#teamtragic

Let’s get the important things out of the way: this time I agree with Patty.

Maybe not the whole way. I don’t know that you could convince me that the harsh, at times dissonant BEAUTIFUL is superior to the multifaceted dithyrambos. It is, however, the best MEG album to come out of her long collaboration period with Yasutaka Nakata. BEAM, STEP and MAVERICK all have shining moments, but they all manage to lose the thread at some point and sooner or later you start to wonder if they’ll ever end. BEAUTIFUL avoids this trap, somehow. 

Considering it’s Nakata, the cohesiveness is probably accidental.

The good – What Patty said in his review is spot on: BEAUTIFUL is on the whole, annoying, strident and noisy, and damn it, that’s what makes it work. “DAYS” slaps you in the face and tugs at your nuts with its elastic synthesizers and MEG’s drunken vocals, but sadly it’s over soon after the beat comes on. On “LIES” a needle scratch noise plods atop machine gun drums and MEG’s deliciously unintelligible English lyrics. I don’t understand a thing but she surely doesn’t sound like she’s putting up with anyone’s shit anymore.

Elsewhere, “WHY” is kind of like a New Wave track filtered through early 2000’s trashiness. That bridge where MEG channels her inner Britney Spears and suggestively coos who knows what? Epic. Even the strange electric guitar that makes an appearance toward the end and sounds more like a horse neighing is intriguing. “SKIN,” while not a single, did get that amazing PV that makes it one of the more memorable tracks on the album. There’s really not anything to it lyrically or even musically, just an insistent beat that continuously gets more piled up on it – guitar riffs, synth riffs, you name it, before it all explodes and decides to become a different song in the last third. If you haven’t already just go and look up the PV. You’ll never be able to unsee Tiny Purple Dancing Woman.

The bad – Even though “PRECIOUS” and “BEAUTIFUL” are decent singles, they stick out like a nun in a whorehouse on the rest of BEAUTIFUL. I’m not sure what the compulsion was to include two shining examples of MEG’s Cute Mode in an album full of MEG at her whiniest, loudest, most obnoxious, but there you go. Of the two, “PRECIOUS” suffers more, sandwiched as it is between “DAYS” and “TELEPHONE,” while “BEAUTIFUL” at least gets the honorary spot of being the closing quasi-ballad. That said, I quite like “BEAUTIFUL,” as it tempers the cute with a wickedly bouncy bass line stitched throughout the song. “PRECIOUS” is a bit forgettable when all is said and done, but the PV was a great example of the bunraku craze of the time. 

The tragic – Maybe this should go under bad but I don’t feel like rearranging stuff. “JOKER” just irritates me. The electric piano at the beginning, exuding vaguely Latin vibes, is probably the most annoying sound in an album that revels in screeches, scratches and rips. Not that the average Nakata song is a genius of composition but this one sounds especially repetitive and sing-songy, without ever really building up to an amazing moment like “SKIN” or “LIES” or “WHY” all do.

I know I have yet to slaughter Edu and Patty’s January picks but I couldn’t resist reviewing Tommy’s new mini album on February 6! While it is more of a glorified dual single release between Tomoko Kawase’s alter ego’s Tommy february6 and Tommy heavenly 6, the tracks are stitched together with story telling narration and instrumentals giving the album a “fairytale” feel. Personally I prefer this approach when compared to the integration of all of the above into a single track like heavenly’s previous “Lollipop Candy BAD girl” and ”I’M YOUR DEVIL”. The result is one of either persona’s best release in some time. 

With Patty and I having just attended “Tommy Dark Christmas Deadly Night” where Tommy performed songs from both personas as well as fan favorites from her brilliant green days, my fangirldom is in full force.

“Tommy's Halloween Fairy tale” -  An expectedly creepy yet somber opening complete with rain, glockenspiel and crows before some bombastic cymbal and horns leading into...

“LIVING DEAD DINER GIRLS” - I’m not lying when I tell you this is the best heavenly track in a looong time. After her initial two albums, heavenly’s output became more heavy and 90s sounding as her brilliant green output became more high energy rock as if the two had switched sounds. Not to mention that her heavenly stuff became increasingly samey over the years which was surprising considering how varied her debut under that moniker was. This track is a return to form not only stylistically but quality wise as well. I’d rank it among her her best and she killed it live as well.

“The Sparkling Candy Man” - The track open’s with the pedo-like narrator welcoming you to Tommy’s heavenly chocolate tea party but warning about not eating the sparkling candy man’s treats. The creepy carnival vibe is something you’d think you’d heard from heavenly before but actually haven’t. Though this isn’t a track I’d hit repeat on it is the type of wonderfully unique pastiche that draws such compulsion to the Tommys and their preset personas.

