Wanna Die? (Shiina Ringo - I)

I'm drowning in Shiina Ringo.  Don't send help.  I'm hoping to grow gills.

Is there anything better than finding an established artist of whom you know nothing, but whose sensibilities so completely click with your own?  In an age when people get all wahoo-nuts over remixes of singles from bands that are still working on their first EP, it's easy to forget how to react to someone who has a deep, rich catalog, all parts of which seem so very what-you-need-right-now.  I want to listen to every single track on repeat.  I want to hear everything she's ever done.  I want to swallow the sea while treading water.

I'm getting gushy, and have lost all perspective.  Describe the ocean, from where I am?  It's wet, and salty, and cool.  And HUGE.

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My problem - and it's really your problem - is that as soon as I say the name "Shiina Ringo," at least ninety-eight percent of you will tune out.  Because she's a  Japanese pop star.

I get it, I do.  There are reasons Americans ignore the world's second-largest music industry, some of them the same reasons we so readily dismiss the world's second-largest film industry.  There are hurdles.  The music most of us enjoy is of African and/or European derivation, and we pride ourselves on being the inventors of rock and jazz and country; traditional Eastern music seems irrelevant, Eastern takes on Western music can be dismissed as copycat, further from the source, unnecessary.

The language barrier doesn't help.  People could at least pretend they were singing along with Robert Plant or Ozzy Osborne.  Lame Brit bands-of-the-week and limp-but-bilingual Swede pop outfits have it in spades over anyone who dares make a lasting impression in another tongue. 

Even when we're willing, the product's not on our shelves (what does come over, comes priced prohibitively), the artists aren't on our stages.  The Internet makes everything more available... but it makes everything more available.

So:  There are legitimate problems with accessibility and - let's not fool ourselves - quality.  Whole rivers of sick, syrupy JPop goop up the marketplace.  Similar-sounding songs that are really factory-spewed replacement parts.  You know, just like we've got here.  And why do I need to listen to a bunch of crap JPop when I've already got so much crap USPop from which to choose?

It makes sense that, with few exceptions - Kyu Sakamoto, Pink Lady, Puffy Amiyumi - Japanese bands that seem to gain some small ground in the U.S. outside expatriate circles are fringe acts.  I'm sure someone could make a case that fans of J-Culture seek the same escapist novelty or exoticism as past generations obsessed with orientalism.  Even when that novelty is simply an enthusiastic revival of a particular Western idiom.  Ramones worship (Guitar Wolf and that ilk).  Stuck-in-the-70s psych rock (Yura Yura Teikoku, etc.).  Noise (Merzbow...), Avant-garde (Boredoms...), Post-Rock (Mono...).  The J-Pop that does gain notice is fetishy (Shibuya-kei - Pizzicato Five...), geeky (video game music - Katamari Damacy...).  Again:  Why look so far away for something you could find at home?

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Because sometimes the songs are good.  And because, sometimes, the most accomplished outsiders come from within.

Shiina Ringo slipped through the machine, somehow, and found success.  She's young - she was 19 when her first record came out in 1998 - and beautiful.  That helps.  But:  Talented.  She comes with all sorts of fan-friendly factoids:  A series of childhood operations left her with scars on her shoulder blades... as if angel wings had been removed.  Her nickname - Ringo, which means "apple" in Japanese - came from her tendency to blush.  And so on.

Shiina gets slapped with the "Japanese Björk" label a bunch, probably more for her artistic aspiration than any particular artistic tendencies... though she too has a voice that goes odd places on occasion, and there are Björkish bits scattered among her songs.  But she covers a lot of ground.  She rocks, she pops, she swings.

Here is how I am going to make you listen to her:

Shiina Ringo - Yer Blues (Beatles cover) (mp3) (buy)

So.  Heavy.

That's really fucking calculating of me.  There's nothing more central to rock than the blues, no act that abused its position in the mainstream more than The Beatles.  Shiina's singing in English.  Shez in yr myoozik Hi!jacking yr songz. 

Listen to it!

There are a few billion things I love about that track.  I have this totally unfounded theory that The White Album was a concerted effort to parody American music; "Yer Blues'" delicious, blunt, time-to-make-the-donutsish approach to wanting to end it all gives me giggle fits.  Shiina goes at it with her best Marlene Dietrich.  Berryish licks have been replaced by great squalls of noise.  Big and chuggy.  Someone, I swear, keeps throwing their ass down on that organ.

