Kent’s “Röd”

Kent / Röd / November 06, 2009
10. Töntarna

“So hang them high, so hang them slowly”: such has become the advice of Kent, a band increasingly consumed by producer Jon Schumann’s electronic influence and a penchant for flipping the bird to jerks, bullies, and catty bitches. Transformed from the raw, soul-searching sincerity of Hagnesta Hill and Isola to defenders of the underdog in two albums, Kent’s musical trajectory can either be considered the greatest transformation of the decade or the worst; it’ll become obvious which side I fall on.

It’s almost impossible to talk about Röd without mentioning its predecessor, Tillbaka till samtiden, Kent’s 2007 showpiece that no longer foreshadowed a change in direction, but chiseled it in stone; Schumann took the underlying Swedish gloom and doom of albums like Du & jag döden and The hjärta & smärta EP and transformed them into tactile representations of death, the heart, and pain that have paved the way for Röd’s abject nihilism. Where Joakim Berg’s vocals used to be lilting and nostalgic, they’re now bitter and acute, tearing into adolescent grief without talking down to its audience. Ostentatious though the production has always been, a sound that used to rely heavily on instantly aching guitar loops and bleeding bass lines that gave away both the plot and the joy of finding that not-so-happy-ending within the first verse has become ravaged by bitter synths and a maddeningly patient denouement. Amateurs could easily dismiss at least two minutes of every track without taking into account the pay off of Kent’s new virtues (hint: temperance is not one of them).

Where some of the tracks may come off as too formulaic – loops are still a thorny issue – others round out the machine-heavy production with violins (“Hjärta”), acoustic guitars (“Ensamheten”), and plinking pianos (“Svarta linjer”); Schumman has become the resident spelunker, transcending the band’s more organic, alternative foundation without altering the magic that made past work so inherently dramatic and moving. Drawing influence from 90’s industrial music, the record is almost mired in too much revenge and fury for its own good; if Tillbaken till samtiden bit back, Röd attacks from behind. No longer providing pathetic excuses for its cowering fear by positing anxiety as a kind of courage, “Töntarna” lashes out: no other song has Berg singing with such precision, such scorn, such accusation. Even Röd’s love songs hide in songs translated as “Waltz for Satan (Your Friend the Pessimist)” and “There Are No Words,” an ironic admission of the difficulty in navigating eros within the confines of language: “There are no words for it in this damn language / I have no words for that we breathe, think, feel the same thing.”

However, as carefully as each song treads in its intricate tapestry of the morbid and self-loathing (“I failed myself / So see me as a warning”), the album still crouches in the shadow of Tillbaka till samtiden, an album a hair’s breadth more sophisticated and restrained, letting the synths accent pieces of music rather than frame or even form the base of entire songs. But though Röd seems content to tackle smaller chunks of easily consumed issues like high school social structures and loneliness instead of drug use and abandonment, both know where to inflict the most emotional damage. Subtlety has been thrown out to make room for a full choir and two fast-paced, demi-club tunes no one would dance to; it’s a sweeping album, full of epic build-ups and nuanced sounds hidden behind its blatant discontent.

Magnum opus though it may not be, it’s still a masterpiece, a record that will follow you long after the fading robots and tubular bells have ululated through the speakers. “Even one hundred thousand voices can be wrong”; these just happen to be right.

♫ Official Site
♫ Buy Röd

Japan Today not very well-endowed; to die old, alone

I touched in passing on the issue of Japan Today’s blatant sexism/objectification of women in a recent post, but the situation has escalated beyond the means of mere mention. From singers to actresses, to misleading headlines and inappropriate reporting, the entertainment section is the worst offender. Yesterday, the article “Kyoko Hasegawa makes sexy comeback after having first child” focused entirely on how rocking Hasegawa’s new body is on the cover of anan magazine. A staff member from the magazine is quoted as saying: “She’s even thinner than before her pregnancy. But her bust remains bigger, so her figure is just awesome now.” Every woman should get pregnant so they can reap all those awesome, painless physical benefits!