“Follow the White Rabbit!” - Having fallen victim to the sparkling candy man we are now left delirious and falling down the rabbit hole. Japanese culture in general is obsessed with the tale of Alice as it is oft referenced in pop songs. Having this on something as kawaii as a Tommy release is nothing but appropriate however.

“LITTLE RED FOREST” - We are now wandering through the forest like little red riding hood having lost our way. Though I wasn’t initially a huge fan of february’s melancholic 80s pop tributes, I eventually grew to love them. Again, this one is among her best of that particular sound. If we’re to be lost it’s best in a forest of moody synths and drum machines.

“Frozen Raspberry Snow” - And now somehow it has began to snow in the enchanted forest. But in true Tommy fashion it’s not any ordinary snow but of the most kawaii variety, frozen raspberry snow. february’s ballads are usually of the 80s full force type but this sweet 6/8 Christmas number tells of Santa Claus coming to town soon. Because you know in Japan the day after Halloween is the Christmas season! And given Jpop’s obsession with seasons and winter and Christmas in general (ask Patty about Frozen from last year!) this ending track is nothing but appropriate for this release. Though she didn’t actually perform this at her Christmas show to my chagrin, I did enjoy hearing it as the opening and ending of the show so it still ended up being definitive of the show in general for me.

As Patty pointed out to me, basically no one who is a Tommy fan is a non-obsessive. So we all know her love of holidays and this release hit the nail on the head for Halloween heading into Christmas both of which are more of an increasing spectacle each year in Japan. But more importantly it was a breath of fresh air for both personas. When your image and fanbase are both quite niche it’s important to know when to reinvent your sound and when to return to form, With two tracks presented each for heavenly and february I feel we get a track each of that type from both.

As the show we attended was simply Tomoko Kawase performing music from all her personas in a single event it has become clear that her career is being streamlined. I believe this kind of release is best in continuing the life of the Tommy whether it be in the form a single themed mini with both Tommy’s participating or dual mini’s like FEBRUARY&HEAVENLY. Though I found her dual full albums TOMMY CANDY SHOP SUGAR♥ME and TOMMY ICE CREAM HEAVEN♥FOREVER incredibly enjoyable, I do find the mini’s more digestible. And if they came more often that would be great too! As she just wrapped up her first full on Tommy february6 concert in ages just hours ago we can only hope that a surprise Valentine’s Day themed mini is on the way. Or if that’s just wishful thinking on my end “Be My Valentine” will more than suffice.

I'm always a bit tickled at the music industry's propensity for repackaging failed musicians to try to make them happen again. Your band didn't take off? Head off solo. You didn't have any success as a solo artist? Change your name and try again. Spin Aqua, winner of Team Traigc's Most Likely to Share a Name with a Laundromat award, is one of those bands that seemingly came and went without much fanfare and without really making much of an impact, but if all they did was launch Anna Tsuchiya's career, I guess we can consider them a minor success.

The good - Probably the first promising moment in the album comes in the third track, "Don't need it," which elbows its way into the album awash in crunchy guitars and growling, layered vocals. Anna sounds as fierce as she does in her latter work, which is a great thing. "GrooVe" is a little like a Tommy heavenly6 that's not just done for shits and giggles, and the muscular guitar riff gives Anna's droning roar a good backdrop.

In a completely unexpected turn of events, I ended up quite liking the album's most straightforward ballad, "one little song." It's got everything – Anna's most mature vocal performance in this album (meaning the one most like her current style, which I like best), a show-stopping chorus that's going to make you reach for your lighter.

The bad - I can't really connect to "Unchained," the album opener.  It being a 2003 track, it still has a little bit of that 90s melodic rock feeling about it, which isn't really bad. The bad part of the track is Anna, who sounds a bit immature and still looking for her style. I don't really dig her attempts at having a deeper voice, much preferring her to be the vocal/attitudinal embodiment of the "winking and sticking tongue out" emoji.

The tragic - The bossa nova intro to "Malibu" sounds like the most ill-advised thing in the album but surprisingly, the song picks up really nicely. It's also another great vocal performance by Anna, who thankfully dropped her deeper register in her solo efforts.

They have to be on something. Are they on something? They have to be.

Here I am trying to write this review, listening to Tomomi Kahala's LOVE BRACE and staring at Chrissy's and Patrick's profile pics on LINE for telltale signs of drug abuse. They seem as sober as sober could be. So maybe they're pulling a prank on me? They must be. Great vocals? Amazing from beginning to end? Is this real life?

The good – "LOVE BRACE [overture]" starts out promising. It lulls me into a false sense of complacency, making me believe for a second that this album will be some sort of orchestral TK effort and not the super-dated 90's pop that makes up the rest of the album. Alas.

