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Welcome To “Stuff We Missed Month” At Make Believe Melodies!

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Last year, we devoted one week of the year to covering music somehow overlooked by the purveyors of this blog. Over the course of seven days, we rushed out reviews of albums and songs that caught our attention but either slipped by or required us to spend a lot of time thinking about. Or we got distracted by who knows what. As nice as it was to offer thoughts on great sounds that got by us, it was also a tad frantic putting out so much in such a short amount of time.

Which is why for 2011 Make Believe Melodies will stretch out the “Stuff We Missed” theme into a month-long celebration of stuff unfortunately missed so far this year. Whether we failed to write about something because we need to spend more quality time with it (Chabe, Sloppy Joe), or because there were other things on the burner (DODDODO) or just ’cause the clowns at Amazon ran out of copies to ship out (The Mornings), now is the time to revisit them. The time expansion helps us to also fit in more contemporary albums…the new Capsule needs reviewin’, while Puffyshoes and She Talks Silence both have fresh releases lurking in the shadows…while also allowing for a glance back. So keep an eye out this month!

Review: Salyu X Salyu S(o)un(d)beams

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The Salyu X Salyu project, a collaborative effort between J-Pop belter Salyu and future-savvy producer Cornelius, showcases one of the rarest forms of the “superstar musicians team up” trope. The duo’s album S(o)un(d)beams neither consolidates one another’s strengths into a unified style…see Madvillainy or to a lesser degree the work of Gnarls Barkley…nor do they cancel one another out into a mediocre mush…hello She & Him. Rather, the individual personalities of each artist manage to shine through brightly here, the two more or less doing the things they’ve always done, now just across from one another. Instead of trying to review Salyu X Salyu as one unit, lets instead focus on how each member of this album fare and draw a grand conclusion at the end.

Cornelius Side

Many people who normally wouldn’t give a lick about Salyu or J-Pop in general seem drawn to S(o)un(d)beams because of Cornelius’ involvement. Tough to blame them – since the mid-90s, he’s been the Japanese Beck, capable of dipping into nearly any genre he wants and coming out with something sounding uniquely his own. Over the course of three albums and all sorts of collaborations, he’s established himself as one of the smartest and strangest producers in the world. Couple this with a stunning live show and a Yo Gabba Gabba! appearance and you can understand why some message board denizens declare they don’t really care about the Salyu in Salyu X Salyu.

Those folks won’t be let down…Cornelius does what Cornelius does best on S(o)un(d)beams. He’s still a man in love with sound and, more specifically, how those sounds bounce around in the listener’s head. Like his own trio of LPs, this album demands headphones, the way noises in the left and right channels play with one another and how majestic it is when they come together in the middle. The funky-bass workout of “Mirror Neurotic” recalls his own “Fit Song,” while closing number “Tsuzuki Wo” seemingly beefs up the skeleton of his Muji jingle into something too joyful to be confined to a store. “Muse’ic” becomes an instant highlight in the Cornelius cannon because of how overjoyed it sounds, his usual approach of breaking apart a song and then reconnecting it into a 3-D puzzle (glued together by fat, electro bass) sounding especially triumphant in a song celebrating the creative catharsis of music itself.

Yet here’s the thing…though this record sounds gorgeous, it’s also pretty standard Cornelius operating procedure. Beautiful, but a lot of the songs on S(o)un(d)beams could easily be slight variations on his previous work (heck, I did that with just two track above, and one seems influenced by a commercial). Most of the time, Cornelius plops snippets of sound down into the song that sound a bit out-of-place at first but eventually everything comes together Intelligent Design like into a proper song. This album is a treat to listen to, but it isn’t a massive departure for Cornelius. Which, hey, is probably a good thing but given the amount of (admittedly, Internet based) people drooling over Salyu X Salyu just because of his production, it seems weird to just celebrate this work for being another example of Cornelius being Cornelius.

To be fair, the producer does explore some new territory over the course of S(o)un(d)beams. When Salyu doesn’t sing proper words but rather just makes noises, Cornelius can take those isolated calls and create staggering soundscapes. “Utaimashou” conjures up an alien world where Salyu coos like a bird, plays backwards and at one point turns into an old robot. In terms of production alone, nothing touches the title track, one of the most daring things Cornelius has done in his career. Given a chorus of Salyus, he creates a slowly unfolding sonic vista that lasts seven glorious minutes. These two songs stand as Cornelius highlights on this album.

