First Listen: Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool

Radiohead - Photo by Alex Lake

At 7pm today, after a week of teasing that saw band delete their social media presence and the release two singles in the shape of Burn The Witch and Daydreaming, Radiohead released their new album, A Moon Shaped Pool. 

The band's new album comes out five years after their previous effort, King of Limbs - an album of glitchy experimental electronica that divided the opinion of many fans. Aside from the wonderful Lotus Flower I found King of Limbs to be a real struggle to listen to. It never really got out of third gear and it was more of an abstract mood piece rather than an album that ebbs and flows and takes the listener with it. 

Radiohead releasing their album on a Sunday, rather than the usual release day of a Friday, gives the release a sense of occasion (it's also a handy and cheap marketing gimmick). With message boards, blogs and social media full of chatter as fans listen to it for the first time, there is an old fashioned sense of it being communal listening experience; everyone getting the album and listening to it for the first time and sharing their thoughts with one another - even if it is a very 21st century communal listening experience as the only thing that connects us are our computers and devices. 

Nevertheless, I thought that I would join in the fun and attempt something that I have never done before. I will share my thoughts track-by-track as I listen to A Moon Shaped Pool for the first time. 

With the earphones on and A Moon Shaped Pool cued-up in iTunes, let's do it...

Burn The Witch
Early reports of A Moon Shaped Pool suggested that Radiohead would take an orchestral direction and Burn The Witch is evidence of that. Rapid fire strings drive Thom Yorke's anxiety ridden melody with lyrics that suggest outsiders are being hunted. Could be a reflection on the current refugee crisis in Europe.

Daydreaming
The second track that was put out by the band ahead of the album's full release. This is one of those haunted piano ballads that the band does so well, think Pyramid Song or Video Tape. Yorke and sparse piano with the band framing the song and adding texture. Instruments are plucked, scraped, blip and bleep floating around Thom as he sings about the end of his marriage. Some strings come in towards the song's end. Heartbreaking stuff. The reversed voice effect at the end ends the song on an unsettling tone. 

Decks Dark
The first 'brand new' song on the album. There's more piano, some electronic percussion, the bass and 'real' drums enter after a couple of minutes. There's a choir of voices too along with some percussive guitar that slowly comes in from the dark as the song progresses. The songs takes a turn at the end, the guitars get a slight sense of urgency about them, start prodding and I think York starts to sing "You had enough of me". Could this be another song about the end of his marriage?

Desert Island Disk
Opening with bluesy acoustic guitar while something buzzes away in the background. Eventually the bass and drums kick in. The song sits on the bluesy groove the acoustic guitar laid out at the start and builds up before one by one the instruments back away and we are left with just Yorke, the acoustic guitar and that buzz again. It's short and sweet but a really lovely and intimate moment. 

Ful Stop
This is the otherside of Radiohead. Warbling bass, an overwhelming sense of dread and jittering electronics that twitch around your head like a mechanical fly. There is a drone that sounds like it's played by some orchestral instruments that have been treated by some studio trickery. They do that thing where the band kick in mid-way through to up the intensity and inject some energy. I thought that this was going to be like Idioteque, Radiohead in full-on experimental electronic mood, but it's more like something off In Rainbows, the band playing nervy propulsive art-rock.

Glass Eyes
Back to Yorke and that gentle piano playing. This time it's just him and the piano accompanied by a soaring string section. It's very short, but the strings make it sound dramatic and reminds me of Kate Bush a bit. 

Identikit
As the song plays I start to recognise it. I've seen videos on YouTube of the band performing this on their previous tour. Driven by a catchy swaggering melody, first it's Yorke singing over a loop of his own vocals, but there's also a choir at a couple of points. This has a real groove to it, then band keep it simple, with the guitars going weird and a little bit prog and the end as they twist and turn replicating the confusion in the lyrics. Sounds like a classic Radiohead song to me. I immediately want to listen it it again.

The Numbers
The one thing that I am noticing is that there is a lot of piano on this record. The Numbers is driven by jazzy piano with strummed acoustic guitars, drums, and some rumbling bass playing. The orchestral influence on this record has also seeped in to the vocals. There's quite a few moments where either Yorke's vocals are layered to give a choir effect or the band use an actual choir. Here there is both. There's also more of those sweeping strings, here coming in as the songs works towards its climax. I wasn't immediately taken by this one if I'm honest. 

