime is following a pop music course.
So what does a major label like Epic Records do with a traditionally-trained singer whose voice is overqualified for idol pop? Answer: compromise.
Hainumikaze, Hajime’s first full-length album, draws from a melting pot of different popular styles — the orchestral sweep of enka, folk-pop from the West, reggae and dub.
On paper, such a melding of disparate styles would usually spell disaster, but Hajime’s songwriting collaborators — Mamiya Takumi, Ueda Gen, Yamazaki Masayoshi — manage to balance everything nicely.
The laid back feel of “Wadatsumi no Ki” isn’t too far removed from the introspective minimalism of “37.6”. The soaring chorus of “Natsu no Utage” posseses the same earnestness of “Rinto Suru”. Even the chiming acoustic guitars of “Shinshi Raika” have the same Celtic feel as the lilting tempo of “Kimi wo Omou”.
Hajime’s voice, of course, ties it all together. Even though the songs on Hainumikaze are mostly mid-tempo, poignant ballads, they serve a perfect setting for Hajime’s incredible vocal range. Had she adopted a Western singing style, these songs would lose their bite, instantly becoming pastiche.
After a while, Hajime’s technique gives way to a humanity inherent in her performance. Like her Bulgarian cousins a continent away, Hajime could be singing about baking bread in the morning and make it sound like the most important act in the world.
But don’t think Hajime Chitose is easy to warm up to. It takes some work to get through her highly stylized technique and to reach that human center. The pay off is great when you get there.
If you really wanted to, you could get wrapped up in the stories David Bazan, the sole member of Pedro the Lion, paints on Control.
Go ahead — furrow your brow over how the devoutly Christian Bazan can write a song about infidelity, incorporate a pious chorus and title it “Rapture”.
She’s arching her back/She screams for more/Oh my sweet rapture/I hear Jesus calling me home
Wonder at how Bazan flings around the language of employment downsizing on the suggestively-titled “Penetration” and somehow refer to the music business.
If you aren’t moving units then you’re not worth the expense/If you really want to make it, you have to remember this/If this isn’t penetration, it isn’t worth a kiss
Or marvel at how Bazan can deliver sarcastic commentary about capitalistic pursuits with deadpan wit.
Thanks in part to Mother Nature/It will never rain again/It should do wonders for the GNP
Bazan certainly provides enough imagery to spell out the themes of his songs, and his prose-like verses read well outside the context of music.
But knowing the lyrics isn’t necessary to appreciate the album.
At its most basic level, Control is an excellent rock album, full of guitars and drums and hooks.
The dischordant chords which open “Rapture” are wound tightly with the song’s pounding drums. “Penetration” drowns in a medium-tempo, driving pulse. “Magazine” sports some really nice, full drumming, while “Second Best” wallows in high volume drones.
It’s all too easy to get lost in Bazan’s wonderfully textural arrangements. He knows when to let the guitars up, when to bring them back or when to keep them spare or thick all together.
As such, you could play Control time and again and never glance at the lyric sheet.
But then, you might also miss out on some really choice couplets. The lyrics for “Rejoice” in its entirety, for instance:
Wouldn’t it be so wonderful if everything were meaningless, but everything is so meaningful, and most everything turns to shit. Rejoice.
Yeah. What he said.
Control is full of biting but literate lyrics. It’s also an album full of well-written, nicely-arranged songs. Individually, they make an entertaining album good, and together, they make a smart album great.
In recent interviews, Damien Jurado admits his aim in making I Break Chairs was to get radio to play his songs. If it didn’t cost so much to buy his way onto a Clear Channel playlist, Jurado could have very well pulled it off.
Seattle-based Jurado is more known for writing slow, melancholy songs which get critics scurrying to their thesauruses to come up with all the same adjectives — minimal, spare, introspective, gentle.
I Break Chairs is none of those. In fact, the title of the album is pretty descriptive of its contents — the way the guitars crunch on this album could crush a few recliners.
