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› home | tuesday night scoop jockey
Of skunks and skanks
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Posted 2004.11.23 | 19:42 by
HCE
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A quick public service announcement to start off this week; there'll be no TNSJ column for the next 4 weeks or so as yours truly is jetting off to an entirely different part of the globe to get away from all my fans and stalkers and such. Yes, I'm leaving for 3 weeks at an undisclosed resort somewhere in South-East Asia, but don't worry; you can still keep up to date on the weekly releases and such by checking the disc schedule and the release forum. Take care and see you on the other side! Right, with that out of the way, let's take a look at some of this week's releases!
THIS WEEK IN TNSJ:
[CDS] Aiko Kayo: "Ienai Kotoba"
[CDS] Beni Arashiro: "Here alone"
[CDA] Eriko Imai: "Single Collection ~Stairway~"
[CDA] HALCALI: "Ongaku no Susume"
[CDA] Hayami Kishimoto: "JUICY"
[DVD] Kumi Koda: "girls ~Selfish~"
[CDS] Mayumi Ono: "winter special edition"
[CDA] Mikuni Shimokawa: "Kimi no Uta"
[CDS] Yui Ichikawa: "Ai wa Katsu"
[CDS] ZARD: "Kyou wa yukkuri hanasou"
I used to love Kumi Koda. I still remember how special her debut album felt and how much I looked forward to it. I even drove out to the DHL depot just to get it a day early. She's had some ups and downs since then but some of her recent releases have been excellent. Take the first track on the triple A-side DVD single being released tomorrow, Selfish; it really is a great song. When her voice kind of cracks on the last "selfish", it's perfection. But lately, I've found myself getting pushed away from Kumi like I'm a magnet of the same polarity.
I think this started around the time of the CUTEY HONEY video and it's just gathered momentum since then as Kumi's image gets progressively more and more, for lack of a better word, slutty. She outdoes herself in that regard on this new DVD. It's obvious she's trying to carve a niche for herself by being provocatively sexual in a market dominated by cuteness and a rather demure sexuality. So Kumi shows enough skin to make 19 footballs, bends over and sticks her ass in the camera, she grabs her breasts and slides her hand between her legs, she pulls the head of one backup dancer into her crotch and gets humped doggy-style by another. It's just being provocative for the sake of it and it's incredibly juvenile. I'm sure some 14-year old boys will love it because they don't have access to real porn yet, but for me it just comes across as laughable and slightly demeaning. Now before any of said boys or the closet lesbians littered throughout j-pop fandom accuse me of just being prudish; I don't object because this whole thing offends my sensibilities. No, I object because it cheapens "my" music and because Kumi looks like a village bicycle that's been taken for one too many joyrides. Given that she doesn't do much to stimulate my salivary glands, I suppose it's possible that I wouldn't mind this kind of development if it was undertaken by a girl who actually "does it" for me and could make me forget about the music altogether, but until such a time I will keep to the high road on this one.
As it stands, I could understand this publicity tactic of pushing the envelope on risqu? behavior if Kumi was, say, a gravure idol who'd crossed over and had to fall back on her bankable assets to cover up for a lack of talent, but that's plainly not the case here. But I digress, and alas, in doing so I've fallen prey to the siren's trap. The whole point of every naughty dry-hump was to get people talking and look - her new release is the headliner in this week's column and people are falling all over themselves to add to the intarweb's proud traditions by making animated gifs, shouting "LOLZ shes HOTT!1" and exhausting the supply of bug-eyed emoticons at every tard-filled j-pop forum around. So I'll backtrack a little and rewind to the part where I talked about the music for all of a nanosecond. I did mention Selfish, which I consider the highlight of the disc, but the other two songs aren't far behind. SHAKE IT is like a sex'ed up take on the 1001 Nights with its Arabian stylings, while 24 sounds like a very nice ballad which might gain favor with me once I hear the whole thing rather than a mere soundbite. All in all, it's a very solid release as long as you can live with the video content, and no, there really is no CD version of this release. It's DVD only so you'll find it difficult to avoid Kumi's undulating hips and obviously that's very much a deliberate, and quite bold, marketing decision.
Bishoujo Club member Beni Arashiro's releasing her third solo single tomorrow, and like Kumi she's got some Arabian stylings on offer in the title track Here alone. It's got a nice bass beat in the foundation, too. Beni's voice sounds a little strained in places, though, but in the final reckoning I quite like the song. You can't argue with three songs for 1,050 yen either, even if the third one is a cover of the christmas song I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus.
