Further Advantages

Hello Mate! / advantage Lucy [1998]

Anderson / advantage Lucy [2005]

I posted on this group a few days ago, but there are two more songs that need listening.

In particular, the first four seconds of "Hello Mate!" deserve attention. It's the perfect intro—just a simple baseline that I'm sure has been used before, but it creates so much anticipation, is so confident, so sure that what follows will be fun, that it should be required study material for indie-pop songwriters from now until the end of time.

Fortunately, that's not all this Lucy's got going on. Like most of the band's 10-year catalogue, "Hello Mate!" and the latest single, "Anderson," are sprinkled with horns, breaks, and sound changes in all the right spots. Just when you begin to wonder how a song will keep you interested for another full minute, they switch things up. "Get out of my head!" you scream. But they're already far away by then.


Also: Many thanks to Colin's friend Jon Rubin who wrote about WPNOB last week at his ubiquit.us blog, which thoughtfully analyzes everything from shitty music sites to politics to quantum telecloning. Quantum telecloning, now there's something even William Shatner can get behind.

aL's AMG Bio.

The Other Best Party Ever

Solaris / advantage Lucy [1999]

朱い夏 / advantage Lucy [2005]

The cover of Fanfare (1999) to the left reminds me of The Best Party Ever (2005). And like The Boy Least Likely To, advantage Lucy has a deceptively juvenile sound. They are named in honor of Lucy Van Pelt of Peanuts fame after all.

This Lucy, however, doesn't just flirt around a piano. On "Solaris," the female vocalist, Aiko, sings, "Let's go for the Milky Way!" as the drums pound and the trumpets blast off. The guitarist even tosses in a mock countdown. It's their least subtle track, but the boisterousness doesn't hide the fact that this veteran group can compete with the best of its younger European counterparts, like Sambassadeur and The Concretes.

"朱い夏 (Vermilion Summer)" is more like a slow ascent in a hot-air balloon. Who needs a rocketship when there's no particular destination? Who needs real words—Japanese, English, or otherwise—when we've got aL singing "La, la, la" like this?

MORE advantage Lucy here.

aL's AMG Bio.

I Want Many Dresses, I Want Much Money

Thank You / Rocket or Chiritori

Fifteen Love / Rocket or Chiritori

Vacation (Japanese Version) / Rocket or Chiritori

Anoraks are loved all the world over.

In 1997 and '98, Satoko Shibahara was 17. Better known as Rocket or Chiritori, she released a handful of singles and LPs before giving up music to focus on school. Some of what remains, especially "Vacation" and (especially especially) "Fifteen Love," is so pure it's hard to imagine Satoko is not still sitting in her bedroom, singing along every time her songs play through a new pair of headphones.

ROC's AMG Bio.

Cutie Girls Don't Love Me and Punk

MP3 Kakenukete Seishun / Ging Nang Boyz

MP3 Juu Nana Sai (...cutie girls don't love me and punk) / GNB

MP3 Inu Ningen / GNB

Ging Nang Boyz released 29 punk songs over two full-lengths in '05. The cover of one album features a nice Lichtenstein ripoff; the other a cartoon that looks inspired in equal parts by the Sgt. Pepper's LP, a page from Where's Waldo?, and Rodin's depiction of Dante's "Gates of Hell." GNB themselves sound more like the latter. Like the Sex Pistols or the Buzzcocks were reincarnated as a bunch of Japanese boyz throwing a party in your house.

...As soon as you hear the two quickshot bursts that open Door ("Juu Nana Sai" and "Inu Ningen"), you realize you're late. By the time you're inside, the place is packed and everyone's already drunk. But somehow you're not pissed. No matter how much yelling and noise, no matter how much beer's been spilled, it's not annoying. It's not annoying because the songs are as fun as they are frantic.

An hour and forty minutes later, the party's reached it's climax: the band plays "Kakenukete Seishun," an old favorite originally recorded when three of the boyz were known as Going Steady. Though happily all-over-the-place, GNB have remained solid all night, and there's yet forty more minutes left to go. But this moment is particularly memorable. It serves as proof that while Korean punk rockers might look better naked, they've still got some catching up to do to match the Japanese in the music department.

GNB's AMG Bio.

Original Title: 十七歳 (...cutie girls don't love me and punk)
Title Romanization: Juu Nana Sai
Title in English: 17 Years Old
Album: Door

Original Title: 犬人間
Title Romanization: Inu Ningen
Title in English: Dog Human
Album: Door

Original Title: 駆け抜けて性春
Title Romanization: Kakenukete Seishun
Title in Babelfish: Running coming out, characteristic spring
Original Album: 君と僕の第三次世界大戦的恋愛革命
Album Romanization: Kimi to boku no daisanji sekai taisenteki renai kakumei
Album in Babelfish: You my third great war romantic love revolution