Shocking Blue - Send Me A Postcard

I remember as a teen being fascinated with the so-called British Invasion bands - Cream, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Animals - and, of course, the quality American groups like Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Doors. So when a song called “Venus” arrived on the U.S. charts in 1969, peaking quickly at No. 1 and selling millions of copies worldwide, I took little notice. The hit was over-played on the radio, plus there was so much other great stuff out there. The female vocalist was good, for sure, but the song was mellow, a plain-vanilla studio recording. The band was from the Netherlands, and, in America, relatively unknown other than for “Venus." I had always thought of them as one-hit wonders.
Not long ago, I was trolling through old YouTube performances of bands from the sixties, as I’m apt to do when I can’t sleep. In addition to my main beat at Forbes covering adventure, I write about classic rock. Truly live performances are hard to find on the channel because, back then, most videos were lip-synced, some horribly, to studio versions of the songs. When I came across “Venus,” though, one performance was stone-cold live, in 1970, in France. I was blown away by the band’s chops, especially vocalist Mariska Veres. Raw on stage, the charismatic woman sounded like a European equivalent of Airplane’s great Grace Slick.
When I googled Mariska, a bunch of references came up, but mostly to actress Mariska Hargitay, detective Olivia Benson on the long-running television series, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” I continued to scroll down, eventually finding Veres. What an interesting person she was. My immediate thought was to track her down for an interview, but found sadly that she had passed in 2006. Of the Shocking Blue band members, in fact, only one is still alive - Robbie van Leeuwen, the lead guitarist and principal songwriter who had penned, “Venus,” and, as he admitted later, made him wealthy. But van Leeuwen is extremely media shy, and grants few interviews these days.
Veres, on stage, sang powerfully to where, like Slick, you couldn’t take your eyes off of her. She was also beautiful, like Slick. But in real life, unlike the wild-child Slick, Veres said in interviews that she was like, “Holy Mary.” Additionally, she spoke only Dutch, and, as such, had to memorize Shocking Blue's songs in English. A tidbit: In “Venus,” the opening lyric was misspelled on the song sheet. It was supposed to read, “A goddess on a mountain top." Veres sang it as it was typed, which was, “A godness on a mountain top.” Van Leeuwen later admitted that the gaffe was his fault. When Bananarama butchered the tune in 1986, the lyric was corrected.
In short, Shocking Blue was way more than “Venus.” Gems virtually unknown in America like, “Send Me A Postcard” (my personal favorite), “Never Marry A Railroad Man,” "Daemon Lover" and “Love Buzz,” (later covered by Nirvana, the raucous version of which did not impress van Leeuwen), will get your attention.  From: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2024/02/15/shocking-blue-more-than-venus-check-them-out-you-may-be-shocked/

Magic Bus - Mystical Mountain

Magic Bus have pretty strongly established their style in the two albums preceding new release Phillip the Egg, and they don't really deviate from it here - again, it's an intoxicated bland of Canterbury-esque whimsy (drawing largely on the warm humour of Caravan and the mystical interests of Gong) with West Coast hippy sensibilities, as well as tight jamming in the instrumental sections reminiscent of the overlap between Ozric Tentacles and You-era Gong. If that sounds like the sort of thing you'd enjoy, then you're in luck, because that's exactly what hatches out of this egg. If you've heard Magic Bus's preceding albums, you pretty much already know what to expect here and whether or not you'll like it.

