Yeah, at one point in my life I owned Whiskeytown’s Strangers Almanac. It was good, but not good enough to tear me away from the Old 97s’ Too Far to Care.
Despite the album’s excellent writing, there was always something aloof about the way head honcho Ryan Adams delivered his songs. It was as if he was trying to affect Murmur-era Michael Stipe just to sound deeper than the rest of us.
What does this have to do with former bandmate Caitlin Cary’s first full-length album? Well, for folks who really wanted to like Whiskeytown but couldn’t, here’s your chance.
While You Weren’t Looking keys into the same kind of furtive, hook-filled, country-influenced rock Whiskeytown mastered in the late 90s, but this time, it sounds more personal, more immediate.
Credit that to Cary’s rich, inviting voice. It’s apparent she has the power to belt, but never once does she abuse that ability. When she lets out a slight yodel on the second verse of “Please Don’t Hurry Your Heart”, it’s a masterful flourish, not useless flash.
That tact works well when the music draws inward. “Girl, he’s killing himself in a car when you’re not driving, in a bar when you’re not looking, food you’re not cooking” Cary sings on “What Will You Do”. It’s the emotional apex of the song, and she gives the chorus a spine-tingling reading.
Cary and co-writer Mike Daly, another Whiskeytown alumnus, do a tremendous job delivering a filler-free album. Not a single song on While You Weren’t Looking is a throw-away. (In contrast, Adams’ prolific output has been described as brilliant when it isn’t spotty and inconsistent.)
Right from the opening strains of “Shallow Heart, Shallow Water”, the album doesn’t relent in delivering one beautiful performance after another. It’s difficult to single out any one track — all of them are that strong.
Producer Chris Stamey provides just the right touches to each of the songs — a big, rousing band on “Thick Walls Down”; twangy reverb on “Pony”; soulful horns on “Too Many Keys”; spare guitars and violin on “Fireworks”.
While You Weren’t Looking is the Whiskeytown album that probably could have been. Thankfully, it’s all Cary’s, and it’s all good.
This first time I heard Jack Johnson, I thought Austin, Texas, big-shot Bob Schneider finally took some singing lessons.
Johnson has so far drawn comparrisons to G. Love and Ben Harper, the latter of whom plays slide guitar on Johnson’s 2001 debut Brushfire Fairytales.
Of course, Johnson doles out the same kind of blues-y, acoustic, singer-songwriter rock as Texas phenom Schneider, and both men possess deep, seductive croons. Hence, the confusion.
But it’s hints of Johnson’s Hawaiʻi up-bringing that ultimately separates him from his co-horts.
Brushfire Fairytales draws its biggest strengths from its laid-back mood. Johnson sticks to a spare, minimal sound throughout the album, never dressing up his songs to be more than they are and seldom venturing to the faster end of a metronome.
Even when he does rock out on “Middle Man” or “Mudfootball”, Johnson sounds positively cool. Here’s a guy who doesn’t need to emote to get his point across.
Subtle “island” touches also makes Johnson’s music stand out.
Slack key picking informs the opening licks of “Inaudible Melodies” and “Sexy Plexi”, the latter track sauntering to a reggae rhythm. Steel drums add a dash of flavor to the mournful “Flake”.
And while “Posters” and “The News” don’t contain any overt Hawaiian references, the single-guitar-and-voice arrangement is a time-honored aesthetic in Hawaiian music.
But don’t think for a moment Johnson is gunning to take a few Na Hoku awards away from the Brothers Caz. Johnson’s “local” touch is as subtle and effortless as his memorable melodies. Plus, he possesses a really, nice, soothing voice.
Brushfire Fairytales is, as critic-types are wont to say, a strong debut. Johnson doesn’t let flash get in the way of his songs, and he injects enough of his own background to make his music truly personal.
It’s always gratifying to see a musician establish a creative pinnacle, then top it with a following work.
John Zorn’s ninth Filmworks album, Trembling Before G-d, was his prettiest and his most beautiful score to date.
Limiting himself to keyboards, clarinet and percussion, Zorn produced an intensely emotional score with very minimal elements. It was hard to imagine anything better.
Then Zorn goes and records Filmworks X: In the Mirror of Maya Deren.