The brief item concerning JUJU’s performance at the Japanese premiere of Disney’s A Christmas Carol focuses entirely on a joking comment she made about wishing she were lucky enough to spend Christmas with a man (and I realize that Christmas in Japan is more of a romantic holiday than a family one, but seriously?) with the headline “JUJU looking for man to spend Christmas with.” I must have missed something because nowhere did I read JUJU saying she was looking for anything. Inference and misquotation: two of the great fundementals of journalism.

Men on this web site very rarely have to deal with topics of relationships or how well they should keep their bodies looking; every time an engagement, relationship confirmation, or break-up occurs it focuses on the female half, bestowing the woman with chief responsibility/scorn. When Yumi Yoshimura and Nao Omori split, the headline read “Puffy’s Yumi Yoshimura back on the single scene.” How’s Omori doing? No one cares! Men have more important things to do then worry about relationships! He has his whole life ahead of him! And anyway, according to the commentary left by readers, it’s the woman’s fault if she failed to look pretty enough to nab a man before she got super old and no one wanted her. They probably broke up because “she couldn’t be bothered to comb her hair” writes one reader; “[s]he got no chance of finding happy hubby time now at 34 – a lifetime of host clubs awaits…” writes another.

As an extension, reporters seem to constantly badger women on the topic of their love life even when their appearance at movie premieres and charity events has nothing to do with their personal lives.

“Reporters at the event wasted no time getting into Hoshino’s private life, asking yet again about her rumored relationship with JRA jockey Kosei Miura, 19. [...] Hoshino deflected further questions about her love life with her light saber, but was kept in the spotlight by the storm trooper at her side.”

“Actress Yu Yamada, 25, shocked crowds in Ikebukuro on Saturday when she appeared at the illumination ceremony of the Christmas tree in Sunshine City’s fountain plaza with her beautiful brown locks cut short by 30 cm. Jumping to conclusions, reporters immediately questioned if something had happened between Yamada and her beau, 26-year-old actor Shun Oguri…”

Actress Meisa Kuroki, 21, lined up with actresses Rinko Kikuchi, 28, and Hinako Saeki, 32, this week to announce the completion of their upcoming sci-fi movie “Assault Girls.” [...] When asked if she was attracted by the allure of older men – a reference to her rumored relationship with kabuki actor Shindo Nakamura, 37 – she replied: “What are you trying to make me say?!”

“Model Yuri Ebihara, 30, attended an event in Tokyo this week to promote the sale of DVDs of the first season of American drama “Gossip Girl.” [...] Ebi-chan is rumored to be seeing ILMARI, 34, of hip hop group RIP SLYME, and she looked like she had grown a bit weary of questions about her private life.”

It’s sort of hard to exclusively poke fun at Japan Today: to examine this type of “reporting” is to examine the actual system at work in Japan. Most promotional events feature women, rather than men, dressed up in cute outfits, a lot of emphasis is placed on awards bestowed upon women for their physical attributes – prettiest hairstyles, greatest legs – to give women an incentive to focus on and value their appearance above all else, and most reporters ask women questions dealing with their personal lives or fashion sense rather than their body of work (a reminder of where a woman’s “real” achievement is). I’d be very interested if anyone has any other examples of such egregious reporting in the Japanese press, or if Japan Today is a sort of very cruel exception to the rule (if I was as bad a reporter, I would instantly assume that with such a rampant, shallow focus on women, sexism isn’t just alive, but thriving in the Japanese press).

Waiting for Gaga

I’ve been rather mum on the topic of Lady Gaga, a pretty demonstrable feat when the majority of my interest appears to reside in the body of work inhabited by divas of all varieties. Maybe I’m just too ashamed to admit that I’m part of this second generation of Gaga enthusiasm, a movement that occurred shortly after the release of “Bad Romance” when the rest of the mildy interested finally got it and were made to suffer the blows of a million I-told-you-sos. But even that’s not being fairly accurate: I was always more than mildy interested. I was there when The Fame was released, I was there to predict songs later released as singles before (rightly) dismissing the rest of the album as filler (because the album, as a whole, is incredibly problematic on whatever narrative grounds Gaga has defended it), I was there to rank a “Just Dance” remix #9 on a year-end list. But even her gradual climb and eventual domination atop the Billboard wasn’t enough to offer respect to someone so determined to be weird for the sake of being weird (it’s probably pointless to note Gaga has said every moment of her life is a performance).