Calling HALCALI a rapping duo is a little misleading, but what else can you call them? 16-year old HALCA and 17-year old YUCALI do rap. But they're not wannabees with hardcore attitudes who spit lyrics about urban life. No, HALCALI is a distinctly Japanese mix of cute rap vocals and all sorts of eclectic music. Now, two young Japanese girls rapping is frightfully cute, of course, but they never really rose above the novelty of it all. I never did get into them. Then they released BABY BLUE, a wonderful track full of dancing raccoons and lotsa, lotsa, lotsa cheese, and I started anticipating this album. Could I be looking at a repeat of the Tommy february6 revelation; where I experienced a late-blooming infatuation with Tomoko's second album after she was able to transcend the novelty atmosphere and produce track after brilliant track of actual quality music? The answer, unfortunately, is a reluctant no. BABY BLUE is the standout track and the rest of the material on Ongaku no Susume can't live up to it. Oh sure, there's the rather silly but appealing synth track OBOROGE COPY VIEW and the '80s pop arrangement of FUWAFUWA BRAND NEW, but it's not enough. Most of their other genre experiments, which seem to center on the '70s with references to disco and hippie music and influences from the Beach Boys and Brazilian Bossa Nova and samba, doesn't really work for me. It's a shame the disc is so uneven, because if they made a living at the altitudes they reach on the disc's high points, this would've been a classic.
Hayami Kishimoto is releasing her second album tomorrow and it's my most anticipated release of the week. Hayamin has been called a poor man's BoA, which I can kind of see. BoA's a little slicker and sexier, but then that's Avex for you. GIZA is a more down-to-earth label and they're kind of getting their feet wet in the girl-pop arena with Hayamin so there's some rough edges in spots. But the girl is awfully cute, she can dance and sing well and there's quite a bit of variety and good tracks on the disc showing up in stores tomorrow. You've got the Yuki Kimura-esque fun of yume real and the attitude of Dessert Days, and that's just the last two single tracks. The major criticism I would raise at this release is that there's only 4 previously unreleased tracks on it and one is a remix of one of her single tracks. It's a good dance/trance mix, but come on. Having said that, the CD still isn't without surprises. One would be the album track NON-FICTION-GAME, which is a pop-rock song with rap vocals outside of the chorus. There's always a danger of having your judgement clouded about artists you like but I feel safe saying this is a good album on the whole. The material's not revolutionary and it won't write headlines or wreck the Oricon curve but Hayami is one name in girl-pop you ought to check out if you haven't already.
The second of Aiko's 4 limited singles being spit out by the Avex machine these days is a Kazuhito Kikuchi-penned ballad called "Ienai Kotoba", which obviously represents a hyperspace jump from her eurobeat cover last week. Kikuchi is one half of the Avex group BREATH and has written a bunch of classic Avex tracks in recent years for artists like Ayumi Hamasaki, Every Little Thing, dream and TRF. I have no objections to diversity and it's kind of cool to have an artist like Kayo go through Avex mainstays like the eurobeat cover and the Ayu/ELT ballad back-to-back.
The new single from Izumi Sakai and ZARD being released tomorrow offers three new songs and no surprises. But then, they're hardly about to change after 13 successful years at the top of the charts, are they? ZARD's well-established sound is carried on through this single, held high like a torch in the darkness caused by hundreds of soulless idols blocking out the sun. Quite a blank that, but it's my party and I'll throw around blanks if I want to. The title track is composed by Aika Ohno and arranged by Akihito Tokunaga and can you really find a better tag-team than that these days? The two c/w tracks also hold up under scrutiny and it adds up to another excellent and, dare I say, valuetastic release. There's a distinct lack of hype surrounding ZARD releases, which can be attributed to hype thriving best among teens too busy to prattle on about BoA and Morning Musume to notice when good music like this bites them in the ass, but Izumi Sakai never fails to deliver with every single disc she records.
