eX-Girl albums tend more to be great souvenirs after concerts than actual recordings to enjoy.
On the Japanese trio’s messy — literally and figuratively — debut Heppoku Pou, it was hard to distinguish improvisatory genius from amateur noise-making.
When Chihiro, Kirilo and Fuzuki started incorprating tunes into their music — as they did on their second album, Kero! Kero! Kero! — an uneasy marriage of musical deftness and novice bravado formed.
eX-Girl’s “a capella” album — somehow implying it’s not a real third album — proves without a doubt that the band knows a thing or two about music.
Once again working with producer/co-writer Hoppy Kamiyama, eX-Girl has produced an amazing work of vocal prowess. Sort of.
Each of the Girl’s sopranos won’t give Jesse Normyn or Kathleen Battle any sleepless nights, but it might give Enya, Värttinä, Les Mystere de Voix Bulgares and the Geinoh Yamashirogumi nightmares.
A hint of eX-Girl’s a capella muscle was flexed on Kero! Kero! Kero! in the form of “Tofu No Uta (Tofu Song)”, a seemingly complex, contrapuntal work that somehow managed to include the phrases “So what?” and “Shut your mouth!”
eX-Girl has taken the simplicity of this jumping point and multiplied it dozens-fold. With the magic of multitrack recording, they’ve gone beyond not worrying and being happy.
Along the way, they make a few nods to some apparent international influences. “Souvlaki” and a re-working of the group’s, ahem, single, “Disco 3000,” borrow liberally from Bulgarian women choir arrangements. “Zozoi” might have been written by either Meredith Monk or Pauline Oliveras. And “Jet Mogura” includes an almost kecak-like chant that fires off a number of cartoon heros, include Pikachu of Pokémon.
Big When Far, Small When Close is one giant step toward realizing eX-Girl’s full musical potential. It’s a real album this time — something you can enjoy listening to while the trio books its next set of American dates (supposedly in October!)
(Ed. note: The text for the reviews of Wayne Horvitz’s Upper Egypt and American Bandstand have been paired.)
After fronting such sonically riveting ensembles as the President, Pigpen and 4+1 Ensemble, Wayne Horvitz seems to have made a decidedly unadventurous move with Zony Mash.
I mean, c’mon — it’s a jam band! That’s what Medeski, Martin and Wood are for.
Recording studios can only capture so much of a live performance, and as such, listeners can’t escape the feeling that a group like Zony Mash and music from the band’s latest disc Upper Egypt would be best experienced in a concert hall or club.
But under Horvitz’s leadership, even something as straight-forward as Zony Mash has its moments of strange beauty. Horvitz is a master of hooks, and in between extended moments of virtuosity, that talent always comes back to grab hold.
“Forever” centers around a quiet but busy melody that’s just plain beautiful. “End of Time” sprinkles in a dischordant harmony here and there for an unsettling effect.
On faster tracks such as “Spice Rack” and “FYI,” seemingly convoluted melodies give way to memorable gestures — a big major chord here or a simple response to a complicated call.
As always, Horvitz is a skilled improviser, making the most random solos sound completely like fate — just as any great jazz musician can do. With rhythm section Andy Roth (drums) and Keith Lowe (bass) grounding Horvitz and guitarist Timothy Young, the composite result is a lot more than the surface initially reveals.
In attempting to form a band to record a “piano album,” Horvitz made the discovery that the fire-brand chemistry of Zony Mash works in an intimate setting as well.
Unlike rock bands who make a big deal out of recording two albums at one time, Horvitz’s multiple releases in a single year is par for the proverbial course. So too with American Bandstand, a Zony Mash album that isn’t Zony Mash.
Horvitz’s piano playing strips away any timbral cloudiness he usually introduces into his music, and without them, he sounds almost traditional in the way his melodies twist and turn.
On some level, the music becomes a bit less interesting, but at the same, time, it forces listeners to recognize the human elements inherent in Horvitz’s work.
