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Live Review: Cubismo Grafico Five And Avengers In Sci-Fi At Shangri-La Osaka, 07/10/10

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Seems most of Japan missed the film PCU, because most concerts feature tons of fans being “that guy” wearing a t-shirt from the band playing that night. It’s a weird flip-around, realizing you, the dweeb wearing another group’s swag, might actually constitute the minority. Self-consciousness doesn’t seem to exist at Japanese shows, replaced by real passion that almost demands you support the band in the spotlight via t-shirt. This seems to be especially true for Cubismo Grafico Five fans, who sports all manners of merch covered in random English phrases and band logos . It was the case the first time I saw them, and it was even more so at the band’s latest show, in support of new album Double Dozen. The band made sure to repay the fans devotion.

First, though, were fuzzy astronauts Avengers In Sci-Fi. These guys couldn’t be any less subtle about what theme they aim for – the band name, for one, is pretty telling, almost as much as the band’s first EP Jupiter Jupiter featuring a bunch of songs sporting titles imagined only by the most far-out NASA geeks around. Then there is the group’s actual sound, an especially loud and aggressive approach to rock coated in all sorts of “spacey” sounds, from Close Encounters keyboard to actual science fiction worthy samples. The added intergalactic sounds never seem forced, though, always coming off as integral to the songs as a whole. Live, Avengers bring a lot of energy to the stage, making huge rock-star poses and leaping onto the drum kit. At their very best, they sound like Klaxons on the moon and if the reception they got at Shangri-La pointed towards anything, they have a real potential to get big.

The vast majority of the crowd came for Cubismo though, as indicated by wardrobe selection. The last time I saw the band, they delivered a spazzy set where they jumped between genres as effortlessly as Shaq jumps from NBA teams. Somehow the Five managed to be even more rapid-fire at Shangri-La – the group’s woozily excellent new album Double Dozen crams, uh, a double dozen loony songs with none of them lasting more than three minutes in length. It does a great job of translating the Cubismo live experience to record, so naturally it worked wonders live Saturday night.

The way Cubismo Grafico Five leap from hardcore squealing to mall-punk to reggae (?!) to proto-barbershop quartet (??!!) from song to song (or sometimes, within a single song) makes it seem like the band are masters of manic improve, when really it’s testament to a kind of precision that wins gold medals in figure skating. Everything clicked together in a perfectly chaotic way, the rush of punk-followed-by-pop-followed-by-dub also being given a timeout so standalone tracks could get some extended time in the light. Double Dozen single “Life Is Like A Season” and it’s surf-rock riffing was a set standout, as was throwback closer “Jamaica Song.”

The one wildcard during Cubismo Grafico Five’s was Cubismo Grafico himself. Grafico aka Gakuji Matsuda shoots around the stage like the Tazmanian Devil, sometimes sprawling out on the floor or leaping into the crowd to let fans shout into the mic. He’s the physical manifestation of the group’s sound, a whirly dude who can’t stay still for very long. His singing is just as unchained, sometimes taking off in directions that improve upon recorded versions of the song. Case in point, “Chukit,” which on Double Dozen is an uplifting bit of “We Are The World” all-together-now. Live, though, Matsuda doesn’t have the support of a big chorus, so he had to do all the singing himself. Instead of delivering it straight, he shot it up a level, howling the second half, transforming it from feel-good group hug to damn near cathartic.

After the band exited stage left to the recorded sounds of Double Dozen closer “Ticket To Sound,” fans who hadn’t already bought the newest Cubismo Grafico Five merch made a beeline for the table set up in the lobby. These fans…many whom I recognized from my first CG5 show…are devoted, and it’s not hard to see after seeing the energy the band brings to the stage. I can’t wait for the sea of smiley face towels sure to be present at the group’s next Osaka gig.

Warmer Climes: Halfby’s The Island Of Curiosity

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I fully expect The Island Of Curiosity to be just as great an album in the fall as it is now. Come the freezing chokehold and increased heating bills of winter I’m sure Halfby’s latest album will be an excellent escape. But I’m positive he made this as a pure summer album, meant to serve as the soundtrack to days spent sweating away inside or on drives to the local waterpark. Don’t be phased by the calendar telling you you’re halfway to the Fall…we are just entering peak Summertime, which means you still have time to embrace Island as you’re Summer jam album.

