There seems to be only two possible reactions to Weezer: rabid fandom or ambivalence.
The folks who get it, get it, and everyone else is left to shrug and say, “Meh.”
A friend of mine took me to a Weezer concert in hopes of converting me, and it didn’t really work. Mostly, it was the asshole frat boy who made me spill my beer on myself, then proceeded to tell me to watch it.
But I can’t say that cover of the Pixies’ “I Bleed” was all that convincing either. Why is it called “The Sweater Song” anyway?
Given those lack of Weezer fan creds, why a review of Maladroit?
Lionize someone like Rivers Cuomo long enough and curiosity eventually takes hold.
Plus, he reminds me of two guys I have crushes on.
If memory serves me correctly, Weezer’s two self-titled albums have often been cited as the template for the band’s basic aesthetic — a double-wide guitar sound backing Phil Spector-ish melodies.
At its core, Maladroit sticks with the program. Cuomo still delivers those sing-song melodies, and the guitars are every bit as crunchy as everyone says.
But compared to 2001’s “Green Album” — some of which I sampled through file sharing, thanks for asking — Maladroit is crunchier. There’s something a lot more forward with the way Cuomo and fellow guitarist Brian Bell hammer on their riffs.
When the pair attacks the choruses of “Fall Together”, “Slave” and “American Gigolo”, the songs transform from pop ditties to Big Rawk Moments. This is the stuff air guitars were made for.
Maladroit also sounds a lot rougher. Cuomo could almost give Number Girl’s Mukai Shutoku a run for his money the way he spits out the excoriating lyrics of “Slob”. “Take Control” feels like it could have been an early 90s anthem finessed at the sound board by Butch Vig. (Work with me here — I’m trying not to evoke the name Cobain.)
Even a slow song like “Death and Destruction” sports some picking reminiscent of those guitar god albums from the late 80s.
Put together, all these elements make a convincing case Weezer deserves some of the accolades they’ve so far garnered.
I’d almost go so far to say Maladroit is the Weezer album for people who don’t really think anything of Weezer. Not only do you get the band’s trademark pop-punk sound, it comes with some nice, heavy axework.
P.S. Don’t tell me to check out “the Blue Album”. I got sick of hearing all the radio hits, and I still think that Pixies cover sucks.
Believe the critics when they name-drop Dave Matthews and David Gray when writing up John Mayer.
Mayer’s lightweight, adult-contemporary pop is definitely geared for the girlfriends-of-frat-boys sect. (Check out the lip-syncing, college-age women in the video for “No Such Thing”. Biff and Betsy, all the way, man.)
To his credit, Mayer does dash off some decent tunes, particularly “Why Georgia” and “Neon”.
There’s just one problem — his lyrics.
That falsetto bit in the chorus of “No Such Thing” is an all-right embellish, but damn is it painful to hear Mayer proclaim he’d like to “run through the halls of [his] high school” and “scream at the top of [his] lungs”.
All right — let’s cut Mayer some slack for being all of 23 years of age. In another seven years, that lyric will look mighty absurd.
The atrocities don’t stop there.
“One mile to every inch of your skin like porcelain/One pair of candy lips and your bubblegum tongue,” Mayer sings on “Your Body is a Wonderland”. Amazing to think he can get through that line with a straight face.
As for “83”, well — all the power to him. It’s great he’d love to be six again, but my Japanese teacher has him beat. She’d rather be two years old — that’s a time in a person’s life when nothing registered.
Musically, Mayer has an expert handle on writing the conventional pop song. He can nail a hook well enough to get the most closeted karaoke singing along.
But the only thing more excruciating than listening to Mayer prattle on about going back to high school is finding yourself mimicing those same lines.
Mayer’s so-called “quarter-life crisis” hasn’t provided enough material for him to spin very engaging tales around his melodies. As a result, his already lightweight pop comes across even blander than it ought to.
Maybe by the time Mayer sees 30 coming around the corner, the School of Hard Knocks might have shown him a thing or two.
Before the release of Un día normal, Juanes told Billboard magazine his outlook on life is a lot more positive.
