One of the guitarists of Mummy the Peepshow calls herself Youngus Akkie. A band so coy as to make a slight reference to AC/DC has got to rock.
And Mummy the Peepshow does.
The clear hit among Japanese bands at SXSW 2000, Mummy the Peepshow plays the kind of punk pop that put Shonen Knife on the international map back in the early 1990s.
An all-girl group, Mummy is the Sanrio version of the Donnas — loud and rocking but cute too.
Mummy knows how to nail its hooks, as evident on such tracks as “Dear Big Tongue,” “Jenny is Feeling Bad” and “Spring pants has come.” But they also know how to make screaming, noisy Dead Milkmen-esque punk, such as on “wonder BREAD angel SOUP” and “Annie.”
And they make such sweet harmonies too.
This is Egg Speaking, Mummy’s second album, is far and away a more solid album than it’s scattered debut, Mummy Bullion. The band embraces both its punk roots and some pop hooks on Egg, making it a wonderful, bratty find.
Two complaints, however. The album is mixed terribly. It’s as if a master for vinyl was used for the CD pressing. The two tracks on the Japan Night 2000 sampler are mixed better.
Secondly, the CD is rigged to pop up a web browser to the Sister/Benten Records web site. While effective marketing, it gets old after a while.
Ever since Guns N’ Roses released Use Your Illusion I & II, artists out to prove their productivity have gone the route of recording two albums at once.
Bruce Springsteen did it with Human Touch and Lucky Town. So too does L’arc~en~Ciel with ark and ray.
After a drug scandal involving ex-drummer Sakura, L’arc~en~Ciel remained mum for the better part of 1997. In 1998 and 1999, the group went gangbusters with its new drummer Yukihiro, releasing a number of singles and three albums, two of which at the same time in 1999.
Historically, one album in double release fares better than the other. Lucky Town overshadowed Human Touch. Use Your Illusion II has more endurance than Use Your Illusion I. And ray has ark beat.
Whereas ray strips “Laruku” down to its most basic — save for an occassional synthesizer — ark is its glossy, over-produced reflection.
ark sports horns, strings and whole lot of synthesizers. The string arrangements on “Butterfly’s Sleep” and “Pieces [ark mix]” in particular sound too much like scores from bad Japanese dramas.
The songwriting veers from dramatic alternative rock (“Forbidden lover”) to bouncy Burt Bacarach pop (“Driver’s High”), even to quasi-Hawaiian (“Perfect Blue”). ray, on the other hand, is more or less a straight rock album.
Both albums bounce around stylistically, but ark suffers from hopping between a number of incongruent genres. In short, it possesses little of the clarity of its companion release.
There are some individually nice moments. “Heaven’s Drive” is the hardest rocker on the disc. “Cradle” has a nice post-New Wave feel.
But compared to the solid songwriting and focused performances of ray, ark sounds like an afterthought dressed up to be more than it really is.
At first, Terra 2001 might strike listeners as a sonic sequel to the Brilliant Green’s self-titled debut album.
But after a few spins, it becomes evident that this second album by one of Japan’s most popular alternative rock bands is a stronger work.
The opening track, “Bye! My Boy!”, bursts out of the speakers like race horses at a derby. It’s grungier, harder, definitely more up-front than anything on the band’s previous album.
After retreating for a while back to the bouncy jangle pop of The Brilliant Green, the trio sticks to its creative guns, muddy-ing up the guitars and boosting the rhythm section.
“Call My Name” lays it on heavy, pitting some classic ’60s bass rhythms with a wheezy, chaotic organ.
“Funny Girlfriend!!” lyrically and musically evoke some pretty strong flower power imagery, and “Round and Round” practically kowtows to “House of the Rising Sun.”
The Brilliant Green seems to have gotten better at twiddling the knobs, hammering out an album with a beefier sound. On such tracks as “Sono Speed De” and “Can’t Stop Crying,” guitarist Matsui Ryo positively blares out of the stereo, burning up on his solos and laying a heavy curtain of tactful distortion.
Even the album’s sole ballad, “Maybe We Could Go Back to Then”, possesses a bit muscle.
And tempting as it was to get heavy-handed with this stronger sound, singer Kawase Tomoko is never lost in the mix. In fact, her singing has gotten more confident since the band’s debut. And as usual, English-language songs outnumber Japanese ones. Both still sound very good.
Songwriting-wise, the songs on Terra 2001 are a bit darker, but they’re every bit just as memorable. By easing back from the jangle-pop of its first album, the Brilliant Green has produced a set of songs that appeals to rock fans who like their music as rough as it is bright.
In all, Terra 2001 is a proverbial major step for the Brilliant Green, a sign that this trio knows it can get better. And will.
It’s almost easy to dismiss Shinohara Rika as another woman indie singer-songwriter, but two things prevent that from happening.
First, Shinohara is a musical rarity. All the Japanese women I’ve run into have either been idols or members of punk outfits. Idol pop singers, by their nature, aren’t exactly towering figures of feminism and all-girl bands such as Shonen Knife, Lolita No. 18 or Mummy the Peepshow are group-oriented.