Using much of the same instrumentation as Trembling Before G-d — replacing only Chris Speed’s clarinet with Erik Friedlander’s cello —
Zorn once again creates an introspective, melodic, intimate score, at the same time creating a work totally different from its predecessor.
On Trembling Before G-d, director Sandi Simcha Dubowski requested Zorn include a specific Masada piece in the score. That restriction led Zorn to pillage his Masada songbook.
On this film, director Martina Kudlacek placed no such requirements on Zorn when he started working on the documentary about film director Maya Deren. Instead, he explores Deren’s own interest in classical and world music, as well as her early years living in Kiev.
The resulting music jumps from Indonesian-influenced percussive pieces (“Teiji’s Time”, “Nightscape”), mournful Eastern European melodies (“Kiev”, “Nostalgia”), tribal-like drumming (“Voudoun”), and sparse, string-and-piano duos (“Drifting”).
Zorn’s ability to speak different musical languages comes through, but instead of jarring listeners with the abrupt quick jump cuts of his past, Zorn channels his fluency into a single, cohesive sound.
Just because he can be flashy doesn’t mean he needs to be. In that regard, Zorn’s compositions have definitely matured.
Where Trembling Before G-d felt at times incidental, In the Mirror of Maya Deren feels like a work that can stand separate from the film. A listener doesn’t need to see Kudlacek’s documentary to appreciate the music.
(There’s probably little chance a film about an obscure director is going to nudge the latest Ben Affleck vehicle out of the multiplexes.)
As such, In the Mirror of Maya Deren makes for good listening regardless of context. Let’s see Zorn top this one.
Being on the cutting edge is Kronos Quartet’s bread and butter, but after 30 years, even the most pioneering of spirits can seem quaint.
When Kronos released Caravan two years ago, the quartet was essentially upstaged by its Eastern European guest musicians, revealing more obviously than before the Kronos don’t always have the flexibility to perform outside the Western art music spectrum.
For Nuevo, a collection of music by Mexican composers and performers from divergent disciplines, Kronos enlisted noted rock en Español musician Gustavo Santalaolla to co-produce with long-time collaborator Judith Sherman.
No slag on Sherman, but Santalaolla was just what Kronos needed to rejuvenate its sound. Santalaolla has a reputation for coaxing emotionally-charged performances out of such artists as Juanes, Café Tacuba and Molotov. And on Nuevo, the quartet reknowned for its “serious” work sound like they’re actually having fun.
Right from the start of Severiano Briseno’s “El Sinaloense”, the Kronos delivers a frantically joyous performance filtered through distortion. David Harrington and company transform themselves from a string quartet to a four-person street accordion.
The sonic explorations don’t just end at effects processors. On Alberto Dominguez’s “Perfidy”, the quartet overdubbed itself multiple times to recreate the lushness of the 101 Strings. Don’t think the Kronos is getting soft — they’re backing Carlos Garcia playing on a musical leaf.
Yes — a one-armed guy who uses a leaf from an ivy tree to create music.
Kronos definitely keeps up with singers Alejandro Flores and Efren Vargas on the traditional and rhythmically complex huapango song “El Lloar”.
Even a cover of ¡Esquivel!’s “Mini Skirt” feels fun. The quartet hasn’t been so on track with its humourous side since including Raymond Scott’s “Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals” in its repertoire.
Kronos does remind listeners it is indeed a classical ensembles, as evidenced by its remarkable reading of Silvestre Revueltas’ dramatic “Sensemaya” and Osvaldo Golijov’s introspective “K’in Sventa Ch’ul Me’tik Kwadulupe”.
Toward the end of the album, Kronos takes makes its most daring creative leaps.
With “Chavosuite”, an arrangment of a television comedy score, Kronos sound sufficiently at ease with itself to deliver some really silly music. They put their instruments through loads of effects on their interpretation of Chalino Sanchez’s narco-corridos “Nacho Verduzco”.
Dig it — Kronos covers a song about drug smugglers.
The album’s apex is the epic “12/12”, composed by and performed with Café Tacuba. A sprawling, sonically-challenging work, “12/12” is the most experimental track on Nuevo, the kind of piece that would have been comfortable on previous Kronos albums as Howl U.S.A. or Short Stories.
It’s also pretty neat to know the most dissonant and jarring work on Nuevo was written by a rock band.