But though “Just Dance” and “LoveGame” were too big to ignore if at any time you had left the house in the past few months, they were still easy to dismiss as the insane warbling of a one-album wonder; I don’t think it’s as easy to dismiss “Bad Romance” and its follow-up leaks “Alejandro” and “Dance in the Dark,” all which are exceptional moments of sonic improvement. The production on Gaga’s numbers are becoming so huge they’re somewhere up in space and her music videos are bringing discussion back into not just the speculation of video as art, but what art is and where it can function. “Bad Romance” isn’t just acclaimed by casual listeners and fans but by critics, who have adopted Lady Gaga as their poster child of pop (PopJustice called the video “basically fucking amazing” based off of a 30 second preview), marveling over that jerky, schizophrenic (“Thriller”-inspired) choreography, gushing over those avant-fashion costumes, and deciphering the muddle that is her lyrics.

This taste for the bizarre, campy, and sometimes tacky and her inability to wear anything with less than two feet of protruding plastic has given hope to a group still mourning the loss of Madonna’s Blonde Ambition. As a persona, Gaga’s may be one of the most inclusive examples of niche marketing: rarely sentimental, focusing on life’s intimate insta-pleasures, she appeals to alternative subcultures while working even the most conservative mainstream dance floors. The Fame Monster, in particular, seems to have struck a nerve, maybe because the world has waited long enough for this Godot, wanting new material as desperately as Gaga wants your bad rah rah romance. The fact that it technically could have been written anytime in the last fifteen years and still inspires so much adulation is the only proof we have that she may be more than just a chapter in the book of pop: there may be only one Lady Gaga, but we may not be willing to stick around as long next time.

Koda Kumi’s TRICK Live Tour 2009

Koda Kumi / TRICK Live Tour 2009 / Oct 21, 2009
That Ain’t Cool / Venus

Shock for the sake of shock wears thin fast: if you’re wondering why more and more critics are rolling their eyes at Antichrist it’s the promise of jolting incredulity gone flaccid through hype and expectation. By the time the pivotal scenes arrive, you’re already comparing it to things you’ve seen worse, to things done worse better, and wondering if anything has the power to make you recoil anymore. The headlining tours of divas are the same. No, you won’t find any genital mutilation in the choreography, but you’ll find the usual mimed sexual theatrics; even though Koda Kumi’s TRICK Live Tour 2009 makes Basic Instinct look like a Sesame Street segment, it’s all pretty yawn inducing.

Freak shows, circuses, funhouses…in 2009, divas around the world recycled mythologized forms of entertainment for their shows over and over and over again. But while Koda Kumi may have intercepted a few memos for her own greatest show on Earth, there remains something distinctly East Asian about the whole experience. And I’m not just talking about the audience, who could be found weeping hysterically at the sight of her when they weren’t thrusting their TRICK baubles in the standard form of adulation: if you’ve seen a recent Ayumi Hamasaki concert, you’ve seen TRICK.

There’s the standard ridiculous costumes, complete with plumage, glitter, and ruffles, like a spoiled princess’s closet burst at the seams, computer graphics-heavy movie interludes, the uncomplicated synchronized dance moves, the obligatory drive through the crowd on a giant platform, the moment where pop diva turns rock star in leather, the magnificent mile of lights trailing down a ridiculous dress for the slow number, wigs, wigs, wigs, and the laid-back jeans/sweatpants encore, all clocking in at over two hours, which I’m sure makes the high price of a ticket seem fair, but makes for a very long-winded home viewing experience. Koda Kumi doesn’t leave much to your imagination, disposing of the myriad uses for the term trick, instead handing you a decent enough present but without any wrapping paper (this is an arena, after all, not a parlor). A few things will seem interesting, nothing will surprise you, and someone gets abducted.