Still, for the most part, Cornelius isn’t revealing anything new about his sound. Even given the Siren voice of Salyu, he mostly just dices it up and double it up, treating it like another sound to carefully arrange. Not a bad thing, mind you. On S(o)un(d)beams, he’s an excellent architect doing exactly what his job calls for. He’s just not the soul of the Salyu X Salyu project. That goes to…

Salyu Side

S(o)un(d)beams is Salyu’s album, a celebration of everything great about her past work and a grand rebirth, like Lady Gaga hatching out of an egg if that actually resulted in something. To properly understand why this is, a little history lesson is in order.

Despite being the “mainstream” side of the project, Salyu never really has been an A-list J-Pop star. She first popped up not as Salyu but as Lily Chou-Chou, a fictional singer in a movie in 2000. Four years later she finally debuted as, well, herself. Her albums tend to chart well – sophomore effort Terminal remains her best-selling album having moved 87,000 units and climbing as high as number two on the Oricon album charts (the follow-up got to seven, while S(o)un(d)beams hit 12). Her singles chart all over the place though – at her peak she’s gotten as high as 10 by herself, usually following somewhere between 15 and 23 (before that, though, adjust to something like between 30 and 100). A collaboration with Bank Band titled “To U” remains her best known song, having reached the second spot on the singles chart. Salyu’s not an obscure artist, but she doesn’t demand attention like cornballs Koda Kumi or Aiko.

Her strongest tool has always been her voice, a soaring sound capable of pushing upper registers without losing any power. Last year’s “Atarashi Yes” highlights everything great about Salyu – that voice, mostly, but also the way you don’t have to know a single word of Japanese or even what “yes” means to get the emotional oooomph of the single. She’s shown flashes of the same vocal power Bjork boasts. Yet Salyu’s never had a good album to her name…”Atarashi Yes” was among a pocket’s worth of good songs on her third album Maiden Voyage, a bloated affair weighed down by half-hearted stabs at mainstream balladry. Earlier releases Landmark and Terminal don’t fare much better. Salyu’s not a top-tier pop star, but whoever puts together her full-lengths desperately want her to be. Bjork carved out an identity while still in The Sugarcubes, whereas Salyu remains caught in J-Pop R&D. Up to now, she’s mostly been a case of “what if.”

Yet here, name doubled up, she’s set free to chase her “Muse’ic” without fear of censor. Cornelius hasn’t improved on Salyu’s voice, but rather crafted a sonic world wide open for her to do her thing from all sorts of angles. It’s not perfect – at this point, it should be acknowledged the album opens with a relative thunk via the annoying “Tada No Tomodachi,” a case of both Salyu and Cornelius relying too much on the gimmick of “a lot of voices at once!”…but what artistic re-emergence is? On S(o)un(d)beams she finds someone willing to let her experiment, and she dives headfirst into an opportunity that it seems like she has been waiting a long time for.

So…whereas in the hands of a more chart-obsessed person “Sailing Days” (the latest in a string of songs finding Salyu obsessed with boats) probably would have ended up a minor-key ballad, here it’s a little shanty that turns into a crescendo of Salyu’s crashing against the shore at a dizzying rate. Cornelius steps way to the background on “Kokoro” and just lets her sing hauntingly around minimal strings. “Dorei” and “Rain Boots De Odorimashou” find Salyu having some of the most fun she’s ever had on record, playing with the extremes of her voice on both (screech-iness on the prior, calmness on the latter). “Hostile To Me” doesn’t just feature a Bjork-like title, it finally finds Salyu making something resembling a Bjork-ish ballad. It all comes back to “Muse’ic,” where she emerges from a cocoon with big bright wings and like eight mouths just ready to sing the praises of art.

It’s tempting to give Cornelius more credit than he deserves for how Salyu sounds here, since the draw of Salyu X Salyu has always been “Salyu’s voice all over the place!” He deserves a lot of praise – excellent placing of her various vocal tracks, not to mention creating the music that that allowed her to sound like this – but he’s just an arranger for the most part. Salyu is the one giving the vocal performance of her career, one that doesn’t feature anything resembling the big pay-off moments like “Atarashi Yes” but rather sees her exploring every corner of her sound.

Both Sides
Salyu X Salyu bridges the gap between experimental and accessible better than any other Japanese album so far this year, Cornelius showing off his inventive production techniques but never allowing the project to sink into needless wandering through the strange. Both artist’s involved on S(o)un(d)beams can be heard loud and clear, but they’ve come together to make one of the best albums of 2011.