Nuevo is Kronos’ most extreme album to date. Santalaolla really uses the studio to stretch Kronos’ sound, and as a result, the quartet offers up some of its punchiest string playing ever. They really do sound new again.
When Craig Armstrong recorded his first solo album The Space Between Us in 1998, he was just a classically-trained composer who happened to hang out with big rock stars.
He was also Baz Luhrmann’s film score composer of choice, an association that would later garner Armstrong a Golden Globe Award for his work on Moulin Rouge and all the visibility that goes along with it.
As a result, Armstrong’s second solo album, As If to Nothing, is packed with such marquee-worthy guest musicians as Bono, Evan Dando and Mogwai. Where The Space Between Us sported only two collaborations and some “covers” of Massive Attack, As If to Nothing is rife with collaborators.
Yeah — the words “sell out” might just might come to mind.
The thing is, Armstrong is a damn fine composer. Unlike the John Williamses and Howard Shores of the scoring world,
Armstrong tends to draw from that murky period in classical music when 19th Century grandiose evolved into 20th Century darkness.
The stormy imagery on the album’s cover is more than just a visual cue — it’s the heart of the album’s content.
Like before on The Space Between Us, Armstrong manages to combine classical music’s lush orchestral power with subtle touches of electronic rhythms. Tracks such as “Amber” and “Finding Beauty” could have stood on their own without the beats, but they’re all the better for them.
This time, Armstrong uses this aesthetic as a springboard to more daring gestures.
The poignant “Waltz” is uncomfortably offset by Antye Greie-Fuchs arhythmic chanting. The heavy-handed rocker “Inhaler” sounds like Armstrong was jamming with Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore on a guitar.
Even when Armstrong brings in singers and delivers straight-forward pop songs, they feel remarkably full of emotion without resorting to predictable gestures.
Evan Dando’s whiskey-voiced performance on “Wake Up in New York” is at once mournful, gruff and tender, a fitting match for a song about the Big Apple. Dave McAlmont delivers a beautifully restrained reading of “Snow”, and even Bono gives a nuanced rendition of U2’s “Stay (So Faraway Close)”.
Steven Lindsay concludes the album wonderfully on “Let There Be Love”. He starts off sounding a bit like Bono but finds his own voice as the song progresses.
Like Anne Dudley before him, Armstrong works remarkably well as a rock musician and a classical composer. He speaks the disparate musical language of both idioms well, making As If to Nothing something indeed.
If the Art of Noise recorded In No Sense? Nonsense! in 2002 instead of 1987, it would probably sound something like Honda Yuka’s solo album, Memories Are My Only Witness.
One half of the now-defunct Cibo Matto, Honda hung out with the likes of John Zorn and Arto Lindsay before teaming up with Hatori Miho to sing about birthday cakes and crazy food.
Now Honda is on her own, making the kind of textured, beat-friendly rock instrumental that made the Art of Noise the godfather of electronica.
To be perfectly honest, the Art of Noise comparrisons are ear-deep. On “You Think You Are So Generous But It’s The Most Conditional ‘Anything’ I’ve Ever Heard — Jumping the Gap Between Me and Myself –” (yes, that’s the full song title), Honda uses the infamous orchestral hit reportedly pioneered by AON’s J.J. Jeczalik.
Other parallels are more spiritual. The 45-second “Driving Down By The Hudson River, We Saw the Blood Red Burning Sky” feels like a lost remix of “Moments of Love”. “Some Days I Stay in Bed for Hours” sounds like the distant cousin of “Robinson Crusoe”.
Aesthetic similarities aside, Honda shares with Anne Dudley a keen musical instinct that turns odd timbres into orchestral fodder.
No, Honda and Dudley don’t share conservatory credentials, but they may as well have. The demented samples that weave in and out of “Schwaltz” could have felt at home on In Visible Silence.
Besides, how can anyone listen to the breakbeats of “Sun Beam — nothing hurts — On a Cold Winter Morning I Walked Back Home on a Street Paved with Pieces of Broken Heart” or “Single Silver Bullet” and not think of “Close (to the Edit)” or “Paranomia”.
Although most of the tracks on the album clock around the four- to five-minute mark, two tracks in particular demonstrate Honda can handle longer compositional forms as well.