The following are five moments that stood out for me. Not necessarily good moments, not necessarily bad moments, just moments, worthy of mention and some rumination.

All you need is Ai: “Is” PV

Ai Otsuka’s given name means love and she has never ceased to remind us this on every album she has released: LOVE PUNCH, LOVE JAM, LOVE COOK, LOVE PiECE, LOVE LETTER… Her first greatest hits collection was entitled Ai am BEST, and her new collection, to be released November 11, is exactly the same: LOVE is BEST. It’s a tad more inclusive, ditching the “clever” wordplay for a more straightforward, in your face, in case you didn’t quite catch it the first time summary of everything Ai Otsuka writes and sings about. But everything in her world isn’t just filtered through the permutations, challenges, setbacks, and joys of love, it is love; “Is” being the key word. And I mean everything.

Fame, it’s not your brain

I apologize for the recent lack of activity. appears should be back to normal on Monday, November 2.

In the mean time, I have an article up on Dolorous Haze about Ayumi Hamasaki, music videos, and fame, by far one of the most fun essays I’ve had writing in a while. I’m a huge fan of the site and all the talented writers involved with it, so it’s an honor to be featured there; special thanks to Ray for his impeccable editing skills.

My Rolling Stone, my self

I never thought I would like the Rolling Stones, but I do. I listen to “Gimme Shelter” when I pick up around the house, “Emotional Rescue” when driving my car, and “Moonlight Mile” as I fall asleep. Snatches of albums here and there because I can only tolerate them in doses, mixed in with artists less Crypt Keeper-esque. My journey down the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (begun in June ‘09) has been less an indication of my capabilities to tolerate anything and more a reflection of where I happen to be in life; sometimes I think I subconsciously seek out songs that say something to me, that I can relate to, but then I like “Sister Morphine” a lot and I can’t relate at all. I started to skip around a bit, but I got through #500-450 and I only rated one album 5/5 (Def Leppard’s Hysteria – it’s personal). Elton John’s Elton John (1970), Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes (1972), and The Drifters’ Golden Hits (1996) came very close, though. But my real point is: this list needs to be updated. Any list is expired by the time it’s published, but if the magazine had waited even two years to put it together, we’d be looking at a completely different list. Or maybe not. Rolling Stone is stubborn like that.

But right now, none of those songs are my favorite. My favorite is a dumb song about lost ambitions by some Norwegian band that I will overplay and in two weeks will be lucky to moderately tolerate. But my rate of musical consumption makes it easy to know that in a few days, I will have found my new favorite song and probably the three or four after it, too. So I know I’ve hit something when I listen to an album for three weeks straight, four weeks straight, five weeks straight… Lester Bangs once wrote that our relationship with recorded music is the search for that “priceless moment” when you truly believe that a song can (or has) fundamentally change(d) you (I realize this is like the third time I’ve quoted this, but as interesting a read as Bangs is, he is tragically unquotable). But then Bangs was also kind of dense, never accounting for his own inability to not just experience those moments, but hold on to them; constantly doubling back on himself, ripping apart albums based on the cover art instead of the music, making inappropriate, sexist remarks about women…he was kind of a jackass, really. But he was a good writer, when he was good (I disagree, of course, about his stance on the mythic superstar. I live for that stuff. Or at least, I used to) and I do still agree about the whole “restless pursuit” business.  And like him, I think it’s only natural and probably best to write things in the heat of the moment, instead of waiting months or years to write about it, which is why I think music criticism, unlike other media criticism (except maybe video games), has a very rapid shelf-life. Movie blogs are chock-full of writers who view and then ponder classic cinema, but that approach doesn’t work very well for aspiring music writers. Pity.

One of my favorite things to do recently has been to read old reviews from music magazines as I travel down the Greatest Albums list. I think a lot about the differences in criticisms between mediums as I scour archives for analytical pieces, which is increasingly scarce when there’s just so much music it’s necessary to weed through all the crap and by the time people get around to finishing that, there’s not much time to discuss what any of it means. I guess movies aren’t like that. One dude with one keyboard can write an entire album and post it on MySpace before breakfast but even the crappiest, low-budget movies takes a team of people and a studio to distribute it, and so people will always take movies more seriously than they will music. Pitchfork posts twenty-five album reviews a week and that’s just indie stuff (except, of course, for the pop albums they deem special enough to award a review – which, by the way, this week was Duran Duran’s remastered Rio. Duran Duran! Now irritating in quality stereo).