Magic Bus remind me of Gong more than any other band minus the silliness. Kind of a Psychedelic, Folky style with some Canterbury flavours thrown in. I'm going to call Phillip the Egg their best although the one before it is right there too. A six piece band with vocals and maybe the funniest title for an album that I've seen in a while. Released in 2017 we get plenty of analog keyboards, really good guitar in many styles, upfront bass, drums and flute. The flute and sound bring The Smell of Incense to mind as well. But is there mellotron on here? I thought I heard it on two songs but none is credited unlike that Norwegian band I just mentioned who like to swim in it.
Top three tracks include the opener "Mystical Mountain" and for 3 1/2 minutes we get a very Canterbury-like sound here especially the vocals. He reminds me of Richard Sinclair in his vocal style. After 3 1/2 minutes it turns experimental somewhat and Psychedelic. Check out the guitar 8 minutes in! "Trail To Canaa" is a Psychedelic/Folk styled tune with strummed and picked guitar, flute and organ. It's Tull-like 2 minutes in as they amp it up with flute. I like the multi-vocal melodies and determined sound that follows 3 minutes in. Organ is in along with the bass, guitar and drums. The guitar lights it up around the 4 minute mark. Last top three is "Kepler 22B" and this is where I thought I heard mellotron before 4 minutes. I know there's flute there. The guitar that follows is a highlight for me. I like the heaviness on this one. A really strong album when it comes to the style they play in these modern times.  

From:  https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=54516

K's Choice - Loreley Festival 1997

K's Choice - Loreley Festival 1997 - Part 1 

K's Choice - Loreley Festival 1997 - Part 2

She strides into the room, her wild, bleached mane damp from a long day of interviews and rehearsal. He follows close behind with a casual gait and cool, unaffected manner. Lounging in the bar of the Troubadour on a sultry Los Angeles afternoon, modern rock band K’s Choice oozes quintessential rock star quality. But over apple juice and insightful reflections, siblings Sarah and Gert Bettens seem grounded by the Belgian comfort that they are quick to remember and eager to discuss.
"A lot of the things that I wrote about in this record are inspired by, or just triggered by, melancholy and missing home,"lead singer Sarah reveals. "It’s a very strange way of living, always being away from home – the same nine people on a tour bus coming home for, like, one week and then going on the road for two months." This nostalgic feeling drives their emotional songwriting, culminating in their third and latest album, "Cocoon Crash." The Bettens lead the band, which includes guitarist Jan Van Sichem Jr., drummer Bart Van Der Zeeuw and bass guitarist Eric Grossman. Last week, K’s Choice kicked off their American club tour after a 10-day stint with the Lilith Fair tour. Beginning in San Francisco, they stopped next at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on Tuesday, dispensing their version of what Americans have coined "alternative rock."
"Alternative music means something else in Belgium than it means here, and I haven’t figured out yet exactly what it means," Sarah admits. The two explain that "alternative" music in their country remains faithful to its name; a "really original" and "really experimental" form that doesn’t necessarily apply to their style. "I don’t think we’re an experimental band," Sarah says. "It’s pretty straightforward songwriting – emotional, acoustic guitar, about things about ourselves. But here, I’m not really sure what it means. A lot of things that are ‘alternative’ seem really mainstream to me." But she adds, "We’re not just the pop band who has one song, and that’s it. I think we take our lyrics very seriously, and we really try to make something that, although it doesn’t sound experimental,we really try to make something very genuine."
Their musical philosophy imbues every aspect of their songwriting in "Cocoon Crash," from the friendship-inspired ballad, "Winners," to the self-affirming "Believe." Their key distinction from the oxymoronic "mainstream alternative" scene is their unabashed willingness to be positive. "We wrote a song about that," Gert says. "It’s called, ‘Too Many Happy Faces.’ It’s the quote of a singer in a Belgian band that told friends of ours after a show that he liked it, but he thought there were too many happy faces … It is kind of cool to be negative. We want to emphasize that it doesn’t need to be that way."
Their thought-provoking lyrics fused with an edgy, electric sound was what attracted Alanis Morisette when she stumbled upon the relative unknowns at a music festival in Germany in 1996. Morisette invited the band to join her American tour. Their break coincided with the growing popularity of their single, "Not An Addict," which ultimately became their biggest hit. While the song’s success propelled them to American notoriety, pressure to deliver another hit plagued K’s Choice when recording "Cocoon Crash." "The record company kept telling me, ‘We don’t have the new "Not An Addict" yet,’" Sarah said. "There’s nothing that stimulates you less than people who tell you stuff like that … but while we were working, we were just trying to make the best record we could make.
You can’t do anything more than that." The result is an album with a greater intensity than their 1995 sophomore release "Paradise in Me," said Sarah. She attributes this new level of quality to the band’s growing closeness through the years. "Cocoon Crash" is also characterized by a wide range of musical genres, from folk to rock. "To both of us, an interesting thing on our albums is a lot of dynamics in the lyrics (but) especially in the music," Gert says. "We try to do that live too. That surprise element is always interesting."
The dynamics of their live act was evident in Tuesday’s show at the Troubadour with a variety of songs that pleasantly jerked the mood of the evening from smooth ballads to jolting rhythms. Sarah shifted from song to song with a rasped intensity that the unaccustomed ear could have mistaken for hoarseness. But fans knew it was distinctively Sarah. While K’s Choice entertained with a high energy that infected the eager crowd, their performance left die-hard devotees uninspired. The band’s slow start dragged for the first handful of numbers but managed to gain momentum once they unleashed "Not An
Addict." With their growing popularity in the United States, K’s Choice seems far removed from their much-missed home. But their pensive lyrics act as an ongoing reminder of their true priorities, much like the Celtic cross tattooed on Sarah’s forearm. "I wanted something that, for me, meant that I’ll always believe in something," Sarah explains. "But I didn’t want specifically a Christian cross because I really don’t know what I’m going to believe in 50 years. But I know, for me, it means that life will always have a deeper meaning, and there’s a universal truth, whatever it is."  From: https://dailybruin.com/1998/08/02/making-the-right-choice

