New Stuff

A whole month's worth of new Japanese music arrived in one glorious package.

First, there was Perfume's 'DREAM FIGHTER' and I respond with a resounding Hell Yeah to that!  The single continues Perfume's musical progression, and the c/w, "Negai" is a slow, hypnotic song that's got me very captivated.  It ends with a somber piano rendition of the main theme (an actual piano, perhaps) and doubtless, I'm still very much on the Perfume boat.

Next, Morning Musume released 'Cover You', a must-have tribute album to legendary (well, NOW you've heard of...) writer Aku Yuu.  A grand cover album in the tradition of W's first record; though W's covers still kick some unquestionable ass, here's some more songs to find the originals of.  Songs like Pepper Keibu (original) and (MM revamped).  A quick fan fave is 'Koi no Dial 6700', but there are 14 in total, like 'Dou ni mo Tomaranai' (or check out this version), or: oh-my-god-it's-chock-full'a-Japanesey-goodness 'Pin Pon Pan Taisou'. It seems like a couple of people have heard this song before. Untold numbers of J-kids singing and dancing in unison, with mecha-robots... they really know how to warm my heart. Is that Aya Matsuura MC'ing?

Finally, the first release of all these, SPEED's triumphant return with 'Ashita no Sora' and c/w 'Something New' which may be, in fact, too funky (not possible).  Again we get a line like 'Let's go out to the street' (?)  Somebody do a bit of research on Okinawa street gangs and reassure me that there aren't rampant amounts of dancing female foursomes blowing each other away for drugs and such.

But brace yourselves, gentle readers; I hate to break this to you, but there is one track I may never listen to again:  the 'White Love～STEADY～Body&Soul 2008' medley.  If this track serves only one purpose, it's to acclimate our ears to the sound of a much-older SPEED singing our old favorites on their new tour.  After that, well...

For good measure, they made sure to employ every available gospel singer to back them up on this one.  This isn't their weak spot, and it never was.  Always plenty of gospel singers wailing away on some really good SPEED tracks, and even if they're going over the top singing about things like 'Kiwi Love bayayayayaby wowowowowowowowowowowow!' (whatever that means), it'd be blasphemy not to have all them gospellers.

Every SPEED medley, even from back in the day, suffers because the songs contained within are on average 5 minutes at least, which meant they really had a beginning and an end, and the journey was magnificent.  To chop them off at around 2 minutes each denies the full force of the message and the spaces between sound like 'fuck it, let's do a different song now'.  There's no effort to combine these songs into one cohesive work that matches the profundity of any of the originals.

But my main opposition to this recording is that, look, Hiro and Eriko are ten years older now, and they're not screaming at the top of their lungs like they used to.  Which happens to be their old trademark, and what endeared me to those old songs in the first place.  Anybody who tries to build a time machine and go back to give them some control or nuance that they didn't have then should be killed before a good thing gets ruined.

Ladies, you're all beautiful and talented, but if this isn't you anymore, don't pretend.  Sing a whole set of new songs, throw in the odd oldie here and there.  But I'm kinda disappointed that you spent any time on this song, because you already recorded it years ago, and we still have it on CD.  And for every imitation you do of your thirteen-year-old selves, I wonder whether it's because you think you can do it better now, or because you think it'll be just as good as it was before (or the third, most likely answer: because the producers demanded it).  Seriously, I can put the old (real) 'STEADY' on repeat for weeks at a time if I miss it that much.

I don't mind the new 'heavier' backing tracks that come with the medley, and someday we may get to hear the new music with the old voices.  But time has moved on, and as much as I *love* the new songs, no matter how hard you try (with every available technology), you just can't recapture a moment.