“Paperwings” opens the album with a country-rock swagger reminiscent of Uncle Tupelo’s more rowdier moments. “Dancing” follows with a dischordant intro more at home on a Weezer album.
That’s not to say Jurado has been downloading Rivers Cuomo’s demos and studying them. Rather, he’s tapped into the same creative well-spring that informed the poppier moments of Caitlin Cary’s solo work.
“Inevitable” notches down the volume level with a simple pulse vaguely reminiscent of a blues grind, while “Air Show Disaster” features harmony vocal akin to the great man-woman pairings of country music — George and Tammy, Gram and Emmylou, Ryan and Caitlin.
But after “Never Ending Tide” transitions back to the louder regions of the volume knob, there’s no turning back — it’s straight-ahead rock all the way to the end.
Drummer Andy Myers does an exceptional job navigating through the various textures on the album. He imbues “Dancing” with it’s hard-edge crunch but steadily underscores the sparse arrangements of “Air Show Disaster”.
Fans enamoured by Jurado’s more introspective work may find this 180-degree creative turn off-putting. Many other reviewers have already voiced such opinions. First-time listeners (such as myself) will instead find a rocking album packed one end to the other with really great writing.
Regardless of their setting — loud or soft — Jurado’s songs are immediately likeable. He’s a great melodicist, and there’s no questioning the simplicity of his riffing. Even without the droning electric guitars and chiming glockenspiels, “Like Titanic” is, in the end, a good song.
Jurado set out to widen his audience with I Break Chairs, and even if radio neglects to rally for his music, the album is still a great starting-point for newcomers.
The last time around, Yuji Oniki made an album that had great songs and subtle arrangements — perhaps too subtle.
Of course, it didn’t help that Number Girl’s School Girl Distortional Addict dominated my playback machines at the time I ran across Oniki. Although Orange prompted a favorable initial reaction, it didn’t leave much of a lasting impression.
In late 2001, Oniki returned with Tvi, and while the California-based, Japanese-speaking songwriter still refuses to wield a heavy hand in his arrangements, this second album is noticeably stronger.
Oniki’s songs are still gorgeously written, drawing heavily from classic pop of the 60s and 70s. But this time, he’s added small but significant flourishes which make all the difference — horns on “Rails in Vain”, a nice interplay of flute, piano and guitar on “40 Seconds”, barely noticable slides on “Transport”.
Oniki has also gotten incredibly meticulous with his songs’ arrangements. Listen closely to any one of the tracks on Tvi, and something new pops out — a counterpart guitar line, a keyboard part playing off a horn line, backing vocals that mix into the texture of the song.
It’s the kind of lushness R.E.M. strove for in Reveal, but Oniki uses fewer musicians to achieve the same effect.
Oniki has brought himself a bit more forward in the mix, which is both a good and bad thing. Oniki’s fragile warble may put off listeners at first, but after a period of adjustment — two listens, tops — his voice sounds appropriate for his music. (That’s not to say other artists wouldn’t do just as great covering his songs.)
As a result, Tvi exudes a real confidence. Oniki no longer has to hide behind reverb and minimal arrangements as he did on Orange.
More importantly, Tvi succeeds where Orange probably wasn’t given a chance — to imbed itself into a listener’s subconscience. Personally, I’ve woken up quite a few mornings these past few weeks with a song from Tvi ringing my head. No prompting, no provocation.
All that talk about Puffy AmiYumi being “anti-idols” is nothing more than splitting hairs.
Sure, Ami and Yumi are a good decade older than most Japanese pop idols, and yeah, they don’t chirp over swirling techno beats and walls of synthesizers.
But in the end, they’re still idols, complete with their own line of merchandise spoofing corporate logos that replace brand names with the word “Puffy”. Take that for what it is.