“What I live, I give back in the songs,” he told the magazine. “And my vision of life has changed. And life is beautiful, and one must take advantage of it.”
It certainly shows.
Un día normal, the follow-up to the Colombian artist’s Grammy-awarding debut Fijate bien, sounds much sunnier.
Juanes still combines Carribean and Latin American rhythms with his straight-forward rock ‘n’ roll songwriting, but the dark edge that subtly underscored much of the singer’s debut has definitely been scaled back.
Sure, Juanes makes room for some haunting tunes, such as the string-laced “Dia Lejano” or the introspective “La Historia de Juan”, a song reportedly about a homeless child.
(Disclosure: I don’t speak Spanish, so don’t look for any lyrical explication here.)
But much of Un día normal is bright, even joyous. If nothing else, it’s a lot more radio-friendly.
The pounding rhythm of the album’s opener, “A Dios le Pido”, drives the song as much as the Carribean-influenced guitar work. “Luna” positively shines with its brilliant intro and bouncy reggae-rhythm.
“Es Por Ti” is definitely a bittersweet, uptempo ballad, but it’s not as dark as “Nada” from Fijate bien.
Newcomers may latch onto the wonderfully performed duet between Juanes and Nelly Furtado on “Fotografia”, but it’s the following track, “Desde Que Despierto”, which really steals the show.
A no-nonsense rocker, “Desde Que Despierto” contains Juanes’ most infectous chorus on the album.
Juanes’ happier outlook on life may jar listeners who appreciate the righteous angst that imbued his previous album. But ultimately, Juanes’ knack for writing a hook, and his seamless combination of rock ‘n’ roll and Latin rhythms, wins in the end.
Un día normal avoids the sophomore slump. Not bad for a guy who won three Grammys with his debut.
There was always some doubt that John Zorn’s Naked City couldn’t have possibly navigated those quick cuts in the music without some studio trickery.
Listen closely to Naked City’s self-titled debut on Nonesuch from 1990, and it’s hard to tell whether some tracks were spliced.
More than a decade later, Zorn puts those doubts to rest by releasing Naked City Live Volume 1. Recorded in 1989 at the Knitting Factory in New York City, the album demonstrates the tightness of Zorn’s “super group” was no fluke.
“New York Flattop Box” is evidence enough. The 43-second track is pretty much a country tune disrupted by the group’s approximation of radio static. When Zorn interrupts Frisell’s twangy country playing with his screaming saxophone, it’s exact and precise. There’s no way any of it could have been manipulated.
That’s not to say some overdubs weren’t used in the studio. On recording, the chaotic intro of “Shot in the Dark” is a lot thicker than the performance captured on this album.
Still, it’s nice to hear different interpretations of some familiar music. Zorn has always been something of a hook-writer, and it was hard to remember Naked City was a jazz group, not a rock band.
Naked City Live Volume 1 reminds fans the group consisted of some of the best improvisers playing in New York’s Lower East Side. “Inside Straight”, a 5-minute piece that concluded the studio album, gets an extra three minutes of improvisation live. “The Way I Feel,” a track never included on a Naked City studio album, is 10 minutes of great swing.
The rest of the album pretty much sports tracks from what would eventually become Naked City’s first album. “Skate Key” wouldn’t show up till the band’s final album, Radio, but the band’s covers of movie themes — “Chinatown”, “A Shot in the Dark”, “I Want to Live” — have a big presence.
There’s even an interpretation of Ennio Morricone’s “Erotico”, another unreleased treasure which never found its way to a Naked City studio album.
Perhaps the most intriguing idea behind Naked City Live Volume 1 is the title — will there be more to come from Zorn and his Tzadik Archival Series? If so, it’ll be an interesting to see whether Naked City’s other albums were ever performed live.
A bit of history — although the band existed for only four years, Zorn managed to record five incredibly divergent albums with the group.
Grand Guignol featured arrangements of 20th Century classical music, while Absinthe was a haunting, ambient work as disturbing as it was fascinating to hear. Only Radio contained much of the same kind of stage-friendly music as Naked City.
It would be fascinating to hear Naked City’s interpretation of Claude Debussy’s The Sunken Cathedral performed in front of an audience.
