Category: Reviews

Duran Duran: Rio (2009 Collector’s Edition)

The story of the release of Duran Duran’s Rio in the United States is circuitous. If you were a preteen in 1983 — like myself — this story would not reveal itself till the advent of the compact disc.

When I cross-graded my copy of Rio from vinyl (and cassette) to CD in 1992, I was shocked and dismayed by the music that came out of the speakers. It was not the one I spent my junior high school years spinning endlessly.

The arrangements of the side one tracks were thinner, and many of them were shorter. Surely, this mistake was made at the pressing plant? Actually, it wasn’t. (Ed note: And don’t call me Shirley.)

Capitol Records told Duran Duran the album had to be remixed to make it marketable to American audiences. For the CD reissue, the band opted to use the original UK mix instead. Over time, I would get accustomed to the original mixes, but they didn’t hold a candle to the album I studied at great length.

Today, I’m old enough to be a sucker for the reissue market, and yet again, I repurchased Rio, this time with the remixes I know and love.

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Van Tomiko: Van.

Do As Infinity, like many bands, is greater than the sum of its parts. When the duo announced it would break up in 2005, it seemed Do As Infinity had run its course. At the same, it was difficult to picture Van Tomiko and Owatari Ryo in another context.

Owatari’s band, MISSILE INNOVATION, didn’t have much innovation, and Van? Her solo career looks like a lot of bad planning.

First, she springs a solo album, Farewell, in 2006 with no singles to precede it — an odd course of action for a pop star in Japan. Then she releases a series of promising singles that … don’t lead to an album. Rather, she spends two years releasing covers before those singles are collected onto an album.

And the resulting work sounds like … Do As Infinity.

Sometimes you can’t help but be who you are.

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LEO Imai: LASER RAIN

LEO Imai’s major label debut in 2008, FIX NEON, held a lot of promise. Capturing the feel of New Wave without ripping it off wholesale, the album demonstrated Imai’s keen ability to synthesize the essence, not the sound, of a style.

He just sang too many "Oh oh oh"s while doing so.

He’s mitigated the wordless vocalizing on his second major label album, LASER RAIN, while also performing a major upgrade to the music. The music goes deeper into the dance roots of his refracted ’80s sound, dipping into some of the ’70s better moments, while maintaining a foothold in rock.

The opening single, "Synchronize", gets excessive with the Autotune, but with the spare disco bass and the space age effects, he’s more Sam Sparro than Duran Duran.

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Tomosaka Rie: Toridori.

One of the best singles Shiina Ringo ever recorded was not recorded by Shiina Ringo.

"Shoujo Robot" was the last single Tomosaka Rie would release before concentrating her attention on acting, leaving her abbreviated music career behind. Despite Tomosaka’s starring role, the three-track release was pure Shiina — part mechanical, part noir, all sophistication and all rock.

Compared to the pop confections of Tomosaka’s preceding albums, "Shoujo Robot" was the protein anomaly, a substantive ear meal.

That was in 2000, when Shiina was still a fairly new but rising commodity and Tomosaka was a burgeoning actress. Nine years have passed, and Shiina has become rock royalty. Back then, Tomosaka was boosting Shiina’s career. This time, it’s the other way around.

For Toridori., Tomosaka’s first album in almost a decade, she’s hooked up with Shiina and her Tokyo Jihen crew, plus members of Clammbon and Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. The difference from her early work is stark.

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Utada Hikaru: This Is the One

Utada Hikaru’s 2004 English-language debut, Exodus, came at a transitional time for the singer creatively.

The reliable template she forged in Japan over the course of three albums showed signs of wear, and what works at home risks getting lost in translation abroad. (Although for the multi-national Utada, where is home? And where is abroad?)

So she underwent a drastic sonic makeover, creating a heavy-handed work that bent too far backward to distance itself from what had gone before. Beneath all the sonic sizzle of Exodus was a songwriter reaching the end point of a style.

It would mean the beginning of another.

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Shiina Ringo: Sanmon Gossip

It took a few albums, but Shiina Ringo eventually distinguished her early solo work from her latter-day efforts with Tokyo Jihen. 2007’s Goraku even found her abdicating songwriting duties to her bandmates.

So when Shiina announced the release of her first new original solo album in six years, it was plausible to think the border between Ringo-chan and Tokyo Jihen would be maintained.

The pre-release single "Ariamaru Tomi," a tender rock ballad, hinted as much. It was a shock, then, when Sanmon Gossip turned out to be … a Tokyo Jihen album.

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Neutral Milk Hotel: In the Aeroplane, Over the Sea

Back when I worked at Waterloo Records, I would stock Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane, Over the Sea and think, "This album looks really precious."

The ornate cover art struck me as indier-than-thou, and the mouthy title all but screamed pretension — and that may very well be the case.

In an attempt to burn through some eMusic credits, I downloaded the album in late 2008, and I haven’t stopped playing it since. I loaded it into my iPod, and I’ve not deleted it. It’s still in my CD wallet, and I always cycle out newer acquisitions with older ones.

Sometimes I’m skeptical of near unanimous critical praise. In this instance, I was wrong.

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On the playlist, or Japan booty (as in treasure, not call)

(Holidailies Ed. note: "On the playlist" is a repeating column that gives brief reviews of what has been in rotation on my media player.)

In all honesty, everything I bought in Japan was something I previewed through the Evil Sharing Networks. I wanted to make sure if I were going to live with an album during my daily commutes, it would be something worth 3,000 or so yen.

In the months preceding the trip itself, I pretty much stopped buying CDs. Waterloo Records even had their pre-holiday season storewide sale, and the only thing I bought was a Kate Bush album. I have, however, been milking my eMusic quotas for all their worth.

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Antony and the Johnsons: The Crying Light

Some artists can get away with recording the same album over and over again. Antony Hegerty’s distinctive voice almost requires the most minimal of accompaniment.

So it’s no surprise The Crying Light contains more of the same sparse orchestral arrangements employed on previous albums. A full band pops up once, but for the most part, it’s Hegerty, a piano and a few other instruments to punctuate the open spaces.

That makes it all too easy to compare The Crying Light with the critically-lauded I Am a Bird Now, and personally, it’s not looking good for the former.

Hegerty can write a poignant piece of music like anyone’s business, but the kind of focus that served I Am a Bird Now so well is missing here. The album is just a bit too dour.

It does have its moments. The title track is a wonderful showcase for Hegerty’s unsettling vibrato. "Epilepsy Is Dancing" is an evocative title, but the song itself is sweetly lilting. "Aeon" eschews the piano for guitars, with Hegerty digging deep into his inner gospel singer.

The rest of the album revels a bit too much in transparency, pushing less to be less, not more. Hegerty has a compelling voice, but the compelling music that usually goes along with it isn’t quite there on The Crying Light.