Because scratching beneath the surface of An Illustrated History, a Puffy AmiYumi retrospective released in the U.S., reveals more surface.
Songwriter/producer Okuda Tamio, the man behind the duo’s music, jumps from one dated genre to another in pursuit of the perfect pastiche — disco on “Nagisa ni Matsuwaru”, 60s pop on “Kore ga Watashi no Ikirumichi”, 70s arena rock on “Jet Keisatsu”, blues rock on “Stray Cat Fever”, Phil Spector girl group on “Tomodachi”.
The assumption is a band versatile enough to traverse different styles has got to be good, right? Perhaps, but the musical jet-setting Okuda takes Ami and Yumi on is akin to flying within the state of Texas — it covers a lot of ground but remains in one place.
To Ami’s and Yumi’s credit, they don’t take their anti-idol status or rock stardom as seriously as this review does. And it shows in the duo’s breezy performances.
Ami and Yumi just wanna have fun, dammit. And the Asia-loving boys in the U.S. for which this music was intended aren’t going to find anything objectionable about that.
A few tracks stand out as positively beefy — “Love So Pure”, which is an English version of “Sumire”, “Asia no Junshin”, “Mother”. The rest of An Illustrated History is as light as cracker.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Pop music aims squarely for the lowest common denominator, which Puffy AmiYumi hits on target.
And while Ami and Yumi may have more soul in their pinky fingernails than any of the boy bands and teen idols of the late 90s here in the U.S., they’re not the rockers other critics and fans would like to paint them as.
Puffy AmiYumi doesn’t take itself too seriously, and as such, they make music that doesn’t beg that much effort either.
Garnet Crow must really think they’re from Ireland.
Even though the quartet’s brand of by-the-numbers pop holds as many surprises as an Onitsuka Chihiro piano ballad, there’s an almost Celtic hue to the band’s songs.
The chiming guitars on “Last Love Song” could have been lifted from latter-day Clannad, and the lilting “pray” almost sounds like a folk song.
If anything, Garnet Crow bears a very close resemblance to the Corrs in the way both bands mix poignant melodies with club beats and heavily arranged synthesizers.
Singer Nakamura Yuri’s resonant voice doesn’t do much to dispell that notion. If she sang in Irish Gaelic instead of Japanese, she’d be dueting with Maire Brennan.
It’s this subtle mournfulness in Garnet Crow’s songs that prevents the band from getting lost in Japan’s superhyper-pop music assembly line. Sure, it might be hard to tell “Timeless Sleep” apart from “Holy ground”, but there’s no mistaking Garnet Crow for, say, Hamasaki Ayumi.
But in the end, Garnet Crow is a Japanese pop band, and J-pop is more about singles than albums.
Like the last time, Sparkle ~Sujigaki Doori no Sky Blue~ doesn’t do much more than assemble the bands last few singles with a few other tracks to fill out the disc.
What does it say about a band when three of its four most recent singles are stashed at the beginning of the album? In fact, Sparkle consists only of 10 new songs — the last two tracks are remixes, one of a song from the last album.
The Japanese music industry tends to favor one-year turn-around times for artists, and those demands sometimes produce spotty results.
Sparkle ~Sujigaki Doori no Sky Blue~ is indeed a nice compilation of well-crafted pop music from a band incredibly adept at writing hooks and crafting slick studio product.
But that’s all it is, and something says Garnet Crow is probably capable of a lot more.
It’s official — Utada Hikaru is now trapped by her own success.
On her last album, Distance, the young Japanese singer recorded an album that wouldn’t disappoint her legions of fans, while showing she had the potential to transcend her success.
Fifteen months later — normal for Japan’s music scene, but somewhat a rush in the U.S. — Utada returns with Deep River. The modus operandi which drove Distance also sets the tone for this album as well.
Deep River contains mostly slick, lush-ly produced R&B pop, mature in its sound, rich in execution. It’s the style that’s kept Utada on the top of the Oricon charts for the past three years.