Simon & Garfunkel - NCRV TV Holland 1966

 Simon & Garfunkel - NCRV TV Holland 1966 - Part 1

 

 Simon & Garfunkel - NCRV TV Holland 1966 - Part 2

 

 In 1966 Simon & Garfunkel had a TV special for Dutch TV (NCRV station) in a music program called ‘Twien’. It was broadcasted for the first time on August 12th 1966. Mostly shows were recorded in Hilversum (where all TV stations and their studios were located) but not this one. This live performance was recorded in Haarlem, in the De Waag theater. Possibly in June of the same year. Recently a very nice book was published called ‘Pop TV 1960-1975’ by Richard Groothuizen. This book gives an overview of all Dutch TV shows, dedicated to pop music. It’s an account, almost day-by-day, with all artists that played in these shows. The book also mentions the Simon & Garfunkel performance. But was this performance planned? No. The story goes that CBS Holland wanted Bob Dylan in this special. But as we all know Dylan had changed from acoustic to electric performances and the show producers wanted an acoustic show. CBS thought it more wise to give Simon & Garfunkel the show.  From: https://paulsimontimeitwas.com/2010/04/19/simon-garfunkel-in-twien-1966-holland/

In 1966 Simon Garfunkel did their first European tour. Besides Scandanavia, they visited at least England and The Netherlands.  Here they recorded the now infamous Twien TV Show. They also performed in Haarlem, De Waag, on June 29, where they were interviewed by Dutch newspaper ‘Het Vrije Volk’. Here’s a translation:

Het Vrije Volk, Thursday 30 June 1966

Two 24 year old boys stopped by in The Netherlands for a short while, together with their girlfriends. Since last December (and that really is just 7 months ago) they sold 5 million records. Simon & Garfunkel yesterday recorded, in Studio Irene in Bussum, a TV Special for NCRV TV, which will be broadcasted on August 10). In the evening in De Waag in Haarlem, where Cobi Schrijer has a place of pilgrimage for every folksinger who visits our country, Reina starts knitting while Paul Simon’s girlfriend is reading a leaflet of a Soda Pop company.
Paul Simon, a small dark little man with a Caesar-like haircut in a burgundy red sweater starts to talk. ‘We sing folksongs from the city. That’s the future and where all the problems are now. The rural blues is not appealing to the people so much anymore. Art Garfunkel and I are already singing since we were 15. Art never cared so much to be in show business. This is our first large tour together, because his still studying mathematics at NYU.
The first hit of Simon & Garfunkel was The Sound of Silence in September 1965. Which was quickly followed up by ‘Homeward Bound’ and ‘I am a rock’, written by Paul Simon. Do they still agree with the content of  their lyrics? Paul Simon: ‘Yes. Even though I have had many requests, I wrote for myself, because the lyrics talk about problems that have my interpretation.’ A couple of moments later Simon & Garfunkel are on the very small stage of De Waag and sing ‘I am a rock’ and ‘Homeward Bound’.

From: https://paulsimontimeitwas.com/2012/11/25/1966-simon-garfunkel-in-holland/

 

Nickel Creek - Live on Austin City Limits

 Nickel Creek - Live on Austin City Limits - Part 1

 

 Nickel Creek - Live on Austin City Limits - Part 2

 

