In the past, I’ve accused Rufus Wainwright of being precocious, calling his voice the strange love child between Thom Yorke and Shiina Ringo. I’ve complained about his debut album being too clever by half, all the while buying up every album he’s subsequently released.
And what’s up with the pork chops on the sides of his face? Such a fabulous little hipster he is.
At some point, my initial skepticism of Wainwright turned into fandom. At some point, the news of a new Rufus Wainwright album became something to anticipate, not that I ever dreaded it.
And so Wainwright releases Release the Stars, and it’s everything listeners come to expect from a Rufus Wainwright album — all lush orchestrations and dramatic climaxes, mouthy lyrics and sweeping melodies.
It’s comfort listening, something of which I’m usually wary when I recognize it. Wainwright set expectations with his previous albums, and he meets all of them with Release the Stars. There isn’t anything really new to point out about this recent set of songs.
The last two Björk albums conditioned me to appreciate her adventurousness while not exactly liking the results.
I understood the acclaim that greeted Vespertine upon its release, but that album didn’t even seep into my subconscious. Medulla started out as a terrific departure, but repeated listening revealed thin work. It would have been more effective if she really did go completely a capella.
With that history, I approached Volta with cautious optimism. It wasn’t long before I realized I actually enjoyed the album.
Matthew Cooper is the focal point for a battle between two feuding muses. In one corner is the muse who directs him to explore new timbres through long, static, droning works. In the other corner is the muse who directs him to write melodic pieces with conventional but odd harmonic rhythms.
As a result, he’s created a surprising body of work, unified by its ethereal aesthetic but divergent by its working methods. That’s the $10 way of saying he has a distinct sound even when he’s writing completely different pieces.
With copia, Cooper attempts to broker a cease-fire between the two muses, hoping to demonstrate that both can inform his music simultaneously. Whatever the terms of the peace accord, it’s clear the neo-classicist in Cooper got a better deal.
Hyakkei doesn’t strike me as a post-rock kind of band. Where post-rock by the likes of mono (who signed Hyakkei to its Human Highway label), Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai and Envy indulge in the crush of heavy guitars, Hyakkei instead aims for an uncluttered sound.
The emphasis is on the trio itself, the interplay of drums with bass, bass with guitar, guitar with drums. On Standing Still in a Moving Scene, the band’s debut album, the music is mostly genteel and melodic. At times, Hyakkei cuts loose and builds to a big climax, but its an ascent proportional to their size.
They won’t go from super soft to deafening loud with a flick of a wrist.
Long ago and far away, I happened upon a Livejournal writer who really, really couldn’t stand my reviews of Chara. So much so, she wished a pox on me. (Yup, fangirl.) Her valid criticism was that I didn’t listen to the lyrics, which I generally don’t for anyone. Judging by the music alone, Chara’s more recent albums didn’t really impress me, and her catalog is deep enough that exploring it would be a major undertaking.
I’m still not listening to Chara’s lyrics, but the music on Union, her first new studio album in five years, grabbed my attention. (I’m not really counting 2004’s A scenery of me.) The singles leading up to the release of Union certainly bade well.
"Sekai" found Chara really rocking out, while the electronic flourishes on "Crazy for you" made a spectacular backdrop for her unique voice. Similar to the singles leading up to Utada Hikaru’s Ultra Blue, a sense of creative clarity could be heard in Chara’s pre-release work.
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.
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.