This album’s so damn tropical I’m stunned it didn’t come from Sweden. Halfby embraces the Baeleric sound favored by nearly everyone on the Sincerely Yours label and Studio. Tracks like the woozy “Blue Condition” and the gliding wonder of “Never Click” ooze over with warm sounds that continue to drive bloggers into a tizzy. Album highlight “Whispering My Name” captures the joyous summer feel best, turning a female vocal sample into a breathless sound seemingly caught in the breeze. It’s all set against Island’s most wide-eyed sounds, a Club-Med worthy mash of island instrumentation. It’s never complicated and often to the point – on “Hunting Out Of Season” Halfby basically rejiggers Vampire Weekend’s “Cousins” but tosses aside the biggest roadblock to enjoying that bunch (the vocals). Island abounds with simple pleasure sounds perfect for this particular season.

Not to imply Halfby’s music isn’t well constructed. “Juicy” finds the producer laying out a sacks-worth of brief hip-hop samples over a steel drum dominated beat. He times each sample…whether it be Flava Flav or Sugar Hill Gang…just perfectly, so the song never loses its party vibe. Even better is the sample-delic “Mad Surfin'” which piles Bollywood onto chipmunked raps onto who knows what. This album’s obvious fault…that it’s too summery…gets steamrolled over by Halfby’s excellent production, which manages to stir up familiar ingredients into exciting tastes on each new song.

The majority of Island is made up of breezy instrumentals, but three tracks feature guest singers. Opening song and lead single “Man On Fire” drafts Broadcast 2000’s Joe Steer to sing over a sea of guitar and bottle clinks. He delivers the goods, adding an extra punch to an already good song. Even better is “North Marine Drive” with Skibunny’s Tanya Mellotte. Whereas “Man On Fire” slows the pace down a bit, “Drive” moves at the same speed of Halfby’s instrumental works but drizzles Mellotte’s sweet voice over it. The resulting chorus is an absolute beast of emotional dynamite, the type of huge hook the best Sincerely Yours’ artists hit on. Last is closing track “Peace Pipe,” with vocals by Is Tropical, a bouncy bit of island flavor that comes off as a little goofy for a finale.

Like ice cream, baseball and Predators, I’m sure you can get a fair amount of enjoyment out of Island during the colder times of the year. But it is at it’s best now, during scorching days and bug-filled nights. 2010, meet the soundtrack for you’re next two months.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAiyo1Sy-lc&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Review: MEG’s Maverick

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Poor, poor MEG. She’s the J-Pop sibling doomed to average-ness, not nearly as popular as sister Perfume and not remotely as cool as brother Capsule. If techno-disco-pop mirrored a Wes Anderson film MEG would be the mediocre family member who isn’t even a glorious failure. Her latest full-length Maverick comes in the middle of the year already boasting one great Yasutaka Nakata produced album (Capsule’s Player) and a pair of excellent Nakata-produced Perfume singles. If none of those albums or songs came out in 2010…or simply waited until the Fall…MEG probably would be showered with a bit more praise. Unfortunately, release dates don’t care and Maverick ends up being just OK.

Not to imply the reason her seventh LP falls a little short is because of a glut of Japanese electro-pop. I’m counting down the days until the next set of new Perfume joints trickle online sometime in August. Rather, all this great Nakata-helmed music shines a light on how MEG comes up short on Maverick. It’s not a bad album per se, just sorta a bad example of this type of music.

Divorced from a greater context, Maverick features plenty of good songs. Like all other Nakata projects, MEG joins digitally affected vocals with vaguely disco templates…or outright ones on the almost too-disco number “Destination”…to create at times ready-to-burst pop loaded with electric wooshes (though not nearly as manic as Perfume or Capsule). There’s the punchy pop-strut of “Gray” and the twinkling “Story” and even a few ballad-wannabes. Nakata uses one of his most endearing production tricks…big, cheesy 80s drums…on two songs here, making both tracks immediate highlights. There are very few moments on this album that could really be called outright mistakes…though, I see ya “Hanabi”…and for the most part Maverick is a consistently OK listen the whole way through.

Which isn’t how this J-electro-pop should work. Give last year’s Triangle or this year’s Player a spin and note how inconsistent those albums come off. They’ve got legitimate dud tracks…but also huge pop triumphs that make wading through the misses worth it. Maverick plays it safe, dodging missteps but also seldom resulting in anything truly thrilling. The only pop monster here is first single “Secret Adventure,” a bouncy treat that holds its own with any of the other big electro-pop hits of the year. But it’s the only one. Indie bands taking cues from this genre don’t settle for alright-ness…they shoot for the same chart-topping choruses. MEG chooses not to and suffers because of it.