Though rooted in bluegrass, Nickel Creek built a reputation as one of the most adventurous and eclectic groups in progressive acoustic music. Comprised of siblings Sean (guitar) and Sara Watkins (fiddle) and mandolinist Chris Thile, the trio first made a name for themselves as teenagers, blazing their way through the festival circuit before being picked up by the Sugar Hill label. Their Alison Krauss-produced 2000 debut revealed a youthful and forward-thinking group whose virtuosic playing and three-part harmonies touched on everything from jazz to alternative music. During their initial run, they continued to move away from bluegrass' core and were rewarded with crossover success, a Grammy Award, and plenty of critical praise. After going on hiatus in the late 2000s, each member continued to flourish with projects like Punch Brothers, Fiction Family, I'm with Her, and various solo albums. A 2014 reunion yielded a new Nickel Creek album, A Dotted Line, and although Thile and the Watkins siblings continued to pursue their own endeavors, the trio maintained a sporadic performing schedule together heading into the 2020s. In March 2023, following a nine-year gap, Nickel Creek released their fifth album, Celebrants.
In 1989, Sean Watkins and Chris Thile were both students of the same music instructor. Along with Sean's younger sister Sara, the trio first began performing together as preteens in their native San Diego. They got their start while watching the band Bluegrass Etc., which put on weekly performances in a pizza parlor. A local bluegrass promoter liked the idea of such a young string band, and thus Nickel Creek were formed, with Thile's father Scott joining them on bass.
 Nickel Creek were regulars on the festival circuit through most of the '90s, and during that time, Thile recorded two solo albums, 1994's Leading Off... and 1997's Stealing Second. In 1998, with help from Alison Krauss, Nickel Creek landed a record deal with the roots music label Sugar Hill. Krauss produced their self-titled debut album, which was released in 2000; with the kids apparently all right, Scott subsequently retired from the band. Though it was decidedly a bluegrass record, Nickel Creek boasted elements of classical, jazz, and rock & roll, both classic and alternative; naturally, the influence of progressive bluegrass figures like Krauss, Edgar Meyer, and Béla Fleck was also apparent. Perhaps aided by the success of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which brought traditional roots music to a whole new collegiate audience, Nickel Creek became a slow-building hit; by early 2002, it had gone gold, climbed into the country Top 20, and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album. Meanwhile, Sean released his solo debut, Let It Fall, in 2001, and Thile followed suit with Not All Who Wander Are Lost.
Nickel Creek released their sophomore set, This Side, in 2002; it debuted in the Top 20 of the pop charts and went all the way to number two on the country listings. Even more eclectic than its predecessor, the Krauss-produced album turned indie rock fans' heads with a cover of Pavement's "Spit on a Stranger." This Side won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album in early 2003, after which Sean issued his second solo album, 26 Miles. In 2005, the group worked with producers Tony Berg and Eric Valentine (the latter had worked with Smash Mouth and Queens of the Stone Age) to produce Why Should the Fire Die?, a dark and introspective collection of new material that found the trio steering even further away from their bluegrass beginnings.
In mid-2006, Nickel Creek announced they would be taking an indefinite hiatus following a scheduled tour the next year so the band members could concentrate on solo work. Thile eventually formed Punch Brothers, releasing a debut album, Punch, on Nonesuch in 2009. Sara Watkins also released an album on Nonesuch in 2009, the self-titled Sara Watkins, which was produced by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame. Sean Watkins, who had formed Fiction Family with Jon Foreman (of Switchfoot), also released an album in 2009, the duo's self-titled Fiction Family from the ATO label. Meanwhile, siblings Sara and Sean continued to host a monthly revue called The Watkins Family Hour at Hollywood's Largo club, playing free-form and impromptu sets with a wide array of musicians who might be in town for the evening, including names like Gabe Witcher, Benmont Tench, Greg Leisz, Jon Brion, Jackson Browne, Glen Phillips, Mark O'Connor, Ethan Johns, Matt Chamberlain, Tim O'Brien, and Tom Brosseau.
Nickel Creek's hiatus extended into the first half of the 2010s, with the members continuing to record their own projects. Thile in particular was quite prolific; his work during this period included two further Punch Brothers albums, The Goat Rodeo Sessions -- a collaboration with classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma -- and even a classical album of his own, Bach Sonatas & Partitas transcribed for mandolin. For her part, Sara Watkins released a sophomore effort, 2012's Sun Midnight Sun, and Sean Watkins released a second Fiction Family album, Fiction Family Reunion, in 2013.
Ending their hiatus, Nickel Creek reunited in early 2014 to celebrate their 25th anniversary as a band. Their first album in nine years, A Dotted Line, appeared on Nonesuch in April of that year and was supported by an extensive tour. After this the band members again focused on their own endeavors, while still performing occasionally as Nickel Creek. Sara Watkins formed the trio I'm with Her with fellow songwriters Aoife O'Donovan and Sara Jarosz and also recorded an album with her brother as part of their Watkins Family Hour project. Sean Watkins released his fifth solo album, What to Fear, in 2016 and later that year Thile took over as host of the long-tenured radio variety show A Prairie Home Companion from its creator Garrison Keillor. Later rebranded as Live from Here, the show featured Nickel Creek a handful of times before its eventual cancellation during the 2020 global pandemic.
During the quarantine period, the group dug into their archives and in 2021 released their first concert album, Live from the Fox Theater, recorded in Oakland, California on May 19, 2014. After playing a series of Nickel Creek livestreams earlier in the year, both Thile and Sara Watkins returned to their own work releasing the respective solo albums Laysongs and Under the Pepper Tree. By 2023, however, the group had readied a new studio album, their first since 2014. Featuring the core trio augmented by double bassist Mike Elizondo, the lengthy 18-track Celebrants was as complex and daring as anything in the group's catalog.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/nickel-creek-mn0000399733#biography  

The Band - King Harvest

Greil Marcus
: You take a song like King Harvest (Has Surely Come). Is that a blues song? There’s a lot of blues in it, but it’s not a blues song. Is it a country song? Absolutely not. There’s a progression in there, a ‘sweep’ that country music doesn’t have. And yet there is an anxiousness, a nervousness, a sense of being alone in the singing - it’s pure country music. Is it rock & roll? Sure, it’s rock & roll. And you could go on from there… but what you don’t want to do with that song, you don’t want to take it apart, you know, separate it into its constituent elements. You want to go with it. You want that song to take you somewhere you haven’t been. Or if you know the song, you want it to take you where it took you before. You want to get lost in that song. And when you’re lost in that song you’re floating through a whole vast American story.