We’ll all find out if a second volume follows the first into stores.
Number Girl may have recorded some incredible albums, but the band cuts its teeth in live shows.
Jump on a file sharing network, and more than likely, fans will be trading audience recordings of Number Girl concerts.
Back in 2001, Number Girl tied fans over between albums by releasing two live products — a DVD titled Sawayakaneso and a cassette tape titled Kiroku Series.
Kiroku Series is only available at the band’s gigs, which is a shame — the performances captured here practically blow the quartet’s 1999 live album, Shibuya Rocktransformed Jootai, out of the water.
Number Girl is nothing if not precise. Ahito Inazawa is perhaps the best drummer to come around since Smashing Pumpkins’ Jimmy Chamberlain graced a kit. He and bassist Nakao Kentaro 27-sai are locked in tight over the twin-guitar attack of Tabuchi Hisako and vocalist/songwriter Mukai Shutoku.
When all four of them tear into the opening of “Omoide in My Head” or hammer away at the pounding rhythm of “Drunk Afternoon”, it’s revelatory.
Those comparrisons to Gang of Four aren’t all far off.
When Number Girl released Shibuya Rocktransformed Jootai, it had only two albums of material to draw from. Essentially, it was School Girl Distortional Addict live.
Kiroku Series still limits itself to the band’s major label work, but the set list feels more diverse.
That’s because there’s more to draw from, such as single-only songs “Drunk Afternoon”, “Haikara Gurui” and “Destruction Baby”, a metal song turned Police-like dub for this recording.
But the real treat is the band’s 10-minute rendition of “Zazenbeats Kemonostyle”, a song Number Girl contributed to a movie soundtrack.
The original song had a quirky rhythm and seemed to meander a bit. Performed live, “Zazenbeats Kemonostyle” transforms into a hulking wall of sound, with Mukai screaming himself hoarse. It’s an impassioned reading, one so riveting, 10 minutes seems too short.
The existence of that track alone makes the tape’s limited availability almost criminal. However much it’s uncool to advocate file sharing, this performance justifies the effort to find the entire album online.
Maybe one day Kiroku Series will be released on a wider scale. Let’s hope Number Girl doesn’t top itself with an ever better live recording.
Follow up one of the most successful solo debuts with a live recording? Taped by MTV? With nothing but a guitar as accompaniment?
But half way through her MTV Unplugged performance, Lauryn Hill even acknowledges to her audience that she was duped into thinking she needed a “20-piece backing band”. She didn’t, as evidenced on the two-disc recording of that broadcast.
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Hill’s 1998 watershed album, was such a lush recording, it whetted the appetite for more of the same. When news spread that MTV Unplugged 2.0 would be that album’s follow-up, it was hard not to feel a twinge of disappointment.
Would a literally unplugged Lauryn Hill really live up to her own previous, award-winning work? She does. Quite marvelously, too.
Hill recognizes her talent is in lyrics. She’s not a melodicist aiming to nail the perfect hook.
In fact, Hill’s guitar playing on the album is quite minimal — four chords are about as far as she goes.
Rather, Hill’s concern is with telling a story, painting a setting and letting her first-person characters reveal the inner-workings of their minds.
On “Adam Lives in Theory”, Hill casts Adam and Eve in an urban tale of parental responsibility. “Mr. Intentional” addresses a sweet-talking devil-figure who’s good intentions lead to bad results.
Even without Hill’s between-song explanations, many of these new songs have some pretty apparent autobiographical sources.
Hill slings a lot of legal language typical for a Law and Order episode on “Mystery of Iniquity”. The singer was embroiled in a highly-publicized lawsuit with a producer who wanted songwriting credits for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
“I Got to Find Piece of Mind” speaks to an unnamed love in Hill’s life who has such a profound affect on her, she breaks into tears at the end of the song. It’s clearly the crux of the album.
Hill’s stage banter is almost as illuminating as her songs. She bends over backward to convince her audience her fears aren’t any more significant or special than theirs. Hill might seem to protest a bit too much, but there’s a conviction in her voice that’s enough to show a listener she’s not faking it.
The longest track on the album is a 12-minute interlude.