[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSLK9CCzTo8″]

Review: Merpeoples’ Metropolis

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The other week I paid a visit to Osaka to do some music shopping. This excursion via the Kintetsu railway used to be a common part of my life, the sort of thing I’d mentally pencil into my weekend plans if nothing else of interest materialized. Which, turned out, happened a lot. Yet my forays into the city started decreasing significantly in 2011, a combination of more interesting things happening in my part of rural Japan and because of a shortage of quality Japanese music coming out over the past few years. Sure, a few noteworthy LPs dropped, highlighted by The Morning’s debut (out of stock on Amazon) and a discombobulated effort from Oorutaichi (readily available on iTunes), but that was about it. The shelves of Japanese music I used to sprint to now seemed boring, resulting in more visits to used record shops if I even bothered to drop the 980 yen at all.

This most recent trip into the heart of the Kansai region, though, led to a minor revelation. After some initial disappointment…how does no store have a single copy of the new Mountain Goats in stocks???…something hit me while staring at the “coming soon” poster at Tower Records. “Oh man, there is a lot of good Japanese music out right now.” The past month and a half has seen new stuff from The Cigavettes, Sloppy Joe, Cubismo Grafico Five, Puffyshoes and that Salyu-Cornelius collaboration…just to name a few. Things only get better in May, which will see a new Capsule album, a fresh pair of Perfume songs, a new full-length from DODDODO and whoknowswhatelse I’m missing. I’ve even heard through the digital grapevine She Talks Silence has new material forthcoming. Looks like I need to put aside some weekend travel money once again.

Yet, despite a rush of new releases threatening to push me towards a loan, it’s an eight-song mini-album from a group who last year created one of the most “just OK” releases that threatens to hold a monopoly on my speakers and claim a seat on my “favorite albums of the year” list. Merpeoples seem an unlikely bunch to release said record, previously being a young, good-but-not-great collection of hip young Tokyo-ites that had a pair of catchy singles to their credit. Yet sophomore outing Metropolis finds Merpeoples making an artistic leap forward without even having to dive into experimental deep ends, the band becoming confident enough in their sound to explore the edges of it, with thrilling results.

Last year’s self-titled debut mostly showed flashes of potential greatness, anchored by the poppy punch of “Picasso” and “Sherman.” That mini-album introduced the Merpeoples’ style, a sonic version of Pong wherein guitars and keyboard fell into a repetition similar to the not-quite-math-rock Foals dabbled in a while ago. The songs on Merpeoples sounded tight and, as some described them, appropriate for an indie dance club, but followed a predictable formula the group rarely ventured away from. Metropolis opens with something similar on the title track, carefully plotted guitar strums ushering us in. The addition of an actual piano piques interest, but everything seems in its right place, vocals bouncing back and forth between those looping sounds.

Then…a wall of fuzz and the chorus introduces us to a Merpeoples unafraid of messing with what happens between those repetitions, like building a solid house but tossing buckets of paint wildly in the living room. The piano, at first a charming new touch, reveals itself to be a wild actor that seemingly goes out of tune at times. Everything picks up in intensity, the singing more urgent than before, those same guitars and drums that really haven’t changed feeling like the walls of the trash pit in Star Wars. Rinse and repeat…then comes the other revelation later in “Metropolis.” Everything slows to a creepy crawl, and Merpeoples have plunged into what might as well be an entirely new song complete with sing-speak vocals. It doesn’t last long before the group breaks into one last sprint, but those few seconds show a brave new Merpeoples.

At this point, before I submerge myself too deep in giddy seas, I should note Metropolis also wows because Merpeoples’ general songwriting skills have simply improved since last year. The organ-ized keyboard sound less like the psychy buttons of their self-titled and more like an integral edition to the music. Lead-singer Charlotte also sounds far more confident this go around, her vocals taking on an immediate edge while still retaining the pop accessibility of those breakthrough singles. Sometimes the band just sounds tougher, like on “Program” which opens with a pitter-pattering drum barrage that ends up exploring all sorts of directions, highlighted by a chorus where Charlotte approaches something sounding like a just-held-in shout. “Mutter,” meanwhile, comes closest to recalling “Picasso” and “Sherman,” what with its repetitious verses suddenly turning into a big bright chorus . Yet “Mutter” embraces slightly unsettling touches, like how the verses sound semi sinister and how sometimes the guitars and keyboards just take on a mind of their own.