Levon Helm
: Some of the lyrics came out of a discussion we had one night about the times we’d seen and all had in common. It was an expression of feeling that came from five people. The group wanted to do one song that took in everything we could muster about life at that moment in time. It was the last thing we cut in California, and it was that magical feeling of ‘King Harvest’ that pulled us through. It was like, there, that’s The Band.

I remember gazing from a freezing cold Oxford Street into the windows of the HMV record store in London. The three Christmas displays in late 1969 were Abbey Road, Let It Bleed… and The Band. Not a bad year, then. The cover touched something in my imagination. A sense of longing. And I hadn’t even heard it. The first track I heard? Easy. It was King Harvest on late night BBC television, accompanied by a weird black and white 1920’s cartoon. I couldn’t believe the oddness of the sound. The great spaces in the music. The yearning keening voices; the odd stumbling arrangements. The dead slap of the drums. It was like nothing I’d heard before. Maybe it was better than anything I’ve heard since. Later - too many weeks later - I listened through the album with a sense of disbelief. It encompassed an America of the dreams. It rooted music after the dweebling sounds of Pink Floyd and the pretensions of early King Crimson. The up-and-coming Chicago seemed merely workmanlike. Half my record collection seemed as dull and well meaning as Chicago Transit Authority. The Stones were raw and tough, but oddly hairless - oddly chinless even. The Beatles were producing sublime sounds, but it was St. Petersburg 1917. On the West Coast all was mellow. But some British musicians felt that Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead had traded musical competence away for the sake of originality. They were into Alvin Lee and how fast you could play. Bob Dylan was meandering through the backwaters of his roots on Nashville Skyline. The Band had it all - rawness, competence, sublimity, experience, originality and roots.

William Bender: 
King Harvest is touched with a double vision. It’s marked by an ironic interplay between the rich yet somehow threatening sound of nature and the querelous, grasshopperish whine of the farmer… Then comes the refrain, with Danko and Robertson on guitars creating a controlled hush that is just the right rustling background.

Levon plays his ultimate drum part, where the cymbals whisper like the wind through the rice, where the hard slap of the drums shove home the farmer’s plight. Robbie Robertson isolates the bass and drum on the Classic Albums video. For him the rhythm section is the whole basis of the song. Rob Bowman says that the ending of King Harvest might be Robbie’s finest moment as a guitarist, in a style Andy Gill later described as ‘death-by-a-thousand-delicate-cuts’ and Bowman goes on to quote Robertson:

Robbie Robertson: 
This was a new way of dealing with the guitar for me, this very subtle playing, leaving out a lot of stuff and just waiting till the last second and playing the thing in just the nick of time. It was an approach to playing where it’s so delicate. It’s just the opposite of the ‘in your face’ guitar playing that I used to do. This was the kind of thing that was slippery. It was like you have to hold your breath while you’re playing these solos. You can’t breathe or you’ll throw yourself off. I felt emotionally completely different about the instrument.