Present Tense
Twinkling picked guitars, a bit like in Weird Fishes, and more playing around with Yorke's vocals. This time there an ghostly, mechanized delay going on. It adds a woozy element. Then we have the real choir once again and the strings come in again for a short and breezy section. It'll be interesting to see how they tour this record. It feels like a band record but they've messed about with the songs in the studio, took them apart, and then built them back up with the orchestra and choir in mind. The songs appear simple at first but there's a lot of stuff going on in them. Lots of layers that will take multiple listens to discover. Will they take a string section out on the road with them?

Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief
This is the twitchy electronica version of Radiohead. Yorke yelping over a looped piano and some low bass. The rest of the band eventually join him playing creepy loose-knit jazz, the drums really holding it all together. And then there's those strings again soaring above everything else. It feels like the strings have replaced the guitars on this record. Whereas in the past they may have written a guitar part, on A Moon Shaped Pool they've put together a whole orchestra instead. This song feels like a good idea that never really gets off the ground. I would have preferred it if they had gone deeper in to the choppy electronic rabbit hole on this one. I can imagine it's got scope to go off when played live though. 

True Love Waits
Wow. Wasn't expecting this one to be on the record. It felt that the live version that they put out was the definitive version. This is different though. The band have really taken it apart. Mournful piano has replaced the acoustic guitar. There's a second piano in the background playing a counter-melody. Then some distorted bass as piano notes twist and tinkle as if taking flight. This is now the definitive version of True Love Waits. 

That's that then. You can't keep expecting Radiohead to re-invent the wheel with each album. And they haven't done that here. My initial thoughts are that they've done away with most of the electronic stuff only, using it subtly here. The songs feel stark and contemplative, they are often Thom Yorke brooding over a simple piano refrain or acoustic guitar with the band framing him by adding texture and atmosphere. It's lush and mellow. The orchestral moments aren't over done, but slot in comfortably alongside the band's playing. A great record that will take some time to really get inside the songs. 

Thanks for reading. It's now time for me to go to sleep. 

The Quietus Review of Urth By Kagoule

Following on from my review of Colossal Downer by Grey Hairs, the kind people at The Quietus were nice enough to let me have another opportunity to write for them. Again, I got to review a debut album by one of my favourite bands to come out of Nottingham (or anywhere to be honest), Kagoule. Urth is out now via the legendary Earache Records and my review can be read at the following link: http://thequietus.com/articles/18670-kagoule-urth-review

I also got to sit down with Cai from the band and interview him for a double-page spread in LeftLion. The above image is a photo of the page as it looked in the August issue of the magazine. I think this was the third time that I have interviewed the band. The first was when they played a gig for LeftLion that I put on at Nottingham Contemporary for Record Store Day in 2012. Then later in the same year, I spoke to Cai and Lucy for the band's first feature in the magazine. The online version of my most recent Kagoule interview can be read here: http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/kagoule/id/7623

 Urth by Kagoule can be bought direct from the band's webstore

The Quietus Review of Colossal Downer by Grey Hairs

In the middle of last month Grey Hairs released their debut album Colossal Downer. Its 12 tracks of grizzled garage rock that their cues from the American underground of the 80s and early 90s, mixed with copious amounts of cans of Red Stripe and the general disappointment and kind of inert anger you get from working a day job from nine-to-five, Monday to Friday.

It's easily one of my favourite records of the year and I was well chuffed when The Quietus, one of my favourite websites, agreed to publish my review of Colossal Downer. You can read my review at the following URL: http://thequietus.com/articles/17677-grey-hairs-colossal-downer-review

You can listen to and buy Colossal Downer via the Grey Hairs Bandcamp page. 

In Appreciation of Adore by Smashing Pumpkins

1996 was the beginning of the end for the Smashing Pumpkins. On 21 July, midway through their 14-month, 173-date, world-straddling Infinite Sadness tour in support of their over-blown opus Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the band’s touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin overdosed on a potent mixture of heroin and alcohol known as ‘Red Rum’. He and Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlain had been injecting the drug at the Regency Hotel in Manhattan. Attempts by Chamberlain to revive Melvoin by putting his head under a running shower came to nothing. Melvoin was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.
 
It would later transpire that this was the third time Chamberlain and Melvoin had overdosed on the tour. Chamberlain was sacked from the band with immediate effect and checked in to rehab. 

Prior to Melvoin’s death, on 11 May at a date at the Point Theatre in Dublin, 17 year old fan Bernadette O’Brian was crushed by the surging crowd. Her life-support was disconnected shortly after. Four other fans were also injured at the show. During the same year, Chamberlain’s father passed away, Billy Corgan separated from his wife (they would divorce in ‘97), and in December his mum Martha died from cancer.
 