Metropolis’ ends on a particularly strong three-song sequence, one that pushes the album even higher and cements the band’s evolution. “つかわれない扉 ” starts this sequence strangely – it’s an unabashed ballad, a first for Merpeoples. Even more stunning, they pull it off without surrendering their souls…check the guitar squall trying to rip through the chorus…but still getting the emotional across…check Charlotte’s singing. As good as this foray into slower territory sounds, it’s the following number that ends up being the early favorite for Japanese song of the year. “まぼろし” borrows cues from one of 2010’s most celebrated singles, LCD Soundsystem’s “All I Want,” down to the general pace of both guitar-heavy songs being eerily similar. It would be tempting to call Merpeoples out on biting but…here comes the contentious part of the review…”まぼろし” comes off as both better and more original than James Murphy’s number. The problem with “All I Want”…and to some degree, a large chunk of the LCD catalog…is that it reminds listeners of other artists instead of the one actually performing it. Nearly every write-up of “All I Want” mentioned the resemblance to David Bowie’s “Heroes” and that’s just it…that song sounded like LCD Soundsystem trying to be Bowie, the same way they tried being countless other bands over the course of their run. “まぼろし ” may be similar to LCD and, by proxy, Bowie, but Merpeoples make sure that it sounds distinctly like them. It’s a six-minute triumph, a brave stylistic step forward for the band but one true to what they’ve been doing since Merpeoples.

Plus, “まぼろし ” chorus sounds way bigger and emotionally resonant than “All I Want’s,” and you don’t have to sit through “Drunk Girls” to get to it.

The album ends with Merpeople’s cover of Imawano Kyosiro and Ryuuichi Sakamoto’s goofy new-wave number “Ikenai Rouge Magic.” I’ve written at length about why this update slays the original and ends up being a daring move for Merpeoples, so I won’t rehash what I’ve already spilled like so many packs of Fun Dip…the candy equivalent of this song…agaain. On Metropolis, “Ikenai” plays us out, a deserved celebration for a group that just spent the past half-hour killing it. Love And Hates (HNC and Miila) join in the revelry and it almost feels like an initiation, two of Japan’s best artists extending Merpeoples’ into their circle the only way they know – with yips and whoops and possibly Champagne spilled on the carpet. It’s the perfect way to close this coming-out shindig out, even though you be sure this won’t be the last time it will be talked about this year.

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

On First Listen: Miwa’s Guitarissimo

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J-Pop artist Miwa recently made Japanese music history when her debut album Guitarissimo reached the number one spot on the Oricon album charts. The 20 year old became the first Heisei period-born singer (this period started in 1989) to climb to the top of that list. This feat coupled with a movie-worthy climb to musical fame (Wikipedia can do the heavy lifting, but she worked part-time jobs to save up money for her first guitar despite that being against her school’s rules amongst other obstacles) makes Miwa an already interesting subject to look at. Yet what really makes Guitarissimo’s rise fascinating is how she did it for someone her age.

The Heisei angle makes for a good headline, but plenty of other performers born well into the 90s can boast similar success. The majority of members in AKB48 and the various other (insert city initials)48 acts came into the world around the start of the Clinton administration, and they’ve moved way more singles than Miwa has. Three-fourths of rock group SCANDAL are Heisei babies, and the Johnny’s act Hey! Say! JUMP wears its pride via an eye-roll of a pun. Miwa isn’t some musical outlier, especially in a culture obsessed with youth like the Japanese are.

Yet Miwa isn’t leaning entirely on the super-young angle to sell her debut album. The thing’s titled Guitarissimo after all, implying some sort of six-string skill presumably on display within this disc. Admittedly it’s kind of a silly move, the classic “forget all those OTHER pop stars, I PLAY my instruments” defense busted out by people hung up on artists having to play some sort of “real” instrument…no computers please!…to have any credibility. That thinking is pretty silly, but I’ll also cop to thinking the way Miwa’s being branded stands as a fresh blast of air compared to say AKB48, who prance around in schoolgirl outfits or cat costumes. That act…along with SCANDAL who started off in sorta the same place as Miwa but now have turned into fashion magazine inserts…emphasizes physical appearance over the musical side, to the point where the actual music takes a backseat to whatever “cute” clothes the group members are wearing this week. Miwa avoids that pitfall (not to mention the emphasis on her being in university while a lot of AKB48 aren’t), putting the focus on her music almost exclusively.

