OK — let’s get the comparrison blurb out of the way.
soulsberry is the male version of the Brilliant Green.
There. Said it. Now let’s debunk it.
Both bands traffic in insanely tuneful late-60s-meets-early-90s alternative pop. While the Brilliant Green lean more toward the Byrds-by-way-of-R.E.M., soulsberry goes for a beefier, power chord-driven sound akin to Fountains of Wayne or a more polished Weezer.
The band’s members lists a number of 70s-influenced alternative rock acts as favorites — Jellyfish, Blur, Elliott Smith, Jason Falkner. Bespectacled lead singer Ishizuka Tomohiko could very well be Rivers Cuomo’s Japanese cousin.
The End of Vacation, soulsberry’s “major” debut on Avex Trax, sports a stronger, more robust sound than the band’s self-titled indie album, effectively capturing the energy of the Hokkaido quartet’s live show.
A re-recorded version of “Smash”, in particular, shows how far the band has come. With a slightly faster tempo and a hook played in double-time, this newer version of “Smash” improves vastly on the old.
soulsberry’s punchy performance, however, doesn’t quite mask a dark undercurrent inherent in the band’s music.
“Spirit Song” rocks out, but if it were played at half tempo on acoustic guitars, it would definitely transform into something more haunting. “Personality” sounds as angry as it does joyous.
When Ishizuka proclaims “It’s a beautiful day” on the like-titled opener (“Beautiful Day”), he sings the line with more biting delivery than the lyrics reveal.
Played side by side with fellow countrymen and aesthetic soulmates Nananine, soulsberry comes across as buoyantly poignant.
soulsberry definitely have all the trappings for a critics’ darling band and more than enough potential to be hitmakers. The End of Vacation packs one well-written, terrifically-performed song after another.
Two years ago, this very web site declared FEED as the best UK band not to come from the UK. If that award were bestowed today, it would easily go to farida’s cafe.
Where FEED evoked the Cranberries and the Smiths, farida’s cafe would probably be lumped (somewhat unfairly) with all the UK bands gunning for Radiohead.
Of course, most writers evoke the name “Radiohead” because the kids reading music mags these days wouldn’t recognize the name “the Cure”, let alone “the Sundays”.
Led by the angelic croon of Rie Sekine, farida’s cafe specializes in the kind of high volume, introspective alternative pop that steers clear of any navel-gazing preciousness. Jewel, this band is not.
Sekine, who lived in Canada before returning to Japan, flawlessly switches between Japanese and English on the band’s debut, Hear Nothing. Her powerful voice dominates such songs as “G-Song” and “Kaerimichi”.
Even though the band’s songs slower songs tend to start quietly, it doesn’t stop guitarist Andre Sakai from tearing out a loud riff midway.
“Tuesday” and “Watchman” both begin as seemingly haunting songs, then turn into a roaring epics. “Until It’s Mine” stays pretty quiet until the chorus, when the band kicks in with full force.
farida’s cafe works best when they’re rocking out, as they do on “Kaerimichi”, “G-Song” and the album’s title track. With the likes of Starsailor, South and Elbow cashing in on the whole “slow is more” aesthetic, it’s nice to see a band like farida’s cafe navigate both fast and slow tempi.
Hear Nothing, however, suffers from a somewhat indescript mix. There’s always a sense the guitars could be louder, the vocals more forward. It’s easy to imagine the band’s songs would sound far more powerful in a live setting.
Still, Hear Nothing is an incredibly strong beginning for farida’s cafe. If chasing Radiohead gets tiresome, check out this Japanese quartet instead.
The public relations machinery behind Norah Jones’ debut is some of the most disproportionate effort placed on an album in recent memory.
When writers from Newsweek start name-dropping Alicia Keys to describe Jones, there’s a definite whiff of publicist strong-arming.
Keys and Jones couldn’t come from more different musical planets. The former traffics in slick, hyper-produced R&B, the latter in intimate, country-tinged cabaret vocals.
No sleight to Jones’ house guitarist Jesse Harris, but Bill Frisell should have been all over this album. Fortunately, the Seattle-based downtown New York City legend shows up on “The Long Day Is Over”, and does he ever sound totally at home.
Like Frisell, Jones performs jazz music with the heart of a country artist.
Although her singing affects a smokey Dinah Washington-by-way-of-Erika Badu timbre, her music is thoroughly grounded in twang and heartbreak, all without using a single steel pedal.
Jones’ ghostly cover of Hank Williams’ “Cold, Cold Heart” sums up the entire album nicely — she captures the essence of the song without sounding anything like a country diva.