To me, the instruments all assume distinct personalities, reflecting and commenting on the lyrics. There’s the guitar, picking, plucky, strutting and wirey, creating an argumentative extra line. Then there’s the bass, dogged, persistent. These are the farmer. The extended notes of Garth’s organ are a contrast, with the irresistible sweep of history resonating through them. Then the drums, the inexorable thump of the seasons changing, the rustle of the wind. Robbie said he’d been immersed in the novels of John Steinbeck. Ralph Gleason picked up on The Grapes of Wrath - the John Ford movie rather than the original John Steinbeck book - when he reviewed the album for Rolling Stone. We’re right in that territory - the line between independent sharecropper, the grandson of Virgil Kane, and industrial unionised worker was thin and getting rapidly thinner when Steinbeck researched the trek of the landless Okies from the dried-up homesteads of the dust bowls of Oklahoma to the wage-slavery of fruit picking in California in the 1930’s. When the story is recalled, the pejorative ‘Okies’ for Oklahomans is always remembered, because the central Joad family were Okies. If you look back to the Steinbeck book, you’ll find that the other group of farmers ruined by the dust bowl were the ‘Arkies’ from Levon’s home state of Arkansas.
What had happened was this. When settlers arrived in the former Indian Territory, which became Oklahoma, in the 1880s and 1890s, the region was enjoying a short, unusually wetter spell which supported farming, and which persisted until the late 1920s. The drought of the late 20s / early 30s was not so much something abnormal, but simply a return to the naturally arid climate of the area. The same happened in the west of Arkansas. With the top vegetation stripped by intensive farming, the whole area became literally a bowl of fine dust. The banks foreclosed on the poverty-stricken farmers. They were starving and dispossessed. They loaded up their few possessions on battered Model-T Fords and trekked west to California where they could earn subsistence wages in the burgeoning fruit plantations. They became white slaves.
But on the surface King Harvest takes place further south than Steinbeck’s Oklahoma. It never mentions the dust bowl specifically for that matter. If they’re listening to the rice when the wind blows across the water, they’re probably back down in the Mississippi Delta of Louisiana as in Cripple Creek (and most of Robertson’s Storyville solo album.) I’m sure people can tell me where else rice is grown, but that’s the primary image. Robbie Robertson has a knack for combining disparate images and getting resonance from both of them.

From: https://theband.hiof.no/articles/king_harvest_viney.html

Takako Minekawa - Plash

When I reviewed Takako Minekawa's last full-length, Cloudy Cloud Calculator, I lazily referred to her as a "female Cornelius." Seeing how I was under a tight deadline at the time, this comparison adequately conveyed to the Pitchfork audience that Minekawa was all about classic pop, and that she had the multi-instrumental and arrangement chops to realize her syrupy-sweet musical dreams. Imagine my surprise when I read in Giant Robot that Minekawa is not only going steady with Cornelius, but that she would be writing and recording with him for her next record. Man, I love being right, especially when I don't have to work hard to do it.
And so it seems, with her new beau at her side, the already talented Minekawa can't be stopped. This record easily surpasses everything else she's done, with newfound production sophistication and better songs to boot. Gone are those grating moments of excessive twee; instead, our ears are treated to extended passages of warm musical bliss, where modern technology is gracefully deployed in the service of the pop song.
See, this is where Minekawa and her Japanese ilk have a real leg up on the American indie pop crowd: Elephant 6'ers know a thing or two about melody, but their deep block on all post-Kraftwerk musical developments continues to disappoint. Those neo-hippies can be as narrow-minded as your average beer-swilling mullethead: "Where are the fucking guitars?" is always the dismal refrain. Artists like Minekawa and Cornelius realize that a drum machine, when used correctly, has more soul than Ringo Starr and Charlie Watts combined. It's the ideas that matter, not the alleged "purity" of the delivery. And Takako Minekawa has musical ideas to burn.
The fuel on Fun9 (pronounced "funk," mysteriously) is provided by a breadth of influences that somehow blend into a singular sound. The opener, "Gently Waves," showcases Minekawa's dreamy voice, multi-tracked into a five-part Wilsonian symphony. "Plash" (one of the four Cornelius collaborations) effectively combines a Brazilian acoustic guitar shuffle with choppy beats. And "Fantastic Voyage" is one of three tracks featuring the sampling artistry of DJ Me DJ You, featuring a great vocal riff shamelessly lifted from Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side."
Though all the melodies on Fun9 are strong, a few songs prominently feature a more complex electronic ambiance. "Flash" (also featuring contributions from Cornelius) shows that Minekawa listened carefully to Oval's deconstruction of "International Velvet" on her remix album: the distorted, distant sound of her vocal transmission undercuts the loping Hawaiian feel of the background music to sublime effect. And "Fancy Work Funk" features a trance-inducing Moog pattern that would do the German electronic crowd proud. With or without her main squeeze, Minekawa has got vision.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5301-fun9/