The problem with the term “rock en Español” is its ambiguity.
Spanish-language rock music takes on so many guises that it’s best described by what it’s not — specifically, a “Latin Explosion.” The grand anthems of Maná are as much rock en Español as Café Tacuba’s art rock or Molotov’s blistering metal-rap. But they’re definitely not Ricky or Enrique.
There seems to be a slight movement, however, to pigeonhole rock en Español as a primarily rap-driven genre. (A number of bands on last year’s Watcha Tour were rap groups.) The soundtrack to the film Price of Glory neatly maps the different directions the hybrid music can take.
“Keep It Simple,” a track by rap-rockers Puya, establishes the path the entire soundtrack will eventually follow, but the disc does attempt to give a broad survey of rock en Español in its first few songs.
Aterciopelados present the almost Dead Can Dance-ish “Lado Oscuro.” Pastilla goes for the big, punk-pop riffs on “Be a Star,” while Ozomtali and Los Lobos make a case for the Español part of rock en Español.
After that, Price of Glory alternates between a series of slightly different sounding rap groups. King Chango and El Gran Silencio — both contributing two tracks to the album — lean toward more Latin-influenced music, while Control Machete and Cypress Hill represent the straight-forward hip-hop contingent.
And just to throw an additional monkey wrench into the whole equation, the soundtrack concludes with the Texas Tornadoes sounding absolutely Louisianan. As a result, the soundtrack blurs into an indistinguishable sameness.
Right now, the diversity of rock en Español groups makes the music such an exciting listening experience, but if marketing forces intervene and gentrify the, ahem, “genre,” it creates products as seemingly generic as Price of Glory.
While the soundtrack makes for a good Spanish rock sample, it also serves a warning for the future of the music.
If you’re bored with all these women singer-songwriter types, it’ll be hard to dislike Leona Naess.
Oh sure, she can probably fit nicely on a Lilith Fair bill, but she’s no Jewel, that’s for sure.
Naess eschews the usual heartstring-tugging musical clichés of her contemporaries for a more atmospheric sound akin to a version Mazzy Star that wasn’t psychedlic. Vocally, she possesses a languid, easy-going timbre that manages to keep up with the more rocking numbers on her major-label debut, Comatised. But it’s on the slower, sparser tracks where Naess’ voice shines.
Lyrically, she’s been compared to Joni Mitchell and Liz Phair. Haven’t listened to either artist, so can’t be sure if it’s an accurate comparisson. One thing is for certain — she doesn’t go for melodramatic, chest wringing couplets as badly as Alanis Morissette or Sarah McLachlan. When Naess asks, “Why do I always chase the ones that run?”, she’s definitely not pitying herself.
If anything, Naess takes all the material that’s made the whole “women-in-rock” schtick shallow and makes something meaningful out of it.
The strings on “Northern Star” sound appropriate, not overwrought. The analog drum beat on “Lazy Days” gives the lethargic track some real character. And when the chorus of “Chase” comes crashing between the song’s spare verses, it keeps listeners on their toes.
Comatised is a satisfying debut from a singer who does her feminine rocker colleagues one better.
The opening strains of the group’s debut album, Break of Dawn, hint that this Japanese trio plays jazz-pop. Then the chrous hits, and they become a loud, alternative rock band.
Skip to the next track (“Standing on the Hill”), and they sound like a version of Every Little Thing without synthesizers.
Skip to the next track (“Oasis”), and they’re back to being loud rockers again.
Skip to the next track (“Another”), and they’re back to playing jazz-pop, this time with strings, hip-hop beats and DJ scratches.
It’s this kind of eclectism that makes J-popTheGenre an interesting offshoot of exported American rock music. In attempting to emulate what’s going on an ocean away, bands such as Do As Infinity end up creating altogether new brews.
One thing is for certain — a sound so unique as Do As Infinity’s would leave U.S. audiences puzzled.