By aligning herself with Sheryl Crow, Suzanne Vega and Lisa Loeb, Shinohara asserts her individuality — something quite outside of the Japanese norm, especially in terms of idols and punk girl groups.
Second, Shinohara writes some really good songs. Don’t let the subdued arrangements give a wrong first impression. Repeated listenings and Shinohara’s full alto reveal the simple beauty of her melodies.
During a recent showcase at SXSW, Shinohara sang most of her songs in English and sold two versions of her CD, Seikatsu no Uta — one in its original Japanese, the other as an English CD-R. She’s serious enough about breaking into the U.S. that she’s doing it on America’s linguistic terms.
But give the Japanese version of Seikatsu no Uta a chance. These songs deserve to be heard in the tongue for which they were originally written.
FEED is definitely the best UK band to not come from the UK.
This Japanese quartet’s sound calls to mind any number of women-fronted, post-punk bands, including but not limited to debut-era Cranberries, Innocence Mission, All About Eve and Mazzy Star.
Singer Saito Maya, whose perfect English diction can be attributed to her time spent at NYU and her half Scottish-American heritage, alternates from apeing Dolores O’Riardin and Sinéad O’Connor. She’s gone on record disliking the comparrison, but that doesn’t make her any less of a powerful, talented singer.
And while FEED tends to wear its influences on its sleeve — Smiths, anyone? — the band’s songwriting is strong enough to overcome any appearance of blind hero worship.
Sure, back in the early 90s, FEED would have been deridedly considered “alternative-lite”, but while the Cranberries have since moved further away from the kind of dreamy folk-pop that made Everybody’s Doing It So Why Don’t We? sublime, FEED effectively picks up where that debut left off.
If the band’s showcase at SXSW 2000 is any indication, its debut for Sony should even expand on that sound. The six tracks on this debut E.P. leaves listeners craving for more.
Make Every Stardust Shimmer consists entirely of English-language tracks, making absolutely no hints that the band is from Japan.
That could work either way for the band — on the one hand, they can appeal to the parts of an American audience that craves this music; on the other, they might not sound distinct enough for more casual listeners.
Make Every Stardust Shimmer is available in the U.S. through De-I Records. FEED’s full-length debut album will be released in Fall 2000 on Zone/Sony Music Entertainment in Japan.
That’s not entirely true. I love Gish, and it’s because of that love that I’ve pretty much disliked the Pumpkins’ subsequent output.
Siamese Dream had absolutely no arc — it was one mid-tempo song after another, and after a while, the entire album blurred into one song.
Adore, on the other hand, had a great premise and quite a few nuggets. But the lethargy of the performances and the void left by drummer Jimmy Chamberlain pretty much hammered the nails in the coffin of this commercial dud.
Disclosure: When Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was released, I had no interest in listening to two discs worth of Billy Corgan indulging himself.
And yet, I’ve remained interested in the group despite Corgan’s overbearing influence. Credit that to the expert musicianship of James Iha, ex-bassist D’arcy and the re-recruited Chamberlain — Corgan may the group’s brain and muscle, but its other members are the Pumpkins’ heart and soul.
Hence, MACHINA/The Machines of God is actually good. It’s the follow-up to Gish I’ve been waiting for since 1991. It’s the single disc of Melon Collie the band should have released in 1995. It’s the Siamese Dream the Pumpkins should never have recorded in 1993.
The heart and soul of the Pumpkins rock out on this album, and the grand gestures once explored by the band — strings! acoustic guitars! drum machines! synthesized bass! — are drastically scaled back, if not entirely done away with.
Remember that cool bass solo in “I Am One” or the dynamics changes on “Siva” from Gish? The first single off of MACHINA, “The Everlasting Gaze,” has a break in which an a capella Corgan rants an entire verse of the song. Ya see — that’s the kind of clever songwriting shit the band has been missing since the early 1990s.
Rumors have been flying around that the Pumpkins may call it quits after touring this album. If that were the case, MACHINA would be the perfect opus to wrap up an otherwise intersting if not scattered recorded legacy.
Q: What do Tift Merritt’s Bramble Rose and Radiohead’s Kid A have in common?
A: Both albums are best heard when you’re not paying close attention to them.
In the case of Kid A, Radiohead achieved, by design or by accident, a goal Brian Eno set out to do with Music for Airports — to keep background music in the background while making it interesting.
Given the conventional songs on Bramble Rose, Tift Merritt most likely didn’t aspire to attain Eno’s goals either. After all, Music for Airports and Kid A barely have a single between them.
And yet, Merritt’s accomplished debut is best heard when relegated to the outskirts of consciousness.
On close examination, there really isn’t anything too remarkable about Bramble Rose — it’s a collection of nicely written, literate country music delivered by a singer constantly compared to a young Emmylou Harris.
The album is so determined in its modesty, nothing about it really stands out.
Ordinarily, such lack of flash can be construed as a virtue, especially in an era where Britney Spears can’t be escaped. But there’s a fine line between modesty and indescript, something Bramble Rose seems to straddle.
