• “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand” by Primitive Radio Gods.
• “Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve.
• “Tha Crossroads,” Bone Thugs N Harmony.
• “Doo Wop (That Thing),” Lauryn Hill. (I’m pretty sure this song brought about the 1960s influx of the noughts — Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Pipettes, I’m looking at you.)

But here’s a great cover of the song that inspired this brief but (I hope) sweet post.  It’s by Finnish band Cats on Fire. Here’s to wishing that you like it as much as I do. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m sure there are some other songs from that era that have come up, lately, as the 90s are in style again (side note: why??), but I’m going to cap it off at that.

I was forewarned about the cultural journey I would soon embark upon (fried hard roe, white pidgeons, cervesa with real cerevisiae) but not about its various sounds. I write now from the centre of El Arenal (they have wifi), where the music is probably that new Jacob Dylan album they have for sale at the counter. What surprises me most about the country is a real struggle between preserving the authentic and building the new; in terms of infrastructure and transportation, this world is about thirty futures from my Estados Unidos. They have a working metro system in every city, cheap bike rentals, and trains that serve freshly-squeezed OJ and show Love Happens in a cheap dub. But they also have history — immense cathedrals, rich museums, festivals, restaurants that don’t serve Frosties, etc.etc. Accordingly, their music is caught in a strange limbo between old and new, with some incongruities that add up to sometimes jarring, sometimes pleasurable song/site correspondences.

Here’s a breakdown of the songs I’ve heard over here. Note that these are not merely the songs I recognize, rather, they are the ONLY songs I’ve heard. Forget the bells of La Giralda (I have), here’s the real music of Spain.

1. Mariah Carey — “Fantasy”

This is a real treat for me, seriously; not only is it Mariah’s best single, it’s one of my favorite songs of all time (ask Mike we’ve argued about this). When this is playing in the cafeteria of the Prado, well, I know that something’s come true for me.

2. Smashing Pumpkins – “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”

Okay, here’s another one that was playing in a weird place (gift shop in Reina Sofia), but I think it kinda works. I just walked in from seeing Guernica, and the opening line “the world is a vampire” seemed just and very real.

3. Smashing Pumpkins — “Disarm”

Less acceptable and/or pleasurable, this one was in a Cafe & Te, which was my fault for being there I guess. I had a piece of toast. Bad breakfast conversation.

4. Theme to The Neverending Story

Kabob King in Grenada. Pushing doner kebap into my face. Wistful.

5–7. Every Coldplay single from X&Y

The time I’m thinking of involves shopping for a hoodie (Madrid was cold) and going into a place called “Wazzup.” Here “Speed of Sound” is low in the background. Actually, I’m also thinking of a small pub playing this too. And Dunkin’ Coffee (a “bakeplace,” so I’m told). And the three straight months of hearing this song 37 to 44 times a day on the in-store video loop at work (yes I counted). I like the song I think, but I can’t separate it from it’s cyclic rotation between a trailer for “Be Cool” and GOW ad spots.

8. Russian Red — “They Don’t Believe”

As seen on BTV once or twice, eating white melon and some toast. Russian Red had an album two years ago that did okay in the states. She’s still quite popular in Spain. I hope she releases something new this year, I think two years is the appropriate waiting time. I’m including the video because it’s practically necessary. This is just about the only song here that I felt comfortable acknowledging in public as a song I like, which says a bit about my problems.

9. Ke$ha — “Blah Blah Blah”

The second song I’m okay with acknowledging that I like it because it’s kinda post-ironic (and pre-lapsarian) in a sense. This was playing on a TV in front of El Corte Ingles, the Spain-equivalent of Macy’s, or Bloomingdales, or Piggly-Wiggly. It was also on BTV like twenty times in an hour.

10. The Cranberries — “Dreaming My Dreams”

Staying with primo Saul and su novia Lily, eating nice cheese and playing New Super Mario Bros. I think it couldn’t get any better, and I know it only will.

11. Willy DeVille — “Hey Joe”

Whistled by our host atop Montserrat. I think he said “Willy DeJoel,” trying to make a nice tie-in with my name (Joel).

12. The Tallest Man on Earth — “King of Spain”

Perhaps this is cheating, but I listened to this on every plane, every train, every car, during every sleepless night. Our soundtrack was a single song.

xoxo, J

Mas y Mas, hailing from nearby NoVA, were a perfect soundtrack to this scene. They’re at once fidgety and disaffected, smart enough to know that the best of kind of fun, maybe the only kind, is the stupid kind. On this point check out the (um) pointedly titled “You Can’t Play Without Ice.” It kind of reminds me of the first time I heard the Thermals, all lo-fi and pissed off at posers, but these guys are a lot funnier about it, partly cause I can’t really tell if they’re joking or not. There’s a savant tunefulness too, even though Vinny often tries to hide it behind his Mike-Skinner–as-snotty-American-kid impression.

