I was surprised last week to find out that Swinging Popsicle has a new album out, called Loud Cut. It appears to be not so much a proper album as a hodge-podge of random cuts: video game themes, a cover or two, a few tracks off previous albums. Perhaps as a result of this, it doesn’t hold together as well as it could, but there’s still some good stuff here.
Bassist Hironobu Hirata was in charge of the background music to the video game Sumaga, and a lot of the material here originates from that project. Album openers “Perfect Loop” and “(a) SLOW STAR” were both theme songs to the game, and three other songs (“Meet U”, “UN-K.O. ~Our Day Will Come~”, and “Good Time”) are vocal versions of background music tracks from the game. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the other stuff here is also from Sumaga (I don’t have the game or its soundtracks); certainly, the creepy instrumental “Tragedy In Your Brain” sounds like a video game background track.
Beyond the soundtrack stuff, there’s also an Auroranote cover (“Seijyaku to Ryuusei”), two tracks apiece from the last two Popsicle albums (Transit and Go On), and two of the bands’ early b-sides, apparently re-recorded (I’ve never heard the original versions, but Georide marks both セルフカバー, “self-cover”). If you’re keeping track, that accounts for thirteen of the albums’ fourteen tracks — the fourteenth, “Kururi Sakura Hirari”, is listed as “Swinging Popsicle Ver.”, so maybe it’s a cover too?
There’s nothing wrong with odds-and-ends compilations, of course. The four Transit and Go On tracks at the end of the album seem like bizarre padding, but if you disregard them, you still have a 10-song mini-album, and a not bad one at that. Certainly, I’ve raved about “(a) SLOW STAR” before, and “Perfect Loop” is quite good too, continuing the band’s recent experiments adding subtle electronic elements to their music. “UN-K.O.” is also quite good, a big guitar song that comes up a bit short in the chorus department, but still rocks. Those are the main highlights, but the pleasant samba cut “Good Time”, the mid-tempo “Kururi Sakura Hirari”, and the Auroranote cover are all pretty good too. The low points are the rather pointless “Tragedy In Your Brain” and the overly dramatic piano ballad “Let Me Fly”.
At any rate, this album hardly supplants Go On as my go-to Swinging Popsicle album (despite the inclusion of that album’s brilliant title track), but it’s not a bad record to have around, particularly for the first six tracks. I’d say it’s not worth the import price for the physical CD, but for $10 off JapanFiles for the MP3, it’s well worth it.
. I was seriously underwhelmed by their debut, to the point that I didn’t bother to listen to them again until all the positive hype about their new album. But enough people who seemed to hold the band in contempt gave this one good reviews that I thought it’d be worth checking out. And it was.
in Alternative Press (I think) a few months later, I ran out and picked up the 10″ vinyl version. Translucent lime green vinyl, as I recall.
, is one of my all-time favorite records. I suppose it could be because singer Richard Ashcroft’s solo career has been inconsistent and rather disappointing, or that I’ve never really liked any of the Verve’s other albums (I know, I suck), or maybe just a sign of my cynicism about reunion tours in general.
, I got excited: pulsing, brooding, and majestic, it seemed to perfectly encapsulate everything that was great about the band in 1997. So I picked up the album a few days after it came out, and have been listening to it since, trying to make up my mind about it – a difficult task, because while the album has some absolutely fantastic songs on it, it’s also quite flawed.
came out last year, and since I gave it a listen this morning and was bowled over all over again by how great it is, I thought maybe I’d write about it a bit.
, which officially came out in the States a few days later on Koch Records (though it has apparently been out in Japan for over a year). The album, a 17 track, two disc live set recorded at club Basie in Ichinoseki (
, and the results are … pretty damn good, if imperfect, and a reassuring move back towards the band’s early sound after the stylistic detour on their second album.
, when it came out in 2003. One of the many albums mining 80’s post-punk in the wake of the breakout success of the Strokes and Interpol, the Stills stood out by pulling from a more diverse set of influences than their contemporaries, incorporating elements of shoegazing and Britpop as well as the more usual Chameleons and Echo & The Bunnymen references. And Tim Fletcher’s affecting, emotional vocals gave their music a more intimate feel than many of their peers, who were largely trying to emulate Lou Reed’s nonchalance or Ian Curtis’ icy emotional remoteness. The result was a gloomy, grandiose album – cohesive and compelling, if occasionally flawed (I never cared for their stabs at dance punk, for example, and the songwriting didn’t always live up to the pure pleasure of the album’s big sound).
saw a line-up shift, as guitarist Greg Paquet left the group and drummer Dave Hamelin switched instruments to take his spot. Hamelin was apparently already the band’s primary songwriter on the debut, and he now took up the bulk of the singing duties as well (he sang only one song on Logic, but over half on Feathers). His voice, while not bad, didn’t have the presence of Fletcher’s, and combined with a radical shift in sound – away from 80’s anglophilia towards a more ragged, rock n’ roll sound – it left many fans perplexed and disappointed. Feathers is actually a decent collection of songs, but it jettisons much of the personality of Logic, leaving the band sounding somewhat generic.
has 
(the only other Elbow album I have), is entirely made up of slow, quiet, melancholy songs, which take a long, long time to sink in.