At the same time, she provides just enough stylistic flourishes to keep hyper-critical listeners at bay — a buzzing guitar here, an international rhythm there.
Before, those kinds of flourishes could be construed as possible directions Utada could take her obvious talent. Now, on an album that doesn’t show much progression from what came before, those flourishes aren’t anything but.
In other words, Utada is repeating herself.
That’s not to say Deep River is an awful listening experience. Quite the contrary. Utada on a bad day is still light years better than Britney Spears smack dab in the middle of her 15 minutes.
On “Hikari”, Utada’s earnest croon feels heart-felt without being too forced. “Final Distance” is a beautiful re-working of the title track from her last album.
“travelling” might be a bit too akin to early-90s Madonna — you can practically sing the chorus of “Erotica” over the opening hook, and the word “travelling” was used as a refrain in the Björk-written “Bedtime Story” — but it’s a fun song appropriate for a packed dance floor.
But the level of calculation that felt organic on previous albums seems a bit more apparent on Deep River.
The Latin Explosion of 1999 didn’t escape Hikki, as “Letters” hints at Carribean rhythms. The Timbaland influences aren’t hard to mistake on “Tokyo Nights”.
“Uso Mitai na I Love You” even indulges in a bit of nu metal riffage. Rather than go fully rock, as she did on “Drama”, Utada combines dance beats with buzzing power chords. It’s the most imaginative track on the disc, albeit a combination of the two most prominent music genres of the past five years. How’s that for “target marketing”?
Deep River is a well performed, well written album. Then again, so was Distance. Both albums seem to hint Utada could really bring pop music some significant artistry.
But by once again appealing to her fanatical devotees, Hikki limits herself to a template that doesn’t say nearly as much as it could.
A lot of critics had a hard time swallowing Wilco’s forray into musique concrete. Many of them said living with sound files leaked on the Internet for a year allowed them to warm up to the album’s beauty.
Evidently, these writers never cozied up to John Zorn’s Elegy.
Yankee Foxtrot Hotel is probably more comfortable terrain for an indie rock crowd than Wilco’s long-time alt-country fans. (Although making a distinction between the two audiences is pretty much splitting hairs.)
The sonic flourishes Wilco employs on “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”, “Ashes of an American Flag” and “Poor Places” would sound more at home on a Flaming Lips album than on anything remotely associated with the phrase “No Depression”.
All that to say Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is probably more geared to folks unfamiliar with Wilco at all. (Myself — I owned a copied of Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression untill I had to sell it to shore up my shaky finances.)
Sure, there are enough straight-forward pop tracks to ground the album from being too experimental — “Kamera”, “Heavy Metal Drummer”, “Jesus, etc.”, “Pot Kettle Black”.
But it’s Jeff Tweedy’s head-long dive into prepared pianos, sound effects and thickly-layered samples which gives the album its distinct identity.
“Radio Cure” starts off as a quiet tune, but eventually, strange sounds encroach on the song’s arrangements. “War on War” and “I’m the Man Who Loves You” both indulge a bit in some latter-day Edge guitar effects, ca. Achtung Baby.
Some very atmospheric sounds swirl in and out of “Ashes of an American Flag” till they build up to a wall of white noise that crackles and breaks into a segue for the following track.
“Reservation” sums up the album’s aesthetic by keeping the rhythm section to a minimum and the sound effects on full tilt.
It’s easy to see how listeners expecting folk guitars and alt-country instrumentation can be put off by Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s experimental abandon. But that’s probably the whole point.
This album isn’t business as usual, and by creating a work as challenging as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco has opened itself up to an audience that can appreciate Americana music filtered through a post-modern lens.
In reality, this album isn’t too far removed from Emmylou Harris’ landmark album, Wrecking Ball, or to the dissonant-friendly machinations of Robin Holcomb. Haunting, beautiful and disturbing — what could be more appealing?