And the lyrics are golden, as anyone unfortunate enough to follow my Twittrrr barrage will know. On “Sunday School Hymn,” they tackle that freshest of topics—fucking religion, dude—and somehow manage to land it unposed. “Now who here’s had his grandma pass away and wonders why she is still sleeping, and who here’s read a little Walt Whitman and wonders why he is so happy?” Maybe because I’ve wondered both those things, maybe cause there’s some real melancholy in his arch schoolboy recitation, but it’s the most moving thing I’ve heard since Joel got drunk and read some of his poetry at the last gpants staff meeting.

Mas y Mas — “You Can’t Play Without Ice”

Mas y Mas — “Sunday School Hymn”

Mas y Mas are magnanimously giving away their album, Proud Sponsors of Pepsi, here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Along with the opener, “Oh Comely,” Mangum played “A Baby for Pree,” “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” “Two-Headed Boy Part II,” and “Engine,” then quietly exited — along with 30% of the audience.

Well, soon anyway. There’s a precociousness to them that could stand to mellow a bit. Consider the backstory, in which childhood friends Sam Lee and Alex Kaplow go to France for a summer, work on an organic farm, and mix down the album on their Macbooks. C’mon dudes. Jason and Ben once tried a similar thing in Lake Worth, working at the YMCA and recording onto a minidisc. It kind of sounded like Lightning Bolt.

Like this neatly-wrapped slice of summer resume building, their debut album Real Life Color has a sense of diligent overachievement. They less evoke their various influences than splice them together in a way that can seem simulacrum-ly. My favorite song of theirs, “Monster,” is a well-researched composite of indie dorm-room bangers. I hear Ezra Koenig fronting the Postal Service covering Arcade Fire, basically. But despite some lyrical missteps (“a silver spoon to feed me lies”? really?) it’s a frighteningly good approximation, and these considerations are more or less forgotten in the fun of listening to it. Especially live, where Kaplow bounces like a pinball across the stage, brushing the hair out his eyes and crowing into the mic like a bantam rooster.

And that’s the thing. It strikes me that they’re enjoying themselves, processing their influences in a way that doesn’t feel particularly calculated. And if they’re this good this early, well fuck. How good will they be after life throws them a few sucker punches and broken hearts? Sam will be graduating from Yale in mere weeks, after all. I can’t help but think of another pair of New England collegiate breakouts, who happened to be headlining the same festival. They started out doing something pretty distinctive and then unexpectedly segued into an album of genre exercises. It seems like Magic Man just might be on the opposite trajectory.

Magic Man’s album Real Life Color is available for free, in all of its glory, here.

I co-host an occasional radio show on KSFR. It’s a graveyard shift show, which is great for all the insomniac tweaker types because they probably actually like shiny, hyperactive anime tunes. But there’s that stereotype again: not all Japanese music is cute girls with 20,000 sailor outfits singing about love, burning spirit, and food. Mainstream pop in Japan, like mainstream pop everywhere else, is pretty much the same overproduced, slick nonsense. Of course, Japan has great bands of all types right below the sugary pop frosting. This entry is intended to serve as a brief guide to some of the acts that make up the cake below the frosting (see Rohin’s guide below if you’re more of a just-give-me-the-sweets type).

I’m going to start with “modern Japanese folk rock music,” a term I pretty much despise–so let’s just call it “rock” for now. For English-speaking listeners, it almost doesn’t make sense to listen to it, since rock music in the style of Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell has as much lyrical weight as musical. If you’re listening to the Japanese equivalent of Lady Gaga, the lyrics may not matter so much, right? That shouldn’t be the case for the Japanese equivalent of Leonard Cohen.

Actually, it is the case, since a rock singer worth anything will be singing like they’re about to pushed off a cliff: desperate or defiant, or even both. With this in mind, you don’t need to know Japanese to like Kazuki Tomokawa and Morita Doji. Kazuki is a dude, and Morita is a lady, by the way. Both sing like they go way beyond giving a shit, into the realms of various other kinds of bodily distress.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This video by Tomokawa should make it clear he is not singing about candy and first kisses. Or maybe he is, but he’s very upset about those things. Whatever, I’m basically learning Japanese solely so I can translate this dude’s lyrics (which will take a long time). He’s been performing since the late 70s, variously writing his own lyrics and adapting those of other poets like Nakahara Chūya. He’s often compared to Kan Mikami, who also sings with no remorse or fear, but I like Tomokawa’s furious, punkish intensity a little more. Both are still active and performing in Japan, and neither have lost their style. Listening to his recordings from the 70s and 80s, Kazuki, lovingly referred to as the “screaming philosopher,” seems to have lost none of his vigor and voice, and remains more a force of music than just another singer-songwriter.