I don't want to write the review and be entirely dismissive so I'm just going to say that "I BELIEVE [play piano]" is tolerable. TK can be a good composer (let me repeat how much I love Ayu's Love Songs for the umpteenth time) but he sure finds a way to ruin things – his own vocals, Marc Panther's raps, terrible non YU-KI vocalists (not that she is good or anything, but I find her borderline obasan voice fun.) So at least the closing of the album lets our ears take a respite from Kahala's strained singing.

The bad – Every time TK sings backing vocals, an angel commits seppuku. So this album is responsible for the deaths of about 15,294 angels. I hope you're happy, TK.

The tragic – I'm going to throw something in here arbitrarily. Let me point at the screen and choose… "Living on…!" It's got that bouncy swagger that makes me think it was some sort of "Straight Up" cover but, if you can believe it, with weaker vocals than Paula Abdul's. Still, it's pretty fun to imagine, I don't know, some sort of New Jack Swing/early TLC choreography going along with this song.

Another month, another TK album. Mind you, this time it was Patrick who nominated it, and this being shuffle month, it really isn't his fault. But the man sure gets around! Maybe we should rename this blog to #TTTTK: Team Tragic Talks TK. 

At any rate, even though I'd rather review a TRF tragfest if I had to do another TK album, I have to say I quite like globe's Lights2. The winding, 8-minute-plus "TRANSCONTINENTAL WAY" might as well be called "TRANSSIBERIAN WAY," given the positively frigid feeling its sparse techno engenders. But you know what? It just pulls you in. That it's nearly 9 minutes long barely registers with me.

"OVER THE RAINBOW" is one of those songs that took a while to get warmed up to, but nowadays I mostly love it. I really like the slow burn of the electric piano opening before it breaks down into a stomping para-para soundtrack. As usual, the Marc Panther parts don't really do anything for me, and the song ends in a whimper (the reprise they added also doesn't seem to contribute much), but overall it's the first must-listen moment in the disc. "Knockin'on the door of my heart" starts with a delicate percussive sound that brings to mind melting icicles, quickly joined by an acoustic guitar and a trance drum track, continuing for an excellent 6 minutes. "STARTING FROM HERE" is a mixed bag, a club-ready trance-groove worthy of vintage Denki Groove (check out "Shinkansen") that nonetheless feels really weird when the first verse comes on, as if KEIKO is singing the wrong song; then, 6 minutes in, Marc Panther takes over the track and it's probably the most disastrous of his performances ever. The Gallic sexy rapper schtick is just creepy, especially when he keeps saying he feels like a little boy… LIKE A LITTLE BOY! OK Marc please wait here while I get a restraining order, you creep. Anyway, after two minutes of Marc's embarrassing act, the song, once again, just kind of ends. 

"INSPIRED FROM R&B," the other single on LIghts2 has a pretty melody and even the male-female duet works. The arrangement, though, feels kind of boring, like TK couldn't be bothered doing more than setting and forgetting a guitar loop and a percussion track from an old 100-instruments-in-one Yamaha synthesizer. 

OK, OK, I admit it. I choked.

I initially proposed “Gone But Not Forgotten” month (original before Patrick wussed it: “Dead Artist Month”) because July is the month of bice’s death anniversary, and I thought she was a very good artist and I miss her. I wanted to write something touching and beautiful about her career and her final album, something that would make our 10 readers shed a tear for someone they likely have never heard of before. I wanted to post my little homage on July 26, the fifth anniversary of her passing. And as often happens in these things, the pressure was too much.

So let me post something short, hasty and insignificant simply to post something. bice deserves better than that, but she also deserves better than nothing.

Even before unexpectedly becoming her swan song, かなえられない恋のために was an amazing album. Composed and arranged by bice herself, and produced by Pizzicato Five mastermind Yasuharu Konishi, the album is a highlight reel of retro realness, impeccable arrangements, top-notch production and delicate, touching vocal performances. It’s very true to bice’s singer-songwriter, piano-and-guitar aesthetic, while taking things up a notch. Even though every song sounds a little like every other bice song (laid back, intimate, mid-tempo, pared down), they manage to stand apart from each other, sonically, without falling into the genre trap so much J-pop falls prey to. This is a collection of similar-sounding songs that rewards close listening. That’s this album’s strength.

Like Mayumi Kojima, bice puts forward the image of a musically precocious girl. While Kojima presents herself as the weirdo who makes creepy drawings and has a harpsichord in her room, bice was the shy, withdrawn girl with a French obsession, her gauzy bedroom decorated with Bardot pillows and pink lace. Her songs all feel like short song-letters she’s performing just to tell you how she feels. There’s no need for belting anything out: you’re the sole member of her audience. 