The one drawback to this shrew move – when one listens to Guitarissimo they will be expecting to be wowed by perceived musicianship. Miwa gives ample opportunity to show off, as the whole album clocks in well over an hour. This also ends up being its greatest weakness, as having to fill up all that time leads to a lot of filler. A large chunk of Guitarissimo features not-quite-heavy-but-not-quite-ballad guitar songs that sound like a whole lot of other J-Pop artists armed with acoustic guitars. That sound being “pretty boring.” Miwa certainly comes off as a good musician, but this isn’t some DIY cassette release she’s selling out of her car. This is a major release, and it definitely sounds like one, sometimes to the point of feeling a little too sanitized.

Guitarissimo does show flashes of pure, great pop. Opener “Arienai!!” is a nice chirpy-but-aggressive bopalong that starts Miwa’s debut off very well. Her singles boast a similar charm – “Don’t Cry Anymore” apes the sappier moments of Avril Lavigne’s career but features such a strong chorus those missteps don’t come off too badly. Better are the moments when she swipes from Lavigne’s upbeat pop, like on “Change” and especially the giddy bounce of “Little Girl.” Scattered across this disc are solid J-Pop numbers, nothing game changing but pleasantly catchy.

Though Guitarissimo as a whole goes on way too long, it features strong moments that could probably be freed from the LP itself and turned into a pretty good J-Pop EP. Ultimately, it’s Miwa’s image most worth celebrating, a nice change of pace when it comes to how young musicians get marketed in Japan. Glad the people still buying albums feels the same way.

[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSy9j-EohdE”]

Review: EeL’s For Common People/Halcali’s Tokyo Connection

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Discussing pop music usually ends up being less a slippery slope and more like hiking up a waterfall. The act of just identifying “pop” can quickly turn into something contentious, one individual decrying the “vapid” works of Katy Perry before reminiscing about Green Day’s glory days. “Pop,” to many people, has become a bad word and the only way to engage with it is through careful modification. This is why we get people gushing about Justin Bieber slowed down to a crawl and an entire movement where garage bands making poppy sounds smear some distortion over it to become “shit-gaze.” In 2011 you’d think we reach the point where gimmicks weren’t needed to enjoy any music, yet Girl Talk’s still selling out shows. It’s not all bad though – this mutation of pop music has also rewarded with lots of great music. Most shit-gaze might be forgettable but the movement still birthed great acts like Times New Viking and Vivian Girls. Chillwave sails similar settings and has produced a handful of great artists and the resurgence of R&B music in indie circles as of late (see: The Weekend, Frank Ocean) has been a welcome boon.

In Japan, there is EeL and Halcali. Both toy with the cheery template of J-Pop and produce undeniably poppy works, but these acts have also been screwing with the very DNA of those sounds for the past 10 years. The Kansai-based EeL disregards the idea of “genres” entirely, caging reggae sounds with breakcore while also rubbing against what might as well be described as a computer being thrown out a skyscraper. Halcali, meanwhile, merge the cutesy image of J-Pop with goofy rap – they aren’t Wu-Tang but bring a distinctive style that’s a thousand times more worthy of the word rap than schlock-masters like Funky Monkey Babys. Though the two outfits have seen drastically different popular response – Halcali has landed on the Oricon charts, while EeL has been more obscure but responsible for influencing a lot of young electronic musicians in the country today – both have made some of the more thrilling music (pop or otherwise) coming out of Japan over the past decade.

Now both have new albums out, EeL with For Common People and Halcali with the stopgap mini album Tokyo Connection coming after last year’s Tokyo Groove. These releases stay true to their respective creators, engaging in madcap blending and school-yard rap propped up against bright backgrounds, yet both also manage to feel…well, a little stale. EeL and Halcali spent so long subverting popular music into their own mold that now, in 2011, sounds too predictable. What once sounded so clever now comes off as coasting.

For Common People suffers way worse in this regard than Tokyo Connection. EeL’s music still remains the sonic equivalent of sticking one’s head into a cotton candy machine, mouth wide open. Yet what in abstract sounded like a fucking great idea…”that’s a lot of sugar man”…turns into a stomach-wrecking chore. This time around, she’s letting the reggae bleed through brighter than ever, and also placing a greater emphasis on ska-inspired noises and a slightly more “punk” aesthetic. Interesting in concept for sure, but these forays often end up turning into uninspired ideas as on the lazy horn-jog of “Cherry Blossom” or the pointless “rock” of “I Know Everything.”