Morita Doji is on the other end of the rock-singer spectrum. She’s a suicidal Joni Mitchell. She has nothing to rail against, except her own withering disappointment with reality. In short, she is my dream girl. Her most famous song is “Bokutachi no Shippai,” which can be translated as “Our Failure.” This is fucking weird as hell, since Japanese titles and lyrics are almost never this direct. Regardless of what the lyrics are (and they’re pretty depressing, according to what I remember of a translation I can no longer find), you know she’s singing about something she can’t change. The music tries to be wistful and warm, but it doesn’t really help. This singer is falling a long way off her cliff and she doesn’t really care. Pretty much all her songs are like this; songs that seem like echoes of someone who’s no longer there.

In fact, no one has heard from her in more than 27 years. Some people think “Morita Doji” isn’t even her real name. Her songs became popular in the 90s when “Our Failure” was used as the theme for a popular TV show, which led to the recording of many ill-conceived cover versions. In the mid-90s a psych-rock group formed to exclusively cover her songs, but they didn’t get permission to do so, so their album got pulled from shelves almost as quickly as it was released. These songs are pretty much the only good covers of Morita Doji you will ever hear.

I’m passing over plenty of good Japanese rock music here, but this is just a sampler. This album is a great introduction to the rock scene of Japan in the seventies, but it focuses on folk rock and doesn’t get to the great Kraftwerk and Talking Heads inspired stuff that rose up later in the decade. Hey, what a great subject for a future blog here, huh?

Scott White works with computers, cats, food, bikes, cars, electronics, guitars, friends, words, and deep and important feelings in New Mexico. He plays a 5th-level half-elf female rogue in Dungeons and Dragons. You might hear more from him in the future, but man, who even knows?

Best Coast — “Over the Ocean”

I was flying away from a place where I could have happily spent the rest of my life. I remember looking out the window, thinking I can’t believe I’m leaving. Thinking about the places and people I was leaving behind. The man next to me snored in his seat, a constant buzz in my ear. The plane lurched in the air occasionally, in an almost lazy fashion, as if it wasn’t any more eager to reach its destination than I was. The ocean was spread out far below, featureless in all directions as far as I could see. I think I’ve never felt so alone. What awaited me? Why did I leave? Could I ever be that happy anywhere else? I remember looking out the window, seeing nothing but blue and gray.

Best Coast — “Sun Was High (So Was I)”

It’s like those dreams I have sometimes, where I finally find the one person who’s perfect for me, the one I can understand completely, the one who understands me. Of course, it never lasts, because I inevitably wake up, grasping for the rapidly fading images and memories. But today I realized I’m in one of these dreams right now, and it doesn’t have to end. It was a revelation; I’m not sure what else I could call it. I laid back, watching the clouds go by, my mind just fuzzy nothingness, without focus or definition. But one thought stayed in my mind, one thing captured my attention, like a single object glinting in the sunlight as it floated on an endless ocean. I thought of you.

Best Coast is one of those bands where I really like a few of their songs but feel pretty much ambivalent about the rest. Even so, I find that listening to their EPs and singles one after another makes for perfect music for all the long drives I’ve had lately. They’ve got an album out later this year, which I’m really hoping will take the same direction as the above two songs. If so, I’ll be writing about this band again when it’s released. In the meantime, they’ve got a new video out for their single “When I’m With You” that I can show you.

So, folks, with Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls, and now Best Coast, I’m pretty sure I’ve completed some kind of posting trifecta. I really like what these bands are doing, their sort of fuzzy, less offensive version of the noise I usually enjoy in music. If you like any of these three bands, then definitely give the other two a try.

Best Coast are signed to Group Tightener, but their releases seem to be sold out there and on Amazon, so I will instead refer you to iTunes because, happily, they never seem to run out of 1s and 0s. Enjoy!

Utada presents a welcome foil to such a case study in dunderheaded xenophobia. While flirting with an English-language career, Utada hasn’t made it the centerpiece of her artistic ambitions. Still in her twenties, she is essentially a bizarro-world Britney Spears: a picture of the prototypical American pop star had she (a) not suffered a tragic meltdown and (b) learned the value of creative autonomy. Utada is proof that child stars pushed into popstardom at an early age need not come apart at the seams as they stumble into their twenties. Like most young popstrels, Utada built her name on mediocrity, shilling J.Lo-esque pastiches at first, like “Addicted to You” (1999).