But even so, today Lester Bangs would probably not get hired by Rolling Stone and would just be another blogger, maybe with a few thousand extra hits than other popular blogs, and would spend his life in that self-imposed aloneness he enjoyed so much without having to worry about leaving his house just to buy records – Amazon! Because his style was only special in that it was new, and albums like Elton John and All the Young Dudes no longer sound “new.” Even that Leighton Meester song that came out three days ago isn’t “new” anymore.

But the magazine format isn’t just no longer new, it’s inconvenient. Most of them are monthly (Rolling Stone is bi-monthly), yet still insist on printing news sections that are already old and review blurbs as if anyone reads those things to actually get advice on which albums are worth listening to. A subscription for Rolling Stone now only costs $25.94 for two years; that makes each issue worth $0.49. But not only is Rolling Stone almost cheaper than a roll of toilet paper, it’s also outdated and extraneous; it’s cliche to point out that MTV has stopped playing music, but it’s just sad to point out that Rolling Stone doesn’t write about music.

It would be redundant to dwell very long on the issue of females vs. males on the covers (suffice to say, Sean Penn wasn’t licking an ice cream cone with his Milk co-star) as the charge is as old as Rolling Stones‘ freshly printed news bits; Internet publications like Idolator have pretty much eliminated the relevance of that section. The cover stories are well-written, but the topics are questionable and the magazine often delves into subjects it has little business exploring, i.e. I1075’s “100 Agents of Change” article, some sort of self-congratulations to its inflated arrogance and skewed priorities. The top ten features Steve Jobs, Kanye West, Bono, and Tina Fey. In addition, readers are supposed to believe Sri-Lankan rapper M.I.A., Sacha Baron Cohen, and freaking Radiohead have changed the world more than figures who search for cancer cures and are attempting to resuscitate the electric car. Why is Andy Samberg or Judd Apatow (#14!) on this list at all? One has been responsible for an SNL-skit that deserved nothing more than a polite chuckle, and the other has managed to reinforce and laud the lazy, stagnant  man-child as charming, noble, and inspirational.

The Internet is changing the way music criticism and journalism is being done and Rolling Stone clearly refuses to get on the bandwagon. Music magazines have always been the primary source for musical criticism and journalism as a whole, and their reputations aren’t without credit: the authors are usually extremely dedicated music fans who not only love what they’re doing, but write about it in genuinely interesting, innovative ways (again, the cover stories, when they’re not spending six pages summarizing the central conceit in Gossip Girl). But nobody is buying these magazines anymore, and with the availability of music on the Internet, not a lot of people are reading about music in general. In terms of criticism, its job has always been to steer people to places that are worth their time and money, but it takes ten seconds to download an entire album now; it’s faster for kids to download an album and skim the tracks than read about it. Music criticism should focus on the new reader, the dedicated, sometimes obsessive, music fan who enjoys reading about music, but probably does so after listening to a piece of work to find a starting ground for discussion or to enjoy new insights he or she didn’t notice before (hence the shift from deciding whether something is simply good or bad, and focusing on what it’s trying to accomplish). There’s no use appealing to the casual reader, as he or she has probably stopped reading a long time ago. In addition, music blogs and places like Pitchfork are setting the standards on free and giving readers access to enthusiastic niche communities that Rolling Stone puts a halt on by appealing to the largest demographic possible (keeping sales up: a tough job).

On the flip side, there will always be a need for big names like Rolling Stone because the quality of the writing is infinitely better than the average music blogger and provides intimate access to artists and events that people who blog from home will never have, no matter how enthusiastic they are.  Of course, there’s a distinction here between criticism and journalism; Rolling Stone will always be around in some form because of the quality of their work in journalism. The key is expanding the analytical writing and dropping the US Weekly-esque photo caption sections (guess what other magazine Jann Wenner owns) and micro CD reviews, born out of fear that the Internet is killing our attention spans (remember that failed new design of Spin that looked like a tabloid?)  – shouldn’t the media set the standard and not kowtow to it?