It’s only when Merritt’s music is playing in another room on a quiet late night when its beauty emerges.
The sweet harmonizing on “I Know Him Too”, the Georgia blues of “Sunday”, the simplicity of “When I Cross Over” — when the bits and pieces of Merritt’s most memorable moments transmit indirectly does that subtlty turn into seduction.
Sure, there will be folks for whom Merritt makes an immediate connection — it’s not like she’s recorded an album of throw-away filler. Merritt’s voice really is beautiful, and after a while, tunes such as “Trouble Over Me” and “Virginia, No One Can Warn You” ingrain themselves into your karaoke subconscious.
(Um, that’s to say at the very least, you’ll be singing the songs in your head.)
But that quiet beauty may take some work to appreciate. Or it may just be a matter of not listening too closely.
The Brodsky Quartet seems to have learned a lot from the Kronos Quartet.
The cover of Best of the Brodsky Quartet prominently displays the names Björk and Elvis Costello, as if indicating the Brodsky’s hip factor. And amidst a program of mostly Common Practice period pieces, a few pop tunes crop up.
But the Brodsky is not the Kronos, in the same sense that the Kronos is not the Arditti.
Although the Brodsky numbers Dave Brubeck and Paul McCartney as collaborators, the ensemble isn’t saddled with a mission to work exclusive in a particular era of music.
From the Kronos, the Brodsky has learned the value of embracing the ever pervasive popular culture, but unlike Kronos, the quartet frees itself to pursue music of all eras — even if the repetoire leans toward the more crowd-pleasing.
Best of the Brodsky Quartet spans a number of different styles — from a Japanese folk song to an arrangement of a movement from Sergei Prokofieff’s First Symphony. And it’s all performed tightly and expertly. The quartet even manages to keep a lock on the beat over Björk’s freely rhythmic chanteusing on “Hyperballad.”
Some selections are bit too obvious — Copland’s “Hoedown”? Gershwin’s “Summertime?”
Nonetheless, Best of the Brodsky Quartet amply demonstrates the Brodsky’s versatility and diversity.
The classically-trained musician in me ought to be offended by William Ørbit’s Pieces in a Modern Style, but it’s not.
In fact, the pieces selected by Ørbit are pretty much unfamiliar to me, and the timbres he’s selected to interpret these pieces render them nearly unrecognizable as classical music.
As a result, inexperienced listeners — id est, most of us — would probably refer to other non-classical albums to describe Pieces in a Modern Style than compare them to the hallowed interpretations on any number of classical labels.
Craig Armstrong’s orchestral ambient album, The Space Between Us, comes to mind. Maybe even Bang on a Can’s live interpretation of Brian Eno’s Music for Airports.
Pieces in a Modern Style makes for nice, trancey listening if you don’t let the source material distract you. At the same time, Henryk Gorecki’s Pieces in the Old Style 1 or Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Triple Concerto couldn’t have been written by any other composers.
I just wish Ørbit included some detailed liner notes to inform listeners how much of a transformation these pieces under went.
The most recognizable work is perhaps the most unchallenging interpretation on the whole disc — Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings from his only String Quartet. C’mon — I did the exact same thing when I was learning about sequencing back in 1991. Thankfully, Ørbit places the Adagio at the beginning of the disc, dispensing it forthwith.
A second disc of remixes takes up the job of radically reinterpreting Barber’s biggest hit. To the classical establishment, these remixes are crass. But the ATB remix in particular is quite personal. In other words, little of Barber remains — as it should be.
The remixes also beg the question: if Barber were alive today and hanging out gay bars, would he appreciate hearing his own composition blaring through the P.A.?
Truth be told, there isn’t anything really remarkably artsy about the Blue Man Group’s first foray into the audio world.
The reknowned performance theater troupe whose members can catch things with their mouths produce a rather appealing, unobtrusive set of incidental music on Audio. While a good portion of the album’s liner notes are devoted to explaining Blue Man’s custom-made instruments, the context in which these musical devices are performed is instrumental pop.
Of course, we’re running on the Harry Partch asthetic of custom instrumentation — if you build it, you must create music exclusively of its own context.
In reality, there’s nothing wrong with whacking a bunch of plumbing pipes or flipping a thin, long stick in the air to the accompaniment of electric guitars and a drum set. There’s just one problem — without the visual element, it’s easy to assume that anything that doesn’t sound like a guitar or a bass or a drum set is a synthesizer.
While Blue Man’s use of plumbing pipes creates the same kind of jegog timbre prominent in Yamashiro Shoji’s Akira Symphonic Suite, my own Korg N-364 has a patch that sounds approximately like it.
All right. So Audio isn’t pop music’s answer to Harry Partch — it’s still a good set of instrumental music.
Blue Man attempt to get at something primitive with Audio, and the almost Indonesian and Southeast Asian sense of rhythm on most of the these tracks succeed. Blue Man recognizes that rhythm was the first expression of musicality in the history of man and have set melody and harmony aside for the pursuit of something driving and energetic.