In a way, Hill shares with Sinéad O’Connor a frank candor and deep sense of spirituality that comes across well in music. Hill probably won’t be joining any dissident priesthoods anytime soon, but she can make even the most recovered Catholic empathize with her rants against “the Enemy”.
Perhaps MTV Unplugged 2.0 works best because it’s a modest album with huge ambitions. The average length of these songs is 8 minutes.
Hill’s stripped-down performance may not be the sequel to Miseducation fans would love to hear, and that’s a good thing.
By asserting such a bold creative move, Hill underscores the basic theme of this latest batch of songs — she won’t back down from her vision despite what anyone expects from her.
Back in the 80s, artists such as Everything But the Girl, Swing Out Sister and — to a lesser extent — Sade and Sting infused New Wave melodicism with jazz harmonies.
In essence, they took liberties with “America’s classical music” by filtering it through an underground, post-punk lens.
Twenty years later, Zero 7 does much of the same thing, except this time around, the template is club music of the ambient/trip-hop variety.
(Or whatever the label is this week. It’s difficult to keep track of these kinds of things in the dance music world.)
Don’t expect to hear four-on-the-floor beats or minimal, repetitive motifs.
Even though Zero 7’s Sam Hardaker and Henry Binns started out in the remixing business, Simple Things takes its textures, hooks and melodies seriously.
Sure, on such tracks as “Polaris”, “Out of Town” and “Give it Away”, there’s an economy of material, what could easily be construed as “repetitiveness” under unskilled hands.
But Hardeker and Binns give these tracks an almost orchestral sense of arrangement. They don’t merely cut and paste and hope for the best.
Electronica doesn’t pay much mind to traditional song structures, which pretty much separates Zero 7 from its peers. When Hardeker and Binns write a tune, it’s got verses and choruses, not just one-liners posing as lyrics.
Even without the cool roto-scoping animated video, “Destiny” is still an incredible song — a great arrangment, some wonderful timbres and a brilliant, smokey performance by Australian singer Sia.
Sophie Barker gives “In the Waiting Line” a sexy, breathy reading, while Mozez imbues “I Have Seen” and “This World” with a 70s soul feel.
Yes, Virginia — this album is some heavy make-out music.
In a way, Zero 7 does for electronica and jazz-pop what Craig Armstrong does for electronica and classical music — play on the strengths of both forms to produce a distinctive but enjoyable listening experience.
Simple Things is rooted in the club world but is not of the club world. At the same time, it ain’t Sade either, but it sure fits well with her.
Jazz and pop music make yet another beautiful love child.
Since the early 90’s, Hatakeyama Miyuki has involved herself in a lot of eclectic projects.
She started out as a singer for the 10-piece roots ensemble Double Famous, collaborated with Little Creatures, then paired up with Kojima Taisuke to form Port of Notes.
Now, Hatakeyama has struck out on her own and not a moment too soon. Like her cosmopolitan jazz-pop peer UA, Hatakeyama possesses a wonderfully resonant voice, full of longing, powerful in its vulnerability.
It’s a testament to a person’s talent when a song as overused by the advertising industry as “Dream a Little Dream of Me” can sound revelatory.
Hatakeyama’s solo debut album, Diving Into Your Mind, explores much of the same creative ground as her work in Port of Notes, except the overt alternative rock influences have been replaced with a ’70s SoCal feel.
Hatakeyama may still sound like Tracey Thorn of Everything But the Girl, but musically, she sounds closer to Carole King.
Nowhere is this more apparent than on “Kagayaku Tsuki ga Terasu Yoru”. The electric piano alone sounds like it was recorded sometime in the early ’70s.
“Ame wa Oboete Iru Deshoo” goes for a cabaret feel, much like “Ecrice” from Port of Notes’ Complain Too Much, while the Latin-tinged rhythms of “Aoi Yuunagi” could have been lifted from a Manhattan Transfer album.
Hatakeyama does let in a few post-70s influences in. “Into the Whisper” has an ethereal quality more akin to — you guessed it — Everything But the Girl, while “Nani mo Mayowazuni” contains some R.E.M.-like jangly guitars.
