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Category Archives: Music @ja

New Talking City 1994: “Love Won’t Let Me Wait”

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Talking City 1994 is one of the Japanese bands having a really good 2013. After being quiet for more than two quarters of 2012, the Osaka band has come back strong, releasing a strong three-song EP and several great stand-alone tracks. They’ve come along way since when they first popped up, developing a more polished sound. New song “Love Won’t Let Me Wait” sees yet another development in the group’s sound. Strangely enough, “Love Won’t Let Me Wait” sounds more sample based than band based, as it sounds like the group has just flipped an old song, the vocals fast forwarded. Whatever the source, the song is a funky bit of music that emphasizes the dancier side of the group. Listen below.

New Kyary Pamyu Pamyu: “Ninja Ri Ban Ban”

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Fresh off a European tour and preparing for two big shows in America, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu has released the video for her new single “Ninja Ri Ban Ban,” above. The song finds Yasutaka Nakata channeling traditional Japanese sounds and melodies into the song…appropriate given the subject matter focuses on being in love with a ninja. Features what sounds like a shamisen…in a song that also features some video-game-ready synths. It’s another colorful bit of production from Nakata, who sounds like he’s having a bunch of fun working with Kyary. The video, of course, is great too – it features a koi pun, laser arms and Kyary dressed as a ninja. Another winner from one of J-Pop’s best going.

Boyish Prep First Full-Length Everything You Say, Listen To “Crazy For You” Now

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I’m not silly enough to think indie-pop music will ever go away completely. As long as there are romantic boys and girls with guitars and access to twee.net (so, a lot of people), this stuff will always be around, all over the world (see the great Fear Of Men album that came out this year). Still, it feels like the Japanese boom in indie-pop that flared up last year should be over now, a new trend replacing the simply-strummed songs that have been a SoundCloud staple over the past 12 months. Thing is, it isn’t going anywhere…more and more of these acts pop up all the time, and longer-running outfits releasing proper albums. It is a big step up for these bands, jumping from the bedroom to the shelves of stores across Japan.

One of our favorites, Tokyo’s reverb-loving Boyish, will release their first proper album on Dead Funny Records on March 27. It’s called Everything You Say (that’s the title art above), and it features a lot of great Boyish songs that have been floating around over the past year like “Cupid,” The Hidden Secrets,” “Waiting In The Summer” and more. It practically plays like a best-of for the young group, a proper collection of their finest work from 2012 put into one place. “Crazy For You” appeared on an EP last year, but on Everything You Say appears in a new recording that sounds a tad crisper than what came last year. That said, the song still captures everything good about Boyish and Japan’s indie-pop scene; lovely, melancholic lyrics, a good bounce and a sense of DIY-ness pervading the whole track (can a voice sound DIY? Because Boyish’s vocals sure do). Listen below, and grab the album when it drops.

Now This Is A New Rush: Andersons

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“Young Love” is one of the most exhilarating songs I’ve heard so far in 2013. It comes courtesy of a Japanese band I had no idea existed until last weekend called Andersons, a boring name concealing something really special. “Young Love” does a lot of what the music I’ve fallen for so far this year does – it is, as the name hints at, interested in the past, in particularly the teenage years when romance first blooms and burns brightest. This is territory the likes of Shortcake Collage Tape and i-fls have explored too, but Andersons do one very different thing. Whereas the other two artists poke at memories, everything sounding like new-born nostalgia, Andersons capture the rush of that moment. They take inspiration from one of the finest just-waiting-to-soundtrack-the-credits-of-a-teen-movie songs ever, The Cranberries’ “Dreams.” Andersons move more quickly, though, and rarely slow down for anything. Instead, the words conveying all the heavy stuff. “Tell me how to smile/tell me how to touch/tell me how to speak” the lead singer pleads, before letting out an impassioned “love me! love me!” It’s teenage romance captured fantastically – not totally rational or particularly thought out, but earnest as fuck.

That it comes off a self-titled EP with three more strong songs only makes this discovery all the sweeter. “Walk Together” brings to mind the Fleetwood-Mac-inspired grooving of current American buzz-worthies HAIM, except with a part later in the song where the vocals trip over themselves. It’s a trick that also appears at the start of “Drive,” an even more laid-back number anchored by a simple-but-effective piano line and that voice, which really pushes this EP over the top. And it ends with “Nothing,” a sparse song in the mold of The xx, built around only piano, a clicky-clacky beat and THAT VOICE which turns a line as simple as “I have nothing to say” with one dripping with emotion, of history. Fantastic EP, listen here.

Rough Tide: Atlanta Girl’s “South Carolina”

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Atlanta Girl emerges from the ashes of the band Colorado Coronado, a duo who didn’t release much music during their time together but what did trickle out was pretty absorbing. Their one release Far Away, on netlabel Canata Records, showcases a group who takes their time playing with an idea, clearly influenced by the slow-building music of Atlas Sound but also at times much weirder than Bradford Cox. Their career highlight has to be “An Old Strange Man,” a six-minute-plus vision quest of a song that takes it time to get anywhere, Colorado Coronado sounding like two stoned kids around a campfire just seeing what came out of their instruments.

So now comes Atlanta Girl and a lot has changed – first song/video combo South Carolina gets in your face instead of slowly unfold. The dominant sound comes courtesy of some cheap-sounding electronics and a cracker-jack beat. Atlanta Girl’s vocals are a touch higher in the mix, and also a bit more all over the place in terms of quality. Just over a minute into the song, a screeching scream rips through the mix, as if serving as a test for listeners – you either are going to keep going, or stop right here. “South Carolina” is not the prettiest Japanese song you’ll hear in 2013, but it has two things going for it. First, it sounds like a more confrontational Talking City 1994, at least when that Osaka outfit was just starting out and making similarly sorta-ugly grooves. Second, Atlanta Girl tries to be an all-or-nothing affair, which is actually a nice change from a music scene keen on playing it safe.