More frustrating is how so many of these tracks lean on the same ideas. When For Common People’s title track appeared online in zany video form back in January, that number wowed thanks to an unhinged merging of island sounds and head-snapping rock, complete with a late industrial-stomp bridge that seemed like classic EeL. Alone it sounded great, and the album proper features several similar high-energy jump kicks worthy of private time. Problem is, being corralled onto a 36-minute-long album means these numbers grind up against one another and everything starts sounding the same. “For Common People” sounds a lot like “Hungry Panda” which isn’t drastically different than “Wonderful Ability” which is only slightly different than “Everyday.” Each of those songs sound far more interesting divorced from this album, where lodged together they become a hall of mirrors. Several tracks even start off with the same “vocal sample stuttered up” trick, a gimmick so expected you could make a drinking game to it.

[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g21g9zRhiQY”]

Only two fully-formed songs manage to really stand out. “Come Out Of A Sleep” hurls camera sounds and scratching records over a ragtime piano as EeL sings over it, the track morphing from saloon entertainment to turntable exercise. It’s a more relaxed moment that also ends too quickly. The highlight of For Common People comes on final track “Yurayura.” EeL decides that instead of incorporating reggae noises that she’ll actually make a dubbed-out number of her own, slowing the music down to a sunset-walk pace that holds for its entire six-minute playing time. Following the rapid-fire sameness that preceded it, “Yurayura” is an excellent come down, a towel laid out by a pool after an all-day marathon.

Ultimately, For Common People fails because of its pedigree. If this album came courtesy of some upstart Osaka producer nobody had heard of, I’d be writing much more positive words here. But EeL has a big discography, one swimming with records leaps better than For Common People. Her Kung-Fu Master album, for example, captures her manic energy much better than this 2011 effort ever could. Stronger still, EeL has one legitimate masterpiece to her name, an album so good that I ended up revisiting it way more than I spent listening to For Common People. Little Prince, released in 2004, highlighted EeL’s knack for revved up energy and genre-smashing, but also balanced it all out with softer, more experimental moments (the minimalism of “No Heart,” the lonely twinkles of “I’m Crying On A Straight Road,” the all-around excellence of “A Beloved Child”). The closest For Common People comes to something similar is one the two piano interludes, a pair of simple ivory-driven melodies. More of these introspective moments could have lifted up a boringly busy album like For Common People.

Tokyo Connection fares much better for simply being so much shorter than For Common People. As mentioned, this is an obvious filler move, featuring a lame redo of one of Halcali’s best songs (the endearingly silly “Strawberry Chips”) and a just-there 80kidz remix. It also gets points for featuring a legitimately great Halcali song in “Girl!Girl!Girl!,” which electronically twitches about but makes plenty of room for some solid tag-team rapping. The rest varies – the duo enlist Your Song Is Good to help them skank up Kome Kome Club’s “Roman Hikou,” and your enjoyment of that song will hinge on your opinion of ska in general. Following “Girl!Girl!Girl!” Halcali slow Connection down to play three reeled-in joints, starting with the adorable “Chirichoko,” which uses a male voice and some Foldger’s jingle-worthy harmonica to create a strange toyland vibe. “SUPERSTITIONS” and “Hey My Melody” bring considerably less to the table, the latter basically being the sorta of lazy ballad you’d hope an energetic group like Halcali would never resort to recording.

Tokyo Connection isn’t so much a failure because Halcali have become lazy with their signature playful rapping – when they bust it out, it still can get face muscles grinning – but rather because they seem to be distancing themselves from that style completely. Coupled with last year’s Tokyo Groove it seems like the pair want to remain relevant and thus try out all sorts of musical styles not suited for them to do just that (balladry, hoping for a ska revival). That album last year featured Halcali covering a bunch of other artists’ songs and trying to imitate the robo-pop of Perfume which…well not bad sounding certainly wasn’t like them. Connection just further reinforces what they started in 2010.

These albums are mainly a letdown because of who made them – EeL and Halcali have created so much noteworthy music that to see them now sorta spinning their wheels or trying to grab some Oricon money stings. Listeners should spend time with these acts for sure, by seeking out Halcali’s singles (most of which can be seen on YouTube) and by basically giving any EeL album that isn’t For Common People a go. Meanwhile, leave their latest two releases alone in 2011, where they feel less like interesting mutations of pop and more like the predictable stuff most expect from that word.

[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDFt69qjgio”]