For some listeners, the path to hell leads to the music covered in this round-up. For me, it’s paved with the usual good intentions.
I keep wanting to cover more classical music on this site, especially of the modern variety. But my pop song rearing has me defaulting to the Björk and Shiina Ringo portions of my playlist than to the Györgi Ligeti or Concord String Quartet portions. All that to say my actual listening time for some of these releases are disproportionate to the listening times of more recognizable titles.
In other words, don’t expect anything insightful. If anything, the following few paragraphs are a Luddite’s perspective on new music.
I don’t know if a four-year college education is required to understand jazz, but it sure seems like it does. Just by tangential study, I could probably tell you what jazz was. But I was reared on pop, and despite a college education in classical music, I couldn’t begin to tell you what jazz is.
All that disclaimer to say, Ore wa Konna Mon Ja Nai (owkmjn, for short) feels like jazz to me.
But it’s not swing, it’s not be-bop, it’s not even Lower East Side Manhattan noise. If anything, the music of owkmjn is more closely rooted to indie rock than jazz. It’s the same kind of confounding improvisational style trafficked by LOSALIOS, just far more rhythmic and significantly more unhinged.
The band’s second album, dryly titled 2, is a difficult and challenging listen. The harmonies are brash and discordant, the rhythms complex and obtuse. Improvisation is important to the pieces, but it can take a back seat to hooks. And these hooks aren’t necessarily melodic.
The first Explosions in the Sky album I listened to was The Earth Is Not a Cold, Dead Place. I thought labelmates mono had a far stronger sound, but the more genteel aspects of the album ultimately won me over.
The second Explosions in the Sky album I listened to was How Strange Innocence. The band itself disclaimed the album as a product of youth, and I have to say a bigger studio budget did the quartet real justice. Not to say this auspicious debut was bad.
The third Explosions in the Sky album I listened to was Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever. Then I understood how powerful the band’s music can be.
Which brings me to the fourth Explosions in the Sky album, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone. It doesn’t stray too far from what has gone before, but it’s hard to dismiss there’s something different this time around.
How can you call an album "perfect background music" without having it come across as an insult? Because honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever consciously listened to Horn of Plenty by Grizzly Bear.
The album’s transparently sparse songs hover so close to a perceptual horizon that focus would dispel the music’s hypnotic charm. Yeah, I don’t know what that last sentence says either. I can only liken it to that time between dreaming and wakefulness, when the conscious mind can’t tell it’s slipping into a deep sleep.
Extend that feeling for the entire length of Horn of Plenty, and that’s what it feels like listening to this album.
The longer I wait to write reviews, the bigger the listening pile gets. And right now, the pile is pretty big. I think my Winamp playlist at home has about 2 1/2 days’ worth of stuff. I’ve tried to listen to it all, but sometimes, losses will just have to be cut.
So here are the albums that will go into the slush pile:
Back in the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, albums were just a collection of singles. Greatest hits albums, in fact, were some of the first kinds ever made. In Japan, that model still holds true. Many Japanese pop acts tend to release three or four singles before an album, and those singles invariably end up in the final product.
Such is the case with Tommy heavenly6’s second album, Heavy Starry heavenly. If you’re a fan who bought every single since the release of Tommy’s debut, you already possess eight of the album’s 12 songs. In fact, the only coupling track not to make it on the album is "Always Somethin’ New" from the "Heavy Starry Chain" single. The album itself offers up only four new songs.
Luckily, I did not buy any of the singles, so Heavy Starry heavenly ends up sparing me from having to. (I’m not so much of a fan to be a completist.)
I was wondering why orchestral versions of old Shiina Ringo songs seemed like a familiar idea. Then I remembered: Baisho Ecstacy, her concert DVD from 2003.
On that DVD, Shiina performed orchestral rearrangements of her songs, with Saito Neko conducting. My brother called it the closest thing she’s gotten to an MTV Unplugged concert. I was pleasantly surprised by how well her music adapted to new settings.
It’s been a while since I watched Baisho Ecstacy, so I haven’t confirmed whether some of those arrangements found their way into Heisei Fuuzoku. (I suspect not.) Nonetheless, the creative direction Shiina takes on her first solo album since announcing the end of her solo career (to form Tokyo Jihen) isn’t new.
The problem with stellar debut albums is that they sometimes set a bar that cannot be surmounted. Sasagawa Miwa’s 2003 debut album, Jijitsu, was one I couldn’t stop playing when I discovered it. Sasami has released more albums since, but her debut still casts a long shadow.
Mayoi Naku, her fourth album, finds the singer taking a starkly different approach from her previous works. On the whole, Sasagawa is an introspective writer, someone more comfortable with a tender song than a big gesture. While she includes enough of her trademark writing on Mayoi Naku, she’s also offset it with some very big gestures.
The title track effectively establishes the tone of the album — a mid-tempo song with thick orchestration and more guitars than she’s previously shown off. If there’s any stumbling to be made, Sasagawa gets it out of the way early on. The second and third tracks, "Yukigumo" and "Kourizatou", sound so similar, it’s easy to mistake them as a single song.
I had such a promising productive spurt at the start of the month, and then … nothing. It’s been a week since my last post, and I don’t know if I’m going to be all that prolific in the coming weeks.
For the past week, I’ve been immersed in QuarkXpress, dusting off my old page design skills from my print newspaper days. I’ve also been researching short-run CD duplication for Eponymous 4, just to see how it all works. I’ve been concentrating so much on that, I haven’t even updated any of the other blogs I write.
Next week, I’ll be flying home for vacation. I have a laptop now, and my brother said the house has wireless. So I might be able to post, but I make no guarantees.
Just to keep the cobwebs from gunking up this corner of the Internets, I’m going to do a braindump of the stuff on my playlist recently.
James William Hindle is a British queer folkie. Does the world really need another, British or otherwise? If his third album Town Feeling is any indication, the answer is yes.
Two things set Hindle apart — good songwriting and a grizzled voice. Hindle’s music is actually more country than folk, with pedal steel guitars and brushed snares setting the sonic backdrop.
You can picture the clichéd tumbleweeds tossing in the wind on "Birthday Candle", while the finger-picking on "Love You More" and "Sleeping Still" is far more rural than what Garrin Benfield or Dudley Saunders offer. The waltz meter of "Dog and Boy" is pure country, as are the twangy guitars on "Dark is Coming".