As you can expect, I disagree with Patty’s criticism that the album is boring (although I’m not sure he actually said that outside of Team Tragic chat – which, yes, it’s as tragic as it sounds), but I’m not beyond admitting that the strongest material bookends the album. “レッド・バルーン” kicks everything off with a thumping drum and standing bass combination that paints a Parisian cabaret and invite you to picture bice in cigarette pants and ballet flats riding her moped somewhere in Montparnasse, Amélie-style. It’s almost comical until you get to the strangely demanding “Give me love, give me love” of the chorus. “lily on the hill” is more of a traditional bice arrangement, a quirky electronic screech immediately bursting into a grandiose piano arrangement that suggests a flower blooming in time lapse. Meanwhile “１００年後にはふたりはいない” deploys the New Wave synths to sound like the cousin to hitomitoi’s “粉雪のシュプール” (which incidentally, bice wrote).

After this the energy seems to fall off a little bit, but as I said, every song asserts its individual identity in the first few bars, and close listening will be very rewarding. “停戦しましょう” is like a slow, acoustic drum-and-bass track, a perfect background piece for that moment in the imaginary bice movie where she and her friends are driving their convertible down to the Riviera. The pared-down “ordinary days” is like a lost hitomi track from her golden Watanabe Zentaro period (which, spoiler alert, we’ll be touching on in August’s Team Tragic Talks!). hitomi’s frightful bray would be right at home amongst the retro-tinged drums and guitars that make this little gem, and it would totally transform the simple “ah ah” chorus that bice’s voice is perhaps too gossamer to sing.

It took me a long time to appreciate the quiet charms of “heaven,” a short and sweet hayride of a song. Its folksy overtones make for a perfect emotional break before the absolutely cinematic, verging-on-too-much “ただ恋しくて会いたいなんてね,” a track so strong it could be the album’s closer. I’m not sure I would say that bice lacks the emotional range to really get into this song just because she doesn’t succumb to Koda Kumi-level histrionics; her performance is heartbreaking here, her whisper rising and falling like someone who has just about given up on a lover. It really brings tears to my eyes when I let it work on me. The actual album closer, “cine love 4,” is a little more hopeful, but still incredibly gentle and full of little touches that flesh it out. It starts a little dissonant, but quickly gets into an ending-credits kind of groove. It’s a fitting final song for this collection.

Even though I’m a member of Team Tragic, I’m really not all that familiar with Kylie Minogue. Sure, I know “The Locomotion” and, since I’m married to someone who’s more than a casual fan, I’ve actually attended one of her shows and seen others on TV. What I’m trying to say is, I’m aware that she has a long and mildly successful career, but I don’t know the ins and outs of everything that she’s done or every album she’s released. Imagine my surprise when I found out she pulled a Ziggy Stardust and released a concept album called Nana Katase TELEPATHY in Japan! I’m assuming it’s like that thing Garth Brooks tried to do when he went crazy in like the 90s. Musically it doesn’t break a lot of ground for her, but it still has some pretty interesting moments.

The good – Two of my favorites are the remixes/self-covers of “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” and “Love at First Sight,” in this case called “TELEPATHY” and “Babe.” It’s kind of interesting that the melodies are altered enough to sound kind of like different songs, yet not enough to be unrecognizable as the originals. It’s kind of a gutsy move! The only thing marring these is the inexplicable hairball-coughing sound that keeps getting repeated throughout “Babe.” I guess it’s supposed to be a sexy grunt or something, but it sounds like we need to be shouting for a doctor.

The bad – I guess you can’t release an album in Japan without including a limp ballad like “Shine,” so there it is. Someday there will be a great ballad that I’ll rave over and everyone will realize that I’m really not a ballad hater, it’s just that there are a lot of hateful ballads out there. Anyway, there’s really not a lot in “Shine” to hold my attention. It’s too tame, vaguely Christmasy (or what J-pop thinks of when it thinks of Christmas), completely inoffensive.

The tragic – It didn’t take long before I realized that “A.I.O.” is basically a cover of RAM RIDER’s “ミラーボール,” or, to be more precise, a mashup of RAM RIDER’s song and Stardust’s “Music Sounds Better With You,” with brand new lyrics thrown on top of it. It’s another one of those inexplicable decisions, since “ミラーボール” was a decent song to begin with and I’m not sure what new lyrics do for Kylie. Though at least her Japanese is impeccable, as in the rest of the album.

Nana Katase TELEPATHY was an OK album, nothing that makes me really want to dig into Kylie’s catalog but good enough for a spin or two. Maybe if she tours the U.S. again I can get a seat in the front row and request “A.I.O.” just to see if her Japanese is as good live as it is in the studio. But that’s a big if.

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