“Why Do We Mistrust The Machines We Made?” is a three-part suite that doesn’t feel like it occupies eight minutes. “Night Diving”, on the other hand, is straight-forward jazz piece, complete with muted trumpet and lots of steamy improvisation.
Memories Are My Only Witness is melodic and accessible, but also smart and complex. Honda has crafted a pleasant listening experience, every bit as sweet as her explorations into food-themed music but never laying heavy on the additives and preservatives.
Here’s something disturbing: half of the tracks featured on Sony Music’s Japan for Sale, Vol. Two come from artists reviewed on Musicwhore.org.
You think maybe this site had an indirect hand in determining the album’s track listing? Hmmm …
Like before, Japan for Sale, Vol. 2 slants heavily toward electronica artists — namely, Ken Ishii, DJ Krush, Yoshinori Sunahara, and Takkyu Ishino.
Sony is clearly attempting to position itself on the cutting edge of the foreign music market by stacking the track list in such a manner. There is a bit of misdirection going on, however.
Kitaki Mayu starts the album off sounding a lot like Nomiya Maki of Pizzicato Five on “Nakanaide”. Kitaki’s sweet voice fronts a sea of twittering blips and four-on-the-floor beats. Don’t think for a minute this one track exemplifies Kitaki’s muse — she’s really an idol singer.
Dt., represented by “Yume no Naka e -Malted Milk Mix-“, actually sounds harder than this particular track lets on. The original mix of the song is propelled by a lot of buzzing guitars.
In recent years, Supercar has transformed into an electronica outfit, but the band’s early work is definitely rock. The Pet Shop Boy-ish “Yumegiwa Last Boy” shows the band has come a long way.
Conversely, Boom Boom Satellites has done a lot to bridge jazz and electronica, but the track featured here, “Soliloquy”, is the hardest rocking track from the band’s album Umbra.
Does any of this detract from the disc itself? Not in the least. In fact, Japan for Sale, Vol. Two is a lot tighter than its predecessor. Some of the songs chosen for the disc are true gems.
James Iha’s sunny songwriting on “Skirt” fits Chara’s raspy, bittersweet voice nicely. “Spirit Dreams Inside” shows L’Arc~en~Ciel finally mastering a tough rock sound, and “Candle Chant” by DJ Krush is one of the best tracks off of Zen.
Of course, Puffy AmiYumi show up once again to appeal to the American otaku who prefer their J-pop with a little less substance. Why Polysics’ second-rate imitation of DEVO warrants further inclusion on this disc is still puzzling. Spoozys does it far better.
Despite Sony’s “selective criteria”, Japan for Sale, Vol. Two demonstrates the diversity and breadth of Japan’s music scene. In fact, the full work of the bands featured on the disc shows these 13 songs only scratch the proverbial surface.
Tasteless and cheesy and dumb as the CD booklet of Electric Eel Shock’s Slayer’s Bay Blues may be, the music therein isn’t.
In fact, Electric Eel Shock has done a pretty good job of keying into a visceral, raw vibe that made the pioneers of punk music — you know, the usual suspects, MC5, Stooges, Television — so damn good.
The Tokyo-based trio draws upon the same garage rock reference points as Thee Michelle Gun Elephant, but for some reason, Electric Eel Shock does a better job of emulating its idols.
It’s probably because TMGE’s Yusuke Chiba has a voice that really gets tired after a while. Morimoto Akihito is only marginally better, but he emotes a far larger range. He does more than scream his voice hoarse — he growls sometimes, hollers off-key other times.
Morimoto can also tear out guitar riffs in such a way that even the most overused garage clichés sound new. Tracks such as “Turbo Slayer”, “Puma” and “Vegas Night” don’t further the evolution of rock, but they do bring it close to its amateur-is-good roots.
Plus, few of the songs on the album exceed four minutes. Many clock under two. That kind of brevity is hallmark to textbook punk.
The production of Slayer’s Bay Blues is an odd mix of lo-fi messiness and hi-fi power. Somehow, Electric Eel Shock has managed to make a 16-track console sound like a 4-track home studio. The album does a tremendous job of capturing the feel of the trio’s live show.
It’s too bad this kind of gloriously rock ‘n’ roll sloppiness doesn’t translate into the album’s cover art. The booklet shows one of its members sitting on the toilet.