The Internet is music criticism’s new playground and Rolling Stone would be smart to take better advantage of it. Opening borders to other cultural mediums (television, cinema, etc.) is all well and good until you forget what the point of your publication was in the first place. I don’t mean to sound as nostalgic as this entire Baby Boomer magazine is apt to be, mostly because I don’t think it ever had a Golden Age or flourished in a past decade; this magazine has cruised through fairly straight waters until recently. As for me, I will keep forging ahead. I will read the reviews. I will skim the blogs. I will scan the music glossies, no matter how much they annoy me, not because of what’s in it, but because of all that’s left out. I will think about it. I will write about it. I will keep searching. I’m like a musical sea diver, looking for that priceless moment in a list of music that’s supposed to be the greatest of all time, though the list is pretty much entirely  American/English artists and all I’ve really learned so far is that I still hate grunge, Public Image Ltd. is not a rap group, and the Rolling Stones are on this list a lot. Can’t wait until I have an excuse to keep listening to them.

Donkeyboy gets ambitious

I’m afraid of using names like a-ha in my opening sentence in case I lose a few readers, so if you’re afraid reading further might endlessly loop “Take on Me” in your head, you might want to check out now. But I’m less prone to judge musical outfits based on country of origin (in fact, one of my favorite bands is Swedish and I think we can all agree that “Velkommen til Medina” is catchy) and after hearing their debut single, the song you really won’t stop humming is Donkeyboy’s “Ambitions.” It’s the type of song ABBA would have written if Benny and Bjorn were actually Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe: purposeful pop, with hints of regret before the decisive act even takes place. It’s a stunning debut single made loopy by the fact that it stayed at #1 on the Norwegian charts for twelve consecutive weeks while the band remains irritatingly low-key before the release of their album. It makes me wonder if they’re riding the wave out as long as they can before we find out the rest of their repertoire consists entirely of Smiths covers.

There’s nothing inherently different about “Ambitions,” though I’m compelled to voice a sidebar for personal situations; like any teen anthem, it’s both acutely hopeless and poignantly anticipating. The music video features a cast of characters from different age groups who suffer from a disease that occurs when one gives up his or her ambitions, but the party in the woods for the social drifters who are wilting faster than their rashes can cover them is reminiscent of preteen escapades and rowdy dorm parties. Losing one’s ambition can occur at any age, but the video seems to illicit more sadness towards the young, who never got a chance at all.

The text of the song is a bit deceiving: there seems to be two “yous” in question and both sort of flip-flop during the chorus. The “you” can either be a sarcastic look at the ability one has versus the motivation to utilize it, or a call to let someone more deserving step in. Though a sort of trite homage to 80s Euro-pop, the song itself denotes none of the earnest enthusiasm of the decade. It’s more miasmatic than merry, setting the droning, repetitive beat to a future of repetitive days like all the ones before and after it: sparse, simple, increasingly empty. It’s the kind of troubling, scratchy one-liners you stumble upon in a teenager’s diary that continue to haunt you after you’ve shrugged it off. After all, maybe you just settled, too.

♫ Official Site

Lights’s “The Listening”

Lights / The Listening / October 06, 2009
01. Saviour / 02. Drive My Soul

The distant chime of an ice cream truck. Glittery eye shadow. Childhood naivete. Welcome to the world of Lights, a planet where unicorns lap at silver rivers, first crushes are eight feet tall heroic giants with all the answers, and death is something that only happens to grown-ups. The Listening, cloaked in a mythical world of synths and dreamy keyboards that play hide-and-seek with the vocals, feels as invincible as its ethos. The entire record is an homage to forts and capes made out of blankets, a sort of fragile toy capable of shattering at the slightest mention of adulthood. Lost and not a little precocious, the entire record rests on the presumption that you will put on your thinking cap and use your imagination for the earnest show-and-tell and story time of the songs; at snack time, I’d eat the cookies but probably stay away from the Kool-Aid. Nap time to follow.