At this point, Alanis Morissette might have burst into song, going "Oh, isn't it ironic?". I'm talking about idols casting long shadows and here we have no less than two examples of the pure gravure idol moonlighting as a j-pop singer. It's really pretty amazing how many of them are able to make the transition in today's market place where the lines have blurred to such a degree that you can't really tell who's a photomodel and who's a "full-time" singer. There's Yuko Ogura. Sayuri Anzu. MEGUMI. Chinatsu Wakatsuki. And in this particular case, Yui Ichikawa. Yes, she's cute. Yes, it's a lot easier to dig up swimsuit photos of her than Ayumi Hamasaki and BoA (yeah, I know some of you have searched for just such images and I have the search engine hit logs to prove it). But what about the music? Is it any good? Well... *crickets* Okay, seriously, there really isn't much to distinguish Yui's voice and material from any number of cute j-pop or anime songs, as sad a comment as thay may be seen as. But in all honesty this song isn't breathtaking either. You might as well spend your yen on a photobook and dismiss any notion of buying this single for the music. You'll probably be much happier.
I said there were two idols-cum-singers here today, right? Well, Mayumi Ono is the second one. Tell you what, instead of talking about the music, why don't I just link you to some swimsuit photos and we can get out of here early? Okay okay, I'll try not to be so facetious. Promise. You know what? Funny thing happened on the way to making fun of this release...it's far from bad. It won't make children cry or upset the livestock. Mayumi's voice is fairly pleasant without the sharp edges that at times can cut deep into one's soul when listening to idols and the song is catchy and not without charm. I'd definitely get this over Yui's single, and it's something I wouldn't have any qualms about recommending even if it was performed by a girl so ugly she had to wear a bag over her head on the CD cover.
Mikuni Shimokawa started out in the idol girl group Checkicco, which had the numbers of Morning Musume but not the longevity, before she jumped ship to a solo career built around sweet and cute songs that often ended up as anime theme songs. She's quietly plugged away in the 5 or so years since then and is ready to release her 3rd album tomorrow. It's a light and easily digested disc filled to the brim with ballads and sweet, low-key pop numbers. At times I think of Mikuni as Maaya Sakamoto Lite; a little bouncier, a little more pop, definitely worth checking out.
This may be the last we hear of Eriko Imai. You see, she managed to get herself impregnated by Shogo from the j-pop group 175R and after a quick shotgun marriage we now get a shotgun best album; a final collection plate passed around to squeeze the last drop of juice out of a fickle fandom that tends to abandon idols at the same time those idols abandon their (perceived) virginity. So what do we get for our final 30 bucks? All 10 of her single tracks plus Can U feel me?, the coupling track off her last single Butterfly, plus one new track called Stairway. Buy the CD+DVD edition and you can add the PV clips to her 3 Avex singles to the list as well. Ironically, when Eriko sings the new song, her pronounciation makes it sound like she's singing "Stay away". But does anyone really want her to leave for good? I, for one, really like the new song and wish there's more where that came from. If this is the end, though, it's a very nice swan song. You will be missed, Eriko.
From the desk of the Scoop Jockey
| Cover it up! - Hello, sailor! That's not so super! |
| This week's Elephant Man Award goes to Binetsu Danji's cover for their debut release "Amai Memai". The cover's not horrendous in and of itself, although the guys on the cover looking like three American gymnasts and the whoring of the stars and stripes is more than a little questionable, but they get the award for the incredibly high levels of overall gayness. Richard Simmons would be proud. |  |
| The lament of a scoop jockey; or What the blank is up with those blanks? |
You know, even Scoop Jockeys run out of words some times. I was writing today's column when I reached for a particular word and ended up clutching at air. I couldn't for the life of me remember it. It was right on the tip of my tongue but still eluded my touch. I took a shower, I made myself a cup of hot chocolate, I meditated...nothing. And a fat lot of good you people were! Let's see if I help you out if I ever come across you bleeding in a ditch some time. Hrmph! And I was taught to never settle for the next best word, so instead of substituting in some feeble replacement word, I decided to leave the spot where the word would have gone blank and give you readers a chance to participate in the writing process. Click the "post a comment" link below and give me what you feel is the best word to replace those blanks. It must be the same word in both places and only one suggestion per person, please. Oh, and if you're wondering what exactly is being referred to as "quite a blank", it's my preceding statement about torches and soulless idols. After a winner has been chosen, his or her word will be edited into the column for all posterity. So don't let this chance pass you up! YOU could become a part of history!*
*Or not. For all I know the internet may implode tomorrow, so all warranties and campaign promises are void and null.
You've been listening to Tuesday Night Scoop Jockey with HCE. Tune in again next week for more of the same.
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