C’mon, guys — that image totally doesn’t reflect your music. Sure, you sound like shit, but you don’t make shit.
Electric Eel Shock is an honest-to-goodness rock band, distinctive in the way it makes amateurism sound downright professional.
First, a warning: If you’re expecting The World Is Mine to grab, hold, shake and rattle you the way previous Quruli albums have done, prepare to work very hard for your aural gratification.
The World Is Mine is Quruli’s dark album. Sure, Kishida Shigeru and gang have always had one foot planted firmly in moody, introspective balladry, the other in tuneful, hard rocking work-outs.
But on the band’s fourth full-length album, Quruli has taken a dive into more ambient territory.
The World Is Mine starts off slowly — very, very slowly.
“Guilty” has a pretty loud outburst of energy midway through the song, but “Shizuka no Umi”, which means “calm ocean” in Japanese, lives up to its title. The track never builds to a climax, instead retreating inward into a sea of studio effects.
Quruli albums tend to hit the proverbial racetrack, running, so it’s shocking and unsettling to witness The World Is Mine crashing before it even gets anywhere.
Or so first impressions would leave a listener to believe.
Even though the band obliges fans with its trademark rockers — “Go Back to China”, “Thank You My Girl” — this album is mostly about sonic exploration.
“Mind the Gap” combines big beats with bagpipes in a quirky but appealing instrumental. “Suichuu Motor” obliterates the lead vocal, masking it in robotic effects.
“Buttersand/Pianorgan” takes the backbeat of the beautiful “World’s End Supernova” and turns it into an exercise of creating aural collages. “Pearl River” concludes the album with two minutes of water lapping against a pier.
When the band isn’t fiddling around with effects processors, they’re sharpening their skills in writing poignant slow songs. “Otoko no Ko to Onna no Ko” (“Boy and Girl”) has a majestic feel, while “Suna no Hoshi” (“Sand Star”) bounces along on a waltz meter. “Amadeus” is so indescript, it doesn’t register.
Perhaps the one track that epitomizes the creative direction of this album is “World’s End Supernova”, Quruli’s catchiest song to date. Kishida sings a plaintive melody over a driving four-on-the-floor beat, and yet the song’s Spartan arrangement darkens it.
It may feel like a dance song but one you’d dance to by yourself.
The World Is Mine definitely takes at least a week’s worth of listening before it reveals its beauty, and that might try the patience of long-term fans who love playing “Wandervogel” and “Bara no Hana” on repeat.
Quruli has taken a daring artistic step, and it’s not easy making that leap with them. But if you follow the band, they won’t steer you wrong.
OK — let’s get the comparrison blurb out of the way.
Nananine is the coin’s flipside to soulsberry.
There. Said it. Now let’s prove it.
Both bands traffic in a beefy, power chord-driven sound akin to Fountains of Wayne or a more polished Weezer, but Nananine edges precariously to the overused “emo” tag.
First off, singer Kawaseki Hiroshi has a less trained, more nasal voice than soulsberry’s Ishizaki Tomohiro. While Kawaseki’s voice may not have Ishizaki’s immediate appeal, Kawaseki definitely puts in a more emotional performance.
Check out Kawaseki’s workout on “Chasing Becky”. He practically makes his voice hoarse bellowing over Ono Kentaro’s energetic guitar work.
Nananine’s songs are also much brighter than soulsberry’s.
There’s no mistaking the exuberence of “Courtney” or “Orange” on Nananine’s first mini-album, Schnaff-rhythm for anything else.
soulsberry, on the other hand, might darken the edges a bit.
Although these differences seem subtle on paper — or rather, pixels — it becomes glaringly apparent in execution.
True, Nananine and soulsberry are aesthetic soulmates — right down to album covers — but scratch beneath the surface, and Nananine’s unpolished performance comes across as edgy and sweet.
Unfortunately, Nananine hasn’t quite graduated to the kind of studio budget that put viscera into soulsberry’s The End of Vacation.
If Nananine could hook up with a producer that could capture the essence of its live performance, the Fukuoka City quartet would definitely yield the album it has in them.
The Brilliant Green had better watch out — soulsberry and Nananine definitely have all the elements to snatch Kawase and co.’s alt-pop crown.