On “Turn Me On” and the album’s title track, Jones tackles Memphis blues with uncanny coolness, while on “Seven Years” and “Nightingale”, she dabbles in the singer-songwriter prettiness that made the careers of Shawn Colvin and Lyle Lovett.
“Lonestar” could have been a demo outtake from an Emmylou Harris recording session with Daniel Lanois. Lucinda Williams could have applied her rough-hewned drawl on “Feeling the Same Way”, and Mandy Barnett could have fleshed out the Patsy Cline potential of “Don’t Know Why” and “One Flight Down”.
If anything, Jones has probably made an album closer to the spirit of country than most self-styled country artists. Tim McGraw and Faith Hill could cover Bruce Robison songs till their blue in the faces, and they just might reach the kind of immediacy of Jones.
While Jones, who was raised in Dallas, infuses her songs with a southern sensibility, Come Away With Me is far more versatile than anything Music Row could ever produce.
Keeping her minimalist arrangements strictly to a tight-knit house band, Jones avoids the country pitfall of emotive excess. Come Away With Me occupies a creative space where whispering expresses more than belting and categorization is just a nice suggestion.
In other words, people who wouldn’t be caught dead handling a Willie Nelson record can walk out of a music store with Jones’ album in one hand and their pride in another.
P.S. Any chance Jones can snag Frisell and producer Wayne Horvitz for her next album?
Japanese artists — or perhaps, their label bosses — strongly abide by that old addage: “If ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Onitsuka Chihiro’s inoffensive, inspirational, hook-filled balladry has been a huge hit in Japan for the past two years. The young singer-songwriter even managed to land a television spot in an American ad for Applied Materials.
As such, the last thing Onitsuka would want to do is rock the boat, which she doesn’t do on her second album, This Armor.
Everything that made Insomnia work the first time takes another bow on This Armor — an arsenal of introspective, pretty ballads interspersed with an occasional uplifting, up-tempo song. In short, it’s Insomnia, Part II.
If Onitsuka weren’t such a good songwriter, she could be accused of being totally predictable and only marginally original.
This time around, her songs are fleshed out. Before, it would be just Onitsuka and her piano. Now, tracks such as “Ibara no Umi”, “infection” and “Ryuuseigun” have a sense of direction, building up to an inevitable dramatic climax.
Even when she keeps things minimal, like on “Shadow” and “Arrow of Pain”, there’s a lot more going on than on such previous hits as “Memai” and “edge”.
Onitsuka’s limited singing abilities once again imbues her songs with an unpolished, emotional rawness that gives her the apperance of depth. If Mariah Carrey or Celine Dion covered Onitsuka’s songs, they’d become instantly shallow.
However much Onitsuka’s feel-good, God-loving music might grate on the sensibilities of old curmudgeon critic-types, her tuneful music ultimately wins listeners over.
Onitsuka doesn’t have the kind of bold artistic vision of labelmates Number Girl or Shiina Ringo — or even Utada Hikaru, for that matter — but what she does, she does well.
Bonkin’ Clapper pretty much occupy the same aesthetic space as Missile Girl Scoot — huge guitar riffs, choruses with hooks, a rapping front woman who also sings.
All the elements that made Missile Girl Scoot a sure-fire bet also make Bonkin’ Clapper pretty enjoyable too.
At both Austin and New York City Japan Nite performances in March 2002, Bonkin’ Clapper won audiences over, selling out copies of the band’s most recent disc, Bonkanesia.
The album’s seven tracks doesn’t quite give Bonkin’ Clapper enough space to explore the vocabulary of rock ‘n’ roll the way Missile Girl Scoot does, but that doesn’t stop them from trying.
Michael Corcoran of the Austin American-Statesman beat me to the Lucious Jackson comparrison, an influence clearly evident on “Mars Stone” and “Power to the People”.
“My Way” owes a bit to the Kinks, while the framing tracks “Intro” and “48th. Street (T.A.D.)” indulge in some Middle Eastern ambience the way Pearl Jam’s Ten did. (Someone shoot me now — I just made a reference to Pearl Jam’s Ten.)
The biggest difference that separates Bonkin’ Clapper with its musical brethen in MGS is a studio budget.
Bonkanesia sounds like it could have benefited if everything from the guitars to the rhythm section were punched up a bit more. The base energy of the band’s live show comes through on recording but not its full, head-crushing impact.
70*, however, has a tremendous vocal presence. She dominates Bonkanesia the same way Junn and U-Rie tend to get buried on their respective albums.
On “My Way” and “Warp!!”, she bellows and snarls like she owns the whole fucking planet, and damn if she doesn’t. At the same time, she can draw back when she needs to, as she does on the epic “Rookies Story”.
