Right No Wrong No Right Yes Wrong Yes

Here's how I think this works:  Variety is Tokyo Jihen's best album because it's its least consistent.

Japanese pop genius Shiina Ringo created Jihen when she decided to abandon her very successful solo career and join a band.  Procedurally it was matter-of-fact:  She made permanent her touring outfit.  But it was a radical move promotionally (imagine if Madonna announced she was no longer headlining tours and instead was the lead singer of a group called "The American Happening"), physically (Shiina celebrated the change through plastic surgery, having a trademark mole removed), and musically.

It worked out better than, say, Tin Machine.  The band's first two records, Kyouiku (Education) and Adult, reached the second and first spots on the Oricon (the Japanese equivalent of Billboard) sales charts, respectively.

After the artistic highs of her then-final(*) solo CD Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana(**), the Jihen material is, at best, a different approach to her music, at worst, a retreat.  Even though Shiina wrote the bulk of the music on the first two Jihen records, they lack the vision and coherency that made her solo work so interesting.  That's still her voice on the songs, but there seems to be a very conscious attempt to include the others.  Every member gets his sonic space.  Though the project didn't abandon overdubs and electronic errata, it seemed more focused on a sound that could be recreated live. 

This isn't to say the first two Tokyo Jihen records are bad.  At all.  The musicianship is superb.  There are a vast array of styles on display, though there's an unfortunate jazz bent that ultimately homogenizes the goods.  (Her solo material never needed to resort to jazzish jamminess to feel of-the-moment;  it was a quicksand pit of creative restlessness.)  Of the two, I prefer the bratty, sloppy Education, even though its songs aren't as good, simply because the contents hadn't yet settled.  By Adult - which has its standout tracks (the sequence that goes from a big fat torch song ("Yukiguri") to a brief, noisy, round-robin ("Kabuki") to Latin jazz ("Blackout") is probably the record's best) - Jihen had very successfully forged a group identity.  The compromise of art-by-committee is less interesting.

Variety is more committee'd than the previous efforts; though Shiina wrote all the lyrics, she wrote none of the music.  Its lows are lower - "Fukushuu" ("Revenge"), the one song sung completely in English, comes off like an Evanescence-aping trainwreck - but at its best it's giddy and weird and assertive.

And, paradoxically, more cohesive.  It's tougher to pull quotes from the new record.  The band identity is so firm that, for all its unevenness, everything works best in context.  "OSCA" felt like an odd choice for a single when it was first released; in the record, its easy delineation, its simple structure (and winning sped-up reprise), and Shiina's expressive vocal make it jump out as a natural entry point.  It's the fifth track on Variety and really brings the record together.

It's very possible that my problems with the overall style of the previous records comes from a conceptual disagreement:  Supposedly, each record is based around a television genre.  I can't pretend to know how well this relationship is expressed - every bit of Japanese TV I've ever seen is all-out fucked-up (what the "Adult" genre is in Japan I don't really want to know, but I hear you can eat all the paper you want).  But I'm always willing to belabor a metaphor.  So:  Perhaps the reason it's easier to pull a sample track from Education or Adult is less a matter of  consistency than an adherence to the slavish genre notion that creates continual-loop shows like Law & Order (this tangent would be so much easier had TJ released a CD called Police Action Murder Funtime), something where you can click in at any time and experience three minutes of show where the tone and plot are representative of the ongoing goings-on.  The miscellany of a Variety show, on the other hand, may allow for three solid minutes of plate-spinning, or cooking demonstration, or wacky skits.  And those can all be effectively yanked out and YouTubed, sure.  But they work much better when you're familiar with the idiom from which they've sprung - it's Letterman dropping shit off a building, it's Carol Burnett and we like her so we'll deal with the occasional song.  It's Donny & Marie so that's why there's a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll, and why neither is very good.  It's Pink Lady & Jeff and it's inexcusable.  Etc.  The songs on Variety by Tokyo Jihen make more sense knowing that they're from Variety by Tokyo Jihen.

Only to wildly over-think things.  I hope you skipped that last paragraph.  Wish I had! 

Anyway:

Tokyo Jihen - Tsukijime-hime ("Monthly Princess"/"Princess Mensuelle")(mp3) (buy)

Come on baby, light my fire.

My favorite song on the record is probably "Boutomin" ("A Certain Tokyo Resident"/"Citizens") and I think that would scare you off.  It's as lite jazz as Jihen's gotten, a good part of it's reminiscent of the old Drifters/George Benson nugget "On Broadway."  I know!  Yuck!  But the vocals are out front, the band sings a lot on that track, there's a coy drama to their back-and-forth with Shiina.  It's great to hear her finally sing, "Don't you interrupt me, I am so tired, you're pissin' me off."

It sounds better than all that when it takes place in the middle of a record called Variety by a band called Tokyo Jihen.

"Monthly Princess" is a blast.  Takes dark, ominous, and goofy, grafts on bright pop fun.  You've got that eerie Farfisa, those creepy mock-child chants, a brief surf guitar lick, the handclaps, that Ray Manzarek quote.  It's stuffed full of fills but never overbusy, it gives great build.

It probably has nothing to do with menstruation, even though Shiina Ringo wrote the lyrics.  I think it has something to do with getting a monthly paycheck?  It might be about being poor, then rich.  Or shopping.  Or plate-spinning.  Or the Partridge Family going to hell.  All that's pretty much the same thing.  It's about that.

(*)  This year she released Heisei Fuuzoku, a collaboration with violinist/orchestrator Saito Neko.  Released in conjunction with Sakuran, a film for which Shiina was the musical director, it contained four new Shiina songs and some re-worked older material.

(**)  A record so fantastic I'm apparently unable to describe how fantastic it is without sounding like a total moron.  I'll keep trying.  Someday, kids.

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Go here to see Cornelius playing on Yo Gabba Gabba!

(Wish I could embed that.  But this is the Internet, where people get all proprietary over shit they've appropriated.  Hopefully the clip will be on YouTube before the day is out.)

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Local Hero Todd P on the paper-only Showpaper:

"Remember when the Internet first came around, how everybody thought it was going to make underground shit easier to happen and get heard about, and that everything was going to be decentralized and better?  Well, it didn't work out that way-if anything, independent rock is more dictated and commercial than it was before the Internet. So we made a conscious decision to keep Showpaper off the Internet. There's not much organized opposition to the indie-rock regime at the moment; the whole thing has turned into a more gentrified, adult-contemporary, NPR, New Yorker vibe. The paper's purpose is to get back to what a punk-rock scene is supposed to be about-young people and underground, grassroots shit."

Also:  Silent Barn needs help.  (And, probably, a better lawyer.)

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This successfully finds whole new levels of wrong.  I'm not sure what the worst thing about it is.  The ad's bulshit bling concept?  Its calculated approach toward self-awareness?  The total undermining of the sincere but ridiculous amateurism that made the original supercede its sideshow allure?  That there's such a thing as "Diet Chocolate Cherry Dr. Pepper?"  That I've fallen into the trap of talking about it?

tags: shiina ringo  tokyo jihen  tay zonday  chocolate rain  jezebel  cornelius  toddp  

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