Being like everyone else isn’t the only way MEG could have gone and helped Maverick’s case, because there seems to be another direction hinted at on the album she sorta squandered away. Perfume and Capsule at times evoke the 80s, but there brand of nostalgia strikes like a 13-year-old kid wearing a He-Man shirt. MEG, though, sometimes hits on an honest-to-goodness throwback sound that actually charts the same territory as M83 (well still sounding completely different), most prominently on the slowly unfolding title track. Here is where MEG has the best chance to carve out a unique sound separating her from the other Nakata-groups, but she never embraces it on this album.

Maverick isn’t a bad album by any stretch, just an extremely middling one. It’s the missed opportunities…either at giant pop or something a bit more experimental…that truly frustrate. This album screams “missed opportunity,” and leaves MEG the unassuming sibling of the Japanese electro-pop scene.

Aside: Though the album is a let down, the video for “Secret Adventure” rules. You make an homage to Star Fox and you got my vote MEG.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhahA2_W538]

Review: Cubismo Grafico Five’s “Life Is Like A Season” 7″

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Seeing that Cubismo Grafico Five’s new album Double Dozen drops this Tuesday, reviewing the group’s “Life Is Like A Season” 7″ release a scant day before the official LP release is like writing a blog post about a fancy restaurants breadsticks before the main course. I love breadsticks, though, so consider this a super-tiny preview of Cubismo’s latest full-length.

With it’s surf-rock guitars leading the charge, it’s pretty easy to see why the band chose this as the album’s lead single. It’s an insanely catchy mess complete with moments seemingly built specifically to be mimicked back at the band during live performances…the hand-clap bridge and shout-worthy lines “oh yeah we are gonna get on top!” Like other advance song “Chukit,” though, the track carries a surprisingly strong emotional heft with it. Specifically, the chorus, where Cubismo manages to squeeze a lot of feeling out of just the song’s title. It doesn’t last long, but “Life Is Like A Season” makes its presence felt in a short run time.

The 7″ also features fellow Double Dozen track “Insanit L.Y.” Even more raucous than “Life Is Like A Seaon,” “Insanit” clouds frantic guitars and drums over the vocals. It’s pure energy compared to the title tracks swaying pace…it even manages to last even less than “Life Is Like A Season.” Divorced from the LP, it feels a little too scant, but chances are it works within the album’s confines.

Cubismo also includes a remix of Double Dozen (and not available at the moment) track “Catcher In The Riot!” done by Signals, aka three dudes who used to be in sadly missed LA outfit The Mae Shi. Having not traveled into the future to hear the original mix, I’m guessing Signals are responsible for this take’s hip-hop vibe and the glitchy feel of the vocals. It’s a stuttering track that does its job (fill up the back side of a 7″), though it makes me less excited about Cubismo Grafico Five and more about Signals. Fair enough…only one day away from getting the Five’s latest album, plenty of time to be pumped then.

Review: She Talks Silence’s Noise And Novels

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Earlier this year, popular foreigner-catering ad-vessel Japanzine named Keikaku.net one of the best Japanese music websites. A fine choice, seeing as it is one of the most thorough spots dealing with Japanese artists. But also a troublesome one, as Keikaku at the time hadn’t updated in almost six months. The writer made note of this, arguing a static Keikaku still bested all the other “pretenders” out there. Since then, Keikaku has seen two recent updates, but Japanzine’s selection still points out a sobering truth about music in Japan…not many people are covering it nowadays.

Though always a blip on the world music scene, Japanese music was a bit trendy back in the 90s. Bands like Shonen Knife, Boredoms, Pizzicato Five and Cornelius all got decent Western media buzz and Boredoms even managed to land on Lollapalooza. The rise of the Internet, obviously, changed the game completely. Everything about music fell into niches – if you liked hip-hop you read this website, if you liked rock, that one, so on and so forth. Japanese music outside of J-Pop (which still maintains a large online presence in some part to a heavy crossover with the world of anime fans) got lost in the shuffle. A few artists – Boredoms, Boris, Polysics, to some degree Shugo Tokumaru – were adopted by the indie-leaning communities. But they were just indie artists who happened to be from Japan. Few sites comprehensively looking at the Japanese music scene emerged…Keikaku was one of them, but recent inactivity has made Japan even less present in discussions about music by Western media.