Even though Bonkin’ Clapper is far from being the first band to make an honest go of mixing up rap and rock, they certainly rate as one of the most fun — something seriously lacking with American bands purporting to sport the same muse.
First, an English lesson: If N.E.R.D. really stands for “No One Ever Really Dies”, the trio should use the British spelling of “no one” — Noone Ever Really Dies.
Other, more reputable music publications have already chimed in about In Search of …, and by now, everyone’s heard about how the band released one version of the album, didn’t think it was edgy enough, re-recorded it and released it again.
It’s tempting to write A-B reviews comparing In Search of … v.2 with In Search of … v.1, and for good reason — with the live drums and guitars, the new version of In Search of … really does sound like a totally different album.
Besides, the Neptunes are riding such a wave of hype, it’s easy to get curious about them. More to the point: can people who usually despise hip-hop get into N.E.R.D.?
First, some perspective. In Search of … v.2 has been reluctantly described has a rap-rock album. The term “rap-rock” pretty much conjures up images of blistering metal riffs backing spit-fire freestylers, most of whom are white.
In reality, In Search of … attempts to find a middle ground where it’s neither rap nor rock. Sure, there’s no mistaking the elaborate hip-hop rhythms, and Shay does his share of rapping. But when the guitars kick in on “Lapdance” or “Rock Star Poser”, it’s definitely a raised-fist moment.
By employing live instruments on the album, N.E.R.D. has injected some humanity into hip-hop without having to use a tired heavy metal cliché.
It’s easy to find all this cool and pioneering — if you’ve never listened to Dragon Ash’s Lily of da Valley.
Now, there’s an album that did away with the middle ground and went beyond rap and rock. In spirit, the Neptunes seem to want to accomplish what DJ Bots has been doing for years.
Still, In Search of … has a rock ‘n’ roll spirit that comes through loud and clear. N.E.R.D. hasn’t quite produced the watershed album most American journalists would like you to believe, but they’ve certainly created something special.
Maybe hip-hop really is more interesting than MTV makes it out to be.
I’ll disclose my lack of expertise in the genre right off the bat. My knowledge of hip-hop is as informed as a judicial defintion of pornography — I don’t know what it is, but I’ll know it when I hear it.
But if the guys in Dragon Ash have any say in the matter, they’re going to keep me guessing.
Steady & Co. is the latest of Japanese supergroup side projects. Furuya Kenji and DJ Bots of Dragon Ash teamed up with Ilmari of Rip Slyme and Shigeo of Skebo Kings to produce one of the most distinct rap-rock projects anywhere.
Of course, “rap-rock” is an incredibly imprecise description for Steady & Co. Unlike Dragon Ash’s seamless intergration of metallic riffs and sampled rhythms, Steady & Co. aims for a more unplugged sound on the quartet’s debut, Chambers.
Furuya, Ilmari and Shigeo are little more than window-dressing here — this is entirely DJ Bots’ show.
And Bots does a brilliant job crafting a spacious, acoustic tapestry of upright bass rhythms, six-string guitars, electric pianos and those trademark beats.
On “Sorrow”, “Stay Gold” and “Time Erases Everything”, Bots and co. expand on the balladry hinted by Dragon Ash on “Shizukana Hibi no Kaidan wo” and “Face to Face”.
Jazzy bass lines and thundering beats drive “Pass da Mic”, “Kaze Makase” and the title track, while snappy hooks stamp “Wonderland”, “Hip drop” and “Up and Down” with a singular identity.
Chambers does sound homogenic after a while, and for all of Bots’ sonic weaving, he doesn’t do much with the tempo lever on his gear. The album starts to become a blur by the end.
Still, Chambers sounds like nothing else happening in hip-hop or rock music. Steady & Co. effectively sews together hip-hop and jazz the same way Dragon Ash blur rap and rock into a whole bigger than its parts.
That’s far more than MTV would ever imagine possible.
There was always something suspicious about Buffalo Daughter’s critics’ darling status in the States.
When the trio was first introduced to American audiences, Shonen Knife and Pizzicato Five had just recently wedged its way into hipster consciousness by being cute, quirky and Japanese.
American label heads go with what’s familiar, and Buffalo Daughter’s mix of indie rock swagger with sampling acumen must have seemed like a really cool way to ride the coattails of P5 and Shonen Knife — at the same time.
New Rock, Buffalo Daughter’s 1998 album on Grand Royal, was certainly an interesting work, but was it really a magnum opus indie media outlets made it out to be?
As it turns out, no, it wasn’t.
After New Rock, Buffalo Daughter released a few remix discs but no new material. In that time, the Beastie Boys folded Grand Royal. In 2001, the trio re-emerged with I, and everything that made Buffalo Daughter mildly interesting turned into a driving creative force.