As such, Break of Dawn requires at least two listens — the first one to understand what’s going on musically; the second to really enjoy the hooks offered by the band’s songwriters.
If you didn’t think hip-hop beats could anchor alternative rock music influenced by jazz, it’s time to shift your paradigm.
“There’s a trick to making a tape,” Rob Gordon (ne John Cusack) tells his audience in the film High Fidelity. And he goes into a detailed explanation about the subtle art of sequencing.
What Rob (ne John) failed to mention was the kind of selection that goes into making a mixed tape. A mixer shouldn’t just grab all the obvious singles from a bunch of bands and hope some random order will make it work. No — you need a bunch of different songs from different artists that can somehow fit well together.
Cusack (ne Gordon) and his film buddies have made such a tape with the soundtrack to High Fidelity. The tracks on High Fidelity range from little-known but still-great ditties from the Thirteenth Floor Elevators (“You’re Gonna Miss Me”) and the Velvet Underground (represented twice with “Oh! Sweet Nuthin'” and “Who Loves the Sun”) to more recent tracks by Bob Dylan (“Most of the Time”) and the Beta Band (“Dry the Rain.”)
And while it’s unlikely to ever see Stereolab, Love, Stevie Wonder and the Kinks all on the same album, it’s even more of an accomplishment that no track sticks out significantly from the other.
If anything, putting Dylan, the Velvets and Elvis Costello along side John Wesley Harding, Sheila Nichols and Royal Trux shows how the former artists will somehow always be timelessly indie. It’s that spirit that somehow threads itself through the disc. Maybe it’s all those unadorned, electric guitars — no grand gestures of distortion on this disc, thank you very much.
Strange thing, though — the music in High Fidelity didn’t have as much of a starring role in the movie as other music-driven films, such as Immortal Beloved and Amadeus.
But really — a movie about Mozart compared to a movie about pop music? What am I thinking?
Yet it was that sort of co-starring status in the film that raised the question about whether the soundtrack would be any good. Duh. It is. It truly is.
P.S. I’m going to get my hair cut like Cusack (ne Gordon).
Writing a review for an album already plauded by critics worldwide is pretty useless. Well, reviews are pretty useless if you think long and hard about it — which this one won’t.
(And just why did it take me until now to even acquire the album? I received it as a birthday gift ‘cos I was too busy getting back into J-pop.)
But so Moby? Play? Grammy-award winner? Topped the Village Voice Pazz and Jop Critic’s Poll?
Why all the fuss?
If you saw that DLJ Direct commercial without that floating greater-than sign (>) and wondered how a dot-com commercial could score such cool music, rest assured — it’s cribbed from Moby, it wasn’t written expressly for DLJ Direct.
(Speaking of commericals, anyone think that Björk-like “iPaq” commercial from Compaq is kind of, um, dumb? Never mind.)
The crux of the album lies in Moby’s comandeering of Delta blues and gospels, recontextualizing them in an electronic dance setting. It’s sounds like an insurmountable goal, but Moby pulls it off.
He’s also got some radio-friendly tracks, such as the already-hit “Bodyrock” and the aforementioned DLJ theme “Porcelain.” If anything, Play distinguishes itself from other electronic dance music albums by being song-driven. These tracks aren’t just beat, beat and more beat.
Perhaps the most striking element of Moby’s blues-meets-dancefloor aesthetic is how he’s kept the samples relatively untouched. Unlike Ben Watt screwing around with Tracey Thorn’s vocals on Temperamental, Moby makes his music serve the samples, not the other way around.
“I wonder what kind of drugs they’ve been taking,” asked a co-worker of mine after listening to Macha Loved Bedhead.
Macha, in recent times, has skyrocketed in the indie world. The Athens, Ga., band’s mixes atonal rock with far Asian instruments in a fascinating marriage of timbres.
Collaborating with Dallas-based Bedhead, the collective band takes the sonic adventurousness of Macha’s most recent long-player, See It Another Way, even further.