It’s an annoying truth, but a truth all the same. So the question becomes…how many great Japanese musicians/albums has the world missed out on because of the state of things? It’s a thought easily projected onto any country, from Vietnam to Belarus to even America, but in an age where the Internet hypothetically allows access to more music than ever before but also means a ton of it is being passed by, what have we missed? I’m betting a lot. And how much more will pass right by?

She Talks Silence doesn’t make it easy on herself to standout, even in her native Japan. She posts relatively little info online and her debut album Noise And Novels does its best to stay out of the limelight. Instead of anything close to being considered cover art, her first full-length comes packaged with several random photos (I got the one above), a sticker attached to the clear jewel case featuring the tracklist, and a thin bookmark listing the sparse album info. On one hand it’s appropriate for the music within – mysterious, creative, sign of someone more introverted than they want to be – but also bound to turn Noise And Novels into a rare mushroom that also grows inside a room that doesn’t actually exist for most people.

Which isn’t right in a world where stuff like this isn’t supposed to fall through the cracks. She Talks Silence (STS from here on out) could even be hitched on to all sorts of indie music trends – she’s one part bedroom pop ala Atlas Sound and one part fuzzy garage rock like Dum Dum Girls, but so much more than a “RIYL” Tumblr post. From the first lonely plucks of “Hear The Way, She Talks,” STS takes you into her shadowed world, an isolated place that constantly unsettles like a David Lynch film. What could have been ordinary pieces of bedroom rock…the kind clogging the indie blog-o-sphere like so many Scott Pilgrim-ized avatars…become creepy but tantalizing. The weird samples bookeneding “She’s Not Going Back.” The inverting-piston sounds of “Josef.” The deep electronic hits of “Complexe Elegant.” Even the should-have-been-disposable segue “Sorry For Laughing (But It’s Kinda Phoney)” transforms into something compellingly strange via wobbly keyboard and floating speech.

Not to paint Noise And Novels as the CD equivalent of Eraserhead, because for all the jarring bits STS still delivers catchy music. “Quiet Sun” and “She’s Not Going Back” are, at their core, great blasts of garage rock avoiding needless fuzz in favor of simple melodic pleasure touched slightly by new wave. Strip away all the disorienting details of “Complexe Elegant” and you’re left with bouncy rock. Album highlight “Again & Again” comes closest to being out of place, an un-muddied affair built from simple guitar lines and a straight-ahead beat. It even has the most chorusey chorus on Noise And Novels, almost bright enough to be pop.

“Almost,” though, is the key word, as STS offsets any wide-eyed optimism over the course of this album with lonely thought. Despite sounding sorta of cheery, “Again And Again” is really just desperate longing, highlighted by simple-but-stinging lines like “you don’t see me.” The chorus swirls around like an unrequited desire you can’t shake, too frantic to be depressing but too defeated to be cheery. This is an album about being isolated in a very modern way, not necessarily just being alone but rather being drowned out and looked over. Call it a stretch, but I think this manifests itself in STS’s vocals, sometimes distorted and obscured but always there trying to grab you. Distinctively modern.

This album, then, serves as an excellent compliment to another great album released by a Tokyo group this year – Puffyshoe’s Something Gold. Though Puffyshoes play loud, fuzzy rock sometimes bordering on the ridiculous (“I Scream For Ice Cream”), they manage to capture the loneliness of living in modern urban Japan. The comparatively restrained STS wades in the same thematic waters – on “Josef” she sings about being in the city, and this sense of being smothered by society comes through strong on Noise And Novels. Puffyshoes hammered that sense home with noise, but STS gets it across with unease.

After 25-minutes of vaguely unsettling rock, Noise And Novels becomes clear on the last two tracks. “Tales Of The New Age” delivers melancholy-tinged pop over Pavement-worthy guitar, STS’s most straightforward moment to date but also still affecting. Everything wraps up nicely on concluding track “I Know It’s Over.” Here she resigns herself to the loneliness around her, but manages to cling to some hope as the song reaches its finish. Following a bunch of songs dripping with confusion, STS comes to a clear realization and lets a little bit of sunlight in.

It’s sadly appropriate an album shaped by the overwhelming rush of today is almost certainly bound to be passed over completely. Noise And Novels came out in April and very few websites have written about it. As mentioned, it’s not an easy album to get…I found a whole one copy in early June at a record store in Kyoto…but still can’t somebody outside of Japan stumble across her MySpace at least? This album…one of the best of the year in any country…and this artist deserve a wider audience and I’m going to shout that out from my tiny insignificant corner of the Internet loud as I can. It might just be a niche, but it’s a niche worth hearing.

Get the album online at Jet Set Records.