It's just a cover song, of course, no matter how naturally her band rocks it back and forth - they just ride the tempo changes, underselling them - until that great "Huh?" moment a little before the three-minute mark.  Shiina wraps herself in dreamy Suicide Club bliss, dashes off a cliff.  Hangs there, coyote-stizz.  Children, let's hold hands and sway:  "I'm lonely, wanna die, I'm lonely, wanna die."

When the song crashes back, it has more mass.  It grabs you, pulls you down.  It's going to leave a you-shaped hole in the floor of a cartoon canyon.

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Here, more:

Shiina Ringo - Creep (live Radiohead cover)(mp3)

Nothing radical about that, and at first it's a bit shrill.  But who doesn't like a good "Creep" cover?  I love that it's not a soundboard recording.  Sounds like she's howling from the bottom of a well.

Below, Shiina gets alt-rock on Frankie Valli and amps Janis Ian's bitter up to angry.

Shiina Ringo - Can't Take My Eyes Off You (Frankie Valli cover) (mp3) (b-side of "Tsumi to Batsu")

Shiina Ringo - Love is Blind (Janis Ian cover) (mp3) (buy)

[in case you're unfamiliar with the original:  Janis Ian - Love is Blind (mp3) (buy)]

Both the Beatles and Ian tracks are from a double-CD of covers called Utaite Myōri (Singer's Luck).  On it Shiina sings in Japanese, English, German, French, and Portuguese; there are songs made famous by Edith Piaf, Marilyn Monroe, and Andy Motherfucking Williams.  And many more.  You know, whatever it takes.

Not really worth your import dollar, though.  Save your money for the astounding Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana.

We'll talk more about that one, and Shiina's other solo stuff, next time.  But below is Karuki's opening track.  Ready?  It starts off with a sort of ominous dumdumdumdum...

Shiina Ringo - Shuukyo (Religion) (mp3) (buy)

The first track, and it busts my head right open.

I'm not sure if the edges are supposed to sound that fuzzy or if that's lousy compression.  It works, though, because the song's built on contrasts.  There's just so much going on, in there, yet it never stops making sense as a pop song.  Like that cover of "Yer Blues," there's a dreamy interlude... but the song doesn't just float.  It soars.  Close your eyes and jump.  Something will catch you, lift you up.

Her voice comes from everywhere, does everything.

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Hopefully, that did more than get your feet wet.  Hopefully it made you thirsty.

More, soon.  In Japanese and English.  Do not be afraid!

GO TO PART TWO 

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Speaking of Janis Ian, she's got a "myspace exclusive" available for download.  On her myspace (duh).  Except that it's also available on her site.  Because I'm such a fan of exclusive content, and because it's a witty little ditty about gay marriage, I'll put it here, too:

Janis Ian - Married in London (mp3)

Sample more free wares here, buy stuff here.

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And speaking of Björk, did you see that B. Vegan scored an interview with her?  No swans were harmed.  Go read.

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Miss Neil Sedaka's recent two-night stand at Joe's Pub?  He'll also be back the first week of May.  May! (Chow chuh-chow-chow-chow).  Actually, on May 1st, the early show is Sedaka, the late show is Bat for Lashes.  It's a wonderful world.

Also at Joe's Pub - this upcoming Saturday, and the following Monday - Michael Penn.  Both Sedaka and Penn are touring in support of Greatest Hits collections.  Hear that, Mikey?

Tonight?  The original Avril Lavigne:  Lesley Gore.  Holy crap.  Go here (Do it!) to download a spare, solemn re-worked version of "You Don't Own Me" (and watch her sing the old version here (Do it!)).

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More Tonight:  FREE early show with Lightning Bolt and Sun Ra Arkestra.  Hooray, Todd P.  Cancelled.  Apparently this was out of doors.  They're looking into a raindate.

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Then head down to Battering Room's show at the Delancey, where Sure Juror is playing with Beat Radio, Mussels, and The Mugs.

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If you're afraid of the rain, stay home and download all of the Orson Welles Mercury Theatre radio shows.  Zowee. (via Dave Kehr)

tags: shiina ringo  shena ringo  jpop  tokyo jihen  japanese pop  jrock  japanese rock  ringo shiina  

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