In a way, Hatakeyama has recorded the same kind of album Minako did with Suck it Till Your Life Ends wa Shine Made Sono Mama Yatte. Although not as overtly international, Diving Into Your Mind does explore a number of pop genres within the context of jazz, and Hatakeyama’s distinct voice ties it all together.
Lazy American journalists — such as myself — always need to compare Japanese artists to Western artists.
It’s quick and easy, and readers most likely to be fan of one band just might be interested in another like it.
Still, it’s pretty tired to see constantly that “Band A is Japan’s answer to Band B”. At the risk of being tired, let me just get this off my chest: Port of Notes is Japan’s answer to Everything But the Girl.
Not latter-day Everything But the Girl of Walking Wounded or Temperamental, where club beats and ethereal synthesizers drive the duo’s music.
No, Port of Notes is akin to Amplified Heart/The Language of Life-era EBTG.
Credit that to Hatakeyama Miyuki’s clear, emotive voice. She’s not as technically proficient as Tracey Thorn, but like her UK counterpart, Hatakeyama possesses the ability to imbue each phrase with a subtle, unmistakeable emotional edge.
Although her English diction isn’t as smooth as ex-m-flo Lisa or fellow jazz-pop contemporary Minako, Hatakeyama still manages to make those words her own.
Then there’s “Like I Lay Down” from the duo’s 1999 album Complain Too Much. Kojima Taisuke’s guitar work could have been plucked by Ben Watt, and no one could have told the difference.
On the surface, Complain Too Much is a jazz-pop album in the vein of Sade and Basia. But like late-80s EBTG,
Port of Notes infuses enough alternative rock influences into its music to sound more like Tears For Fears.
The backmasked guitars on “With This Affection” owe more to the Cure than to Django Reinhardt. So does that rock chorus and analog drum machine beat.
Port of Notes does take some time to pay tribute to its less-rock-leaning influences. A tropical beat drives the lyric-less “Unknown Language”. “Ecrice” is straight-forward cabaret tune, and the seven-minute “Complaining Too Much” starts of with a light, bossa nova and ends with a dark salsa.
Hatakeyama’s brilliant voice coupled with Kojima’s expert instrumentation makes Port of Notes one of the most engaging duos around. There’s little to complain about their music.
WINO has often been described as Japan’s answer to Oasis, and given the big influence of British rock on the quintet, it’s easy to understand the comparrison.
Since its debut in 1998, WINO has delivered album after album of hook-filled, psychedelic-tinged, fast-paced rock ‘n’ roll. Strip away the ’90s-styled aural acrouments in the band’s music, and they might just sound like a Beatles knock-off. (Three of the band’s members lists the Fab Four as an influence.)
In terms of aesthetic, 2001’s Dirge No. 9 doesn’t sound terribly different from WINO’s 1998 debut, Useless Music.
All the basic elements that made Useless Music a winner are kept pretty much in tact on the new album — Hisanaga Chokko’s and Togawa Shinichiroo’s two-guitar wall of sound, Yoshimura Atsushi’s versatile vocals, and hooks, hooks, hooks.
If anything, the songs on Dirge No. 9 are just a tad harder to warm up to, something easily remedied after two listens.
Dirge No. 9 is also something of a telling title — the songs on the album are noticeably darker.
“Taiyoo wa Yoru mo Kagayaku” and “Imagine, Still” are both big-chord ballads with Lennon-McCartney undertones. The reverb-drenched drumming on “Hurt” and “Butterfly” subtly hints at a “Funky Drummer”-meets-“White Rabbit” vibe.
“Empty Soul”, sung in English, sounds like Phil Spector missing a dosage of Prozac. Even the title track is a simple voice-and-acoustic guitar number, mournful and sparse.
That doesn’t mean the band has forgotten how to rock out. After a suitably raucous opening with “New Dawn F”, “Resolution” comes out blazing with both guns pointed.
“My Life” and “Sullen Days” bring Dirge No. 9 to its dramatic climax before the title track provides a soft denounment.
All told, WINO isn’t the kind of band to shake things up radically, but they are excellent songwriters. And Dirge No. 9 proves it time and again.