New Music: Shiina, Dee, Ray….
Shiina Ringo, Sanmon Gossip 「三文ゴッシップ」 (EMI, 2009). Shiina tries to merge her early noise-pop sound with her most recent jazz bent, with mixed results. She channels the Jackson 5’s “ABC” on “Rôdôsha,” and her inner Edith Piaf comes out on “Bonsai hada.” My favorite track is the rocker “Yokyô,” but there aren’t any really classic Ringo tunes here: nothing cuts straight through to your inner chaos the way her best work does. It’s still several cuts above the usual J-Pop standard, but it leaves me hoping for a return to form on her next work, either solo or with her band Tokyo Jihen.
Dee Alexander, Wild is the Wind (Blujazz, 2008). Alexander is a local Chicago jazz singer—but not for long. This CD doesn’t quite capture the marvel that is one of her live performances, but it still managed to garner a five-star review from Downbeat magazine and is now attracting lots of attention in Europe. It’s not just that she possesses remarkably true pitch: her music burns with intelligence and passion, and she explores a whole range of vocal sounds.
Black Blondie, Do You Remember Who You Wanted to Be (Black Blondie, 2009). Self-produced debut CD by a mostly female group from Minneapolis. They cross hiphop with R&B, avant-garde pop, and jazz, and end up sounding nothing like anyone else. The lead track “Hunger” is very strong (you can stream it at their MySpace page), as is the reggae-styled “Dressed to Kill a Mockingbird”; the rest of the material is uneven, but always distinctive. A group worth watching in the coming years.
Inoue Takayuki, It’s Never Too Late (Sony, 2007). Solo work by former Spiders lead guitarist, originally released back in 1981. Recorded in England, it features local session musicians, including Mick Taylor as guest on several tracks. It’s pretty standard late 1970s guitar-boogie rock, with a few instrumentals thrown in (Inoue composed the hit instrumental theme song for the 1970s television show “Taiyô ni hoero”).
Ray Davies with The Crouch End Festival Chorus, The Kinks Choral Collection (Universal, 2009). Re-recordings of a dozen Kinks’ classics given full choral treatment. It works on some of the songs quite well—“Shangri-La,” for example, as well as the suite of songs collected here as “Village Green Medley,” all taken from the classic 1968 Village Green Preservation Society album. On some of the others, I find myself wishing for a more imaginative use of the vocal resources, as well as a few more oddball song selections. How ‘bout something from Muswell Hillbillies, for example? Then again, I could listen to “You Really Got Me” played on dueling tubas and still enjoy it, and in fact it provides one of the more thoughtful uses of the choir here (though I can’t help wondering what it would have sounded like if they handed off the guitar solo to the singers and allowed them to go wild with it). The U.S. version will be released in September.