This time around, Buffalo Daughter has incorporated more traditional songwriting elements into its lush sonic canvas.
Before, the band was content to sprinkle minimal lyrics amid dissonant guitar riffs and analog blips and bleeps. On I, they’ve added verses, choruses and melodies to that palette.
“Discotheque du Paradis” could have just remained a typical BD song by leaving out words all together, but SuGar Yoshinaga graces the song’s “Copa Cabana” rhythm with a sweet vocal.
Although “Robot Sings” and “Five Minutes” contain the kind of lyrical sparseness of New Rock, the songs are driven by entire verses, not just one-liners and non-sequitirs.
“Earth Punk Rockers” layers multiple tracks of vocals over ominous synthesizer effects and a menancing guitar lick, while “Volcanic Girl” calls to mind the straight-ahead rock of Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her. Hands down, they’re the toughest songs on the album.
I also feels like more of an epic, with interludes such as “I Know” and “28 Nuts” making obtuse segues. Two-second gaps are in incredibly short supply here.
By the time “A Completely Identical Dream” wraps the entire album up, skeptics get the impression Buffalo Daughter are certainly more than they initially let on.
And fans will definitely feel the group has grown incredibly since the last time they were around.
Dependable. It’s not the most flattering adjective to describe a music group.
Calling a rock band “dependable” implies it’s creatively stiffled, only capable of doing one thing over and over.
Midnight Oil is dependable. Album after album, the five guys from Down Under deliver larger-than-life hooks, straight-ahead rock, and so-important-it-matters lyrics. They’ve stuck to this formula for a good 20 years, and it hasn’t failed them or their audiences.
Capricornia, in turn, is a dependable Midnight Oil album. Everything long-time fans — even Johnny-come-latelies that came aboard 15 years ago with Diesel and Dust — come to expect from the group is here. They even brought back producer Warne Livesley to twiddle the knobs.
As such, Capricornia is one of Midnight Oil’s less cluttered albums.
It’s just the band, the songs and Peter Garrett’s familiar urgent warble. But for some reason, this album takes much longer than the band’s previous work to warm up to.
Perhaps it’s because Capricornia is the Oils’ first album to be released Stateside in four years — and it comes on the heels of two of the band’s most challenging works.
After an 18 month tour forced the group into a long hiatus in the early 90s, Midnight Oil re-emerged in 1996 with the rough, demo-like Breathe. Then two years later, the band came out swinging with the loud, electronic-heavy Redneck Wonderland.
Both albums marked incredibly wild departures for the group. Breathe barely had any electronics, while Redneck Wonderland drowned in them.
Capricornia, by comparison, sounds familiar, and it is — Midnight Oil is a rock band, first and foremost, and this album returns to that simple aesthetic.
But adjusting to the usual modus operandi of Capricornia takes some getting used to. Midnight Oil spent the last half of the previous decade on a creative rollercoaster, and man has it been some ride.
In other words, fans who love Midnight Oil when they stick to the rock ‘n’ roll they know best will find Capricornia a true delight.
But anyone who holds the group to the creative highs they had established for themselves might feel jarred to hear them going back to the basics.
Some bands, such as the Grateful Dead, Phish and Dave Matthews, have developed reputations for delivering live performances that differ vastly from recordings.
For other musicians, the only thing that separates their live albums from their studio recordings is audience noise.
Sade’s performances on Lovers Live don’t really sound much different from its recordings. (We’re talking Sade the band, here — not just Sade the singer.)
In fact, the one spot where the live performance greatly expanded on the original — at the very end of “Smooth Operator” — gets the fade-out treatment.
Does this mean Lovers Live isn’t worth spending money on? Of course not.
As an ensemble, Sade is a tight group of musicians so in tune with its aesthetic, the energy and sensuality inherent in the band’s songs become even stronger.
If anything, Lovers Live puts more humanity, more warmth into music that’s already humane and warm to begin with.
In the eight years since Sade Adu last recorded an album, her voice has become more resonant. And hearing the group’s newer songs alongside its older material demonstrates how far the group has evolved musically.
“Jezebel” may be a gorgeous classic, but “Slave Song”, with its dub rhythm, is much more adventurous.
Fans who couldn’t see Sade on this latest tour will appreciate the track listing — a generous helping of classics, mixed with some album tracks and choice selections of new material.
Lovers Live probably makes for a better cross-section of Sade’s repertoire than 1994’s The Best of Sade.
For anyone who did catch the tour, Lovers Live does a terrific job of transporting a listener back to that night. Lovers Live the Tour was an incredible production, a brilliant mix of stagecraft and awesome performances.
In that sense, this album is a souvenir — a mighty fine one to experience again and again.