But unlike her American counterparts who stall and ultimately crumble before they can evolve, Utada managed a brilliant evolution, heralded by singles like “Traveling” (2001) and “Sakura Drops” (2002). Although it would still be another three years before she’d finally grow into her musical maturity, as someone who could handle more layered pop.

As Utada gravitated towards mid-tempo pieces with more substance, this ultimately left a vacuum for a proper J-Pop dance diva. It was a niche that Koda Kumi and Ayumi Hamasaki couldn’t fill, because the former was uninspired and the latter—while holding the “Queen of J-Pop” title for certainly some time—struggled to keep up with trends. Enter Namie Amuro.

Amuro essentially peddles Pocky pop—it’s cavity-inducing stuff that places a premium on style over substance. It’s also an aesthetic that shamelessly engages in product placement, like in this Patricia Field-assisted Vidal Sassoon-hawking video for “New Look” (2008):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Although perhaps it’s here that she had even purported pop forerunners like Lady Gaga beat.

But what’s exciting with Amuro’s pop is the gimmick that comes with each release. “New Look” served as one-third of a triple A-side single (the entire effort financially fronted by Vidal Sassoon) dubbed 60s70s80s. With “New Look” sampling The Supremes’ “Baby Love” (from the 1960s, obviously), “Rock Steady” sampled Aretha Franklin’s song of the same name, while “What A Feeling” rounded out the the set by appropriating Irene Cara. Then there is also Amuro singing songs like the double A-side “Dr.” / “Wild” (again, Vidal Sassoon-sponsored), and managing a number of musical styles within a traditional pop structure.

What Amuro and Utada both do well is entertain the mainstream. We could ethnocentrically liken the Amuro–Utada dynamic to a heady Madonna–Kylie Minogue style of pop tension, though unlike that pop pair, neither Amuro nor Utada seem withered enough to ever devolve into something as dreadful as a leather-clad Madonna stumbling awkwardly around sad rap beats. Perhaps the best thing about this duo is that their oligopoly on J-Pop creates a slightly lower class of even more interesting pop—but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Rohin Guha is hard at work on his first novel, which features steamy scenes of tea-sipping and a back-handed slap or two. If you Google his name, you’ll find that he has, at one point or another, aroused the curiosity of the following communities: Adam Lambert fans, white supremacists, feminists, Taylor Swift fans, and Japanophiles. You’ll also find that he’s written for quite a few places.

To celebrate the occasion, Palmer released “The Truth,” a free download, featuring Jason Webley on guitar and Sam Kulik on trombone. The song is a story-of-everything-ever, in Amanda’s endearing kind of way; most of all, though, it celebrates freedom. You know you like freedom. And no matter what anyone says, I am not over this lady – she can keep oversharing, making clumsy comments and posting her trademark near-nudes willy nilly around the internet.  It’s just a picture of a girl getting Twitterer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The above is off Who Killed Amanda Palmer, and it is one of my favorites, as it celebrates one of my favorite kinds of humor. Have a good Thursday and try to be as awesome, please.

Well, a lot of things have changed since I wrote about Saturday Night Wrist in 2006. First of all, Chino’s not fat anymore. It looks like he’s started taking his physique seriously, abandoned In & Out burgers, and gotten back to burning calories by writing chord-shredding songs. Because second of all, the Deftones are back with a new album and it’s pretty fuckin’ sick.

Diamond Eyes immediately recalls Around the Fur, the band’s breakout record, in its intensity and melodicism. Not that the interim albums lacked these qualities, but for a time the band seemed to be primarily concerned with proving themselves as standing apart from the nu-metal/rap-metal mainstream. They did this convincingly, but in doing so they sort of played against their strengths at times. White Pony was their OK Computer, fiddling with experimental electronics and varied song structures at every turn. The self-titled album made a point of saying “hey, we can do heavy too! we’re fuckin’ metal!!” (cf. “Hexagram” and “Bloody Cape”), and did it ad nauseam. Saturday Night Wrist mixed the approaches of the previous two albums and managed to produce the singularly awful “Pink Cellphone,” inarguably the worst of the band’s career, along with more than a few pretty damn good songs.

So here we are years later with Diamond Eyes. What have we here? Well, only the best album they’ve put out since White Pony. Have a listen to the lead single, “Rocket Skates,” and a look at its stylish if kinda juvenile video (showing Chino’s slacker beard in full effect):

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s not their best song, nor the best on the album (I mean, that chorus…), but it’ll give you a taste of the rest that’s in store. Diamond Eyes hits stores on May 4th on Warner Bros., but you can pre-order it now if you feel ever so inclined.