Though there are a few missing pieces akin to the blank features on Valerie Poxleitner’s face, these very grand, Swiss-cheese statements aren’t meant to find their missing counterparts within, but instead, adhere to the listener’s inner child, a sort of “Hey, what kid didn’t get made fun of?” approach that succeeds only because the lyrics are just vague enough to fit myriad experiences. Poxleitner’s vocals, hardly polemical, almost strain with the endurance to sound more like a twelve year old; unpolished, scratchy, and heavy on the nasals, it’s as if that desire to become a “little girl / without the weight of the world” isn’t just a heartfelt wish, but the driving credo behind The Listening’s kiddy manifesto. From whimsy to the scorn spurned by an unresponsive crush (“Why’d you have to go and turn to ice?”), to the muddled rebounds of second chances (“Second Go”) and the Saturday night video game marathon of “Quiet,” where she’s content to resign the disc to “no tragedy, no poetry / just staring at the sky.” She’s young, she’s super in love, guys, and that’s where she’s supposed to be.

But the transience is broken by “Pretend,” the album’s central conceit shattered by the reprise, the disc’s only mature track, a bare, piano solo where the lyrics sound downright depressing and voice less nostalgic desire than festering regret. “It would be nice to start over again / before we were men,” she remarks. In that case, just head back to track one. Ice cream trucks, glitter, unicorns, streamers on the handlebars of a pink bicycle; The Listening is a woman in a perpetual girl’s world. No boys allowed.

♫ Official Site
♫ Buy The Listening

Girls in the men’s room: BoA’s androgyny

I’m not saying girls dressing up like guys is anything new (nor vice versa), but when super-feminine waif BoA’s new single is still touting the same fedoras, three-piece suits, and all-male dance cast, it’s worth reiterating a notion I skimmed while gushing over “Eien.” At a time when popular Korean girl groups like SNSD, 2NE1, and 4minute are wrapped in layers of techno-colored wardrobes and purporting to sell tough girl images while skirts get shorter and suits come tailored in revealing short-shorts (and I would be making a completely different point if it wasn’t so obvious that they weren’t choosing any of it themselves and instead, kowtowing to image consultants and gender standards), BoA gets a short haircut (that isn’t pixie, or twee), a three-piece suit (that wouldn’t look attractive on anyone, and looks a size too big), and gender-neutral choreography (that has never showed off her talent better).

Hip-hop may still be a man’s game, but BoA has never been playing it better. A determination to keep her overseas Japanese urban reign has produced some interesting choices, among them “BUMP BUMP!”, her new collaboration with VERBAL. The music video initially caught my eye because it uses the same effect that Koda Kumi’s “Physical Thing” does wherein the edges of frames are dark and blurred so it seems the only light comes from a cheap camera flash, creating a keyhole view. This technique is often used in brooding music videos, a sort of updated film noir that’s supposed to let you know something seedy, sexual, or sinister is occurring. “Physical Thing” played up the stereotype, alluding to bodies littering a room but never taking the lens off Kumi, all the while watching her perform sexually suggestive gestures with wine bottles and grapes. But the effect in “BUMP BUMP!” is absolutely G-rated to the point where it’s almost dull; at least in “Eien” there were multiple settings. “BUMP BUMP!” takes place in one room with two masters of their craft doing nothing much but dancing, singing, and goofing around.

I’m deeply interested in the point behind this particular evolution: Appeal to a wider audience? Highlighting craft over image? Deliberate separation from younger, more stereotypical idol-esque pop groups? Interestingly, there was a completely different marketing strategy with the U.S. release of “I Did it For Love” at the same time the costume change was occurring across the ocean. In any case, no complaints about the turn around here. If at all successful, it will at least provide immunity from the pesky Japanese media who ignore whatever women are actually trying to do to field questions on relationship status, parenthood, and ex-boyfriends at charity events and promotional parties with which men don’t have to deal. I just wish I could dig the song as much as I do the concept.