Waiting for the Sirens' Call: notes for the record

*reading thread* Janni, you're right, am starting to not like the ordering of the first few songs. They sound too similar, except "Who's Joe?" is better than "Waiting for the Sirens' Call" is better than "Hey Now What You Doing", meaning that in practice I'm going to end up skipping the last two. ^^; But when I first got it I would just play the first few songs over and over, precisely because they flowed into one another. XD

Actually I totally grok what Jae means when she says they sound old and lazy, except I like it. ^^;v I have a consistent track record of liking artists' recent/"mature" albums as well as or better than their early, ground-breaking work, against critical consensus or not. David Bowie, Pet Shop Boys and so forth. It's partly attributable to my "flattened" listening history - like I said, Get Ready was the first New Order album I heard, and it still sounded like nothing else I'd heard before - and partly attributable, I think, to the fact that I like the sound of a band/artist distilling themselves to essentials. I like the essentials of New Order (i.e. crisp, sunny-melancholy synth/guitar pop songs written from the POV of someone who 25 years down the line still cannot get over the fact that he isn't required to hold a day job), to me "playing it safe" is the same thing as saying "knowing what you're about". It's like my dad says: by the time you're fifty you'll know who you are and who you aren't, and your best hope is that you'll like the person that's resulted from the sum of your choices. It's something to which I look forward. Which I think makes me a weird young person, or something, but...

( Okay, I'm going to do a quickie track-by-track. Just for the record and all that. )

MP3s to come in a separate post. I'll get to FSTs early next week, I think.

"Telephone yappin', foot-gas-tappin', singin' to the radio--"

Should really have done this when I posted the poll, but:

Atobe Keigo - Valentine Kiss
Oshitari Yuushi - Valentine Kiss

So now you have a basis on which to judge. XD

The Dollyrots - Wreckage: new band courtesy sjdr. I've been listening to Judy And Mary recently, and the Dollyrots sound strikingly like early JAM, except more enamoured with 60s bubblegum and less enamoured with early 90s time-signature changes. Also, Californian not Japanese. XD Lovely pop songwriting; will probably be to my 2005 what the Poxy album was to my 2004, i.e. token candypunk-with-handclaps-in album. I say 'token' but really, it must be the world's fault for not producing enough candypunk with handclaps in. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'd be delighted.

The Dollyrots - Be My Baby: just to cherry-top the overwhelming Chynna Clugston-Major-ness of this album, the last track on it is a pop-punk (ref. NYLPM) cover of a song from Dirty Dancing.

For fabulous_papaya if she still wants it: Royksopp - In Space. Just what you think it should be.

m-flo featuring Ceybil Jeffries - The Way We Were: oblique associative train of thought. Gundam Seed is one of those anime where the ending theme starts playing a minute or so before the episode ends, with the result that the song becomes the series - and "Anna issho datta no ni" is basically "The Way We Were" isn't it? I mean, not melodically or anything, but. True to form I don't have the original, just the jpop cover. Still in English, plus an ear-perking rap - "hectic dialectic" - and that warm, bubbly m-flo production with the shuffle-beat and siren noises and synths on funk-organ setting. ...I saw m-flo on the Japanese MTV Awards when I was in Shanghai, flanking Larry "electroclash" Tee to present an award to I can't remember whom. Thought it was cool. XD

Thanks to mitethe, what you've all been waiting for even if you didn't know it: O-Zone - Dragostea Din Tei (Eurobeat Remix). Just in case someone missed it in the comment thread of last night's post. XD It's better than these things can sometimes be; you can tell the remixer was inspired by his source material and took pains with the arrangement. The genius moment being when the dude sings "Allo?" - and the synths bleep hello back at him.

And now I'm off

Prince of Tennis 174: Hey, wow, the tennis is sort of realistic! Also they spent money on the animation. Now I just want to see 175, though.

You can tell how long it's been since I stopped following the anime: opening I've never seen, ending I've never seen, and I have no idea why Ryouma is back in New York City.

Naked Truth 4: .......*dies laughing* Brava, sensei, brava. XD Did not see that one coming.