And further away from the hooks of Macha’s 1998 debut album.
The six-song, 86-track EP, Macha Loved Bedhead — billed under the name Bedhead Loved Macha — starts off with the closest thing to a single, “You and New Plastic.” After that, the disc turns into a series of ambient, minimalistic experiments. In short, a great soundtrack with which to light up some fatties.
Steve Reich ought to write for this group.
Joshua McKay’s easy-going-bordering-on-lethargic vocals don’t quite let the beauty of the band’s melodies very obvious, which isn’t a bad thing. It just means you need to listen really close to “Hey Goodbye” or “Only the Bodies Survive” to get it.
After the 80-track ambient sound exercise of “How Are Your Windows?” — the same trick Café Tacuba did on Yosoy — Bedhead Loved Macha finishes the EP with the oddest cover of Cher’s “Believe” imaginable, complete with telephone accompaniment. It’s worth the price of the entire disc alone.
Okay. Singer-songwriters tend to blur into one for me. Take acoustic guitar, add introspective, potentially solipistic lyrics.
But let’s say there’s a spectrum.
On the one hand, there’s Jeremy Toback, who wears his Bob Dylan influences on his sleeve, who writes decent if not exactly memorable songs, who sounds commercial enough to warrant inclusion on a few movie trailers.
On the other hand, there’s Yuji Oniki, who doesn’t hide his affinity to the Byrds or the Beatles but carries it off as his own, even singing a verse or two in Japanese.
Josh Rouse is a sort of singer-songwriter who could open for Whiskeytown or the Old ’97s without ever sounding like he’s a No Depression musician. In that sense, he’s more like Oniki.
Rouse’s latest album, Home, is an understated collection of tunes performed with an uncommon restraint. Rather that impress with a lot of dramatic swells of chiming acoustic guitar — like Toback — Rouse would prefer to embellish his songs with a touch of harmony there, a little countermelody there.
There’s a bit of press floating out there about how Home’s sense of desparation slowly etches itself into your subconscious. Well, if you’ve got the dishwasher and laundry going, it’s hard for that to really happen.
Rouse’s music demands the kind of attention suitable for late night listening — soft enough not to wake the neighbors but not so ambient as to treat it like sonic wallpaper.
It’s a good album for those meditative kinds of moments.
When I first donned on the headphones at a music store listening station to sample the Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin, I thought the Bacharach-on-dope strings of “Race for the Prize” were a bit precious.
So I took the headphones off and forgot about the album.
When I walked into my favorite record store one day, the store’s staff was playing a disc that I thought was Radiohead or maybe Guided By Voices with a different lead singer. It was the Flaming Lips.
Oh. The band I passed on a few months earlier.
Then I kept reading good reviews of the disc, and the album was even listed in the Village Voice Pazz and Jop Poll. All the subliminal hints finally came to the fore, and I gave The Soft Bulletin a second chance.
Wow.
I don’t really think I can add anything different to what’s already been said about the Flaming Lips or The Soft Bulletin. It’s probably one of the best-recorded and best-arranged albums of 1999. “A Spoonful Weighs a ton” alone has all sorts of neat orchestral effects — even without a real orchestra — and that drum arrangement is pretty durned neat.
Quite frankly, the album would perversely sound rather cool if it were recorded with a real orchestra. It’s certainly has a rather epic feel. Take that, Metallica.
Wayne Coyne’s scraping vocals might wear some listeners thin after a while, but his inability to hold a note altogether straight somehow magically works with the ambition of the group’s arrangements. They work together, and it’s hard to figure out how.
Not like anyone ought to find out.
Oh, and “The Spiderbite Song” has got to be one of the most unlikely lyrics to ever grace such dramatic music.
When you got that spider bite on your hand
I thought we would have to break up the band
To lose your arm would surely upset your brain
The poison then could reach your heart from a vein