The spectre of death, drugs, divorce and drama would drape themselves around the Smashing Pumpkins like a ghostly veil and directly influence the making of the band’s next LP, Adore.
 
With Chamberlain now out of the band and replaced for live duties by Matt Walker (previously of Filter, now with Morrisey), the stubborn and single-minded Corgan dragged the limping, patched-up Pumpkins through the remainder of the tour in to early 1997.
 
In aftermath of the Infinite Sadness tour Corgan started experimenting with ecstasy, downers, and magic mushrooms. But, perhaps most distressing of all, became best pals with schlock-rocker Marilyn Manson - surely a sign that Corgan, if he hadn’t done so already, was slowly unraveling and starting to lose his mind. Instead of taking a much needed break, he dived straight in to writing the band’s next album.

With his closest musical ally, and the band’s powerful beating heart, Chamberlain no longer on the scene, Corgan wanted to craft an album that welded together acoustic sounds with his love of electronic music. Adore is unlike anything else in the Smashing Pumpkins discography: dark, brooding and quiet; the sound of a bald, early 30-something megalomaniac gently sobbing to himself by candlelight. Corgan was a man whose world was falling apart around him and he wanted the world to know.

If fans of the band’s first two albums, Gish and Siamese Dream, were put off by the outrageous indulgent extravagance of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, then its follow-up would send the majority of fans running away in their millions, with many never returning. Where were the dreamy power chords? The monster drums? That nasal whine? The things that had made the Pumpkins and defined their sound were now been banished from their music. This would be a brave move and one that would go on to cost the band and from which they would never recover.

Like Neil Young and his ‘ditch trilogy’, Corgan was at the peak of his creative and commercial powers, and reacted to close personal tragedy, as well as the pressures of creating a follow-up to a multi-platinum selling album, by creating music that was unlike anything he had produced before. Previous albums had seen Corgan full of rage and spitting venom against a barrage of thick, juggernaut-sized riffs. Now he was writing songs dripping with heartache that tried to get to grips with his emotional turmoil and make sense of his changing world.

Out of this mess and chaos came music that was enriched with beauty and honesty, elements that you could argue had never really been present in Corgan’s songwriting before, and haven’t been in his music since. Adore was a brave record and it’s telling that Corgan would never again make an album like it ever again.

The band moved to LA to record the album at the legendary Sound City Studios. But instead of sun-soaked harmonies that channeled Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty, what the listener got instead was sadness and sorrow, a rainy autumn afternoon of a record that tipped its hat to bedsit indie of The Cure and early New Order. And it was glorious.

Always one of the most dysfunctional bands, Corgan had wanted to the band to live together while they recorded the album, but only D’arcy Wretzky was up for this and joined him in a rented mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Significantly, James Iha opted to stay away and lived on his own in a hotel. The band were drifting apart and would eventually split in 2000.

Recording sessions followed a similar pattern, with Corgan working on his own most of the time, with Wretzky and Iha only dropping by when needed. While much of Gish and most of Siamese Dream was made in this way, without his buddy Chamberlain by his side and behind the drum kit, Corgan had become a loner in his own band. This feeling of loneliness and solitude seeped in to the sound of Adore. 

Upon first listening to the record, as soon as the plucked acoustic guitar and hushed vocals of To Sheila started you realised that this was the Smashing Pumpkins like you had never heard them before. Gone was the bombast of old and in its place was a new found intimacy, with Corgan gently singing in to the mic as if he’s whispering in to you ear.

The release of Adore was preceded with the release of kind-of title track and single, Ava Adore. Its mechanised percussive pulse and clanging guitars, with Corgan wailing “We must never be apart” like a man in the midst of a full-blown existential crisis, was far cry from the grunge behemoths of a Zero or a Bullet With Butterfly Wings. The music video for Ava Adore was the first time the wider world got a glimpse of the Adore-era Pumpkins. Gone were the silver trousers and ‘Zero’ t-shirts, and instead we saw Corgan stalking around something that looked like the set to an Eastern European porno shoot like Uncle Fester dressed in Count Dracula’s pyjamas, while his bandmates reluctantly milled around in the background like a pair of mardy teenagers who have been dragged along to their parent’s swingers party. Not a smile is cracked, Corgan wanting us to know that this was music to be taken seriously. 

The band didn’t make life easy for themselves by coming across as po-faced goths who had had a sense of humour transplant. This was a long way from making out on trippy ice cream van journeys or playing guitars with toy guns, so there’s no surprise that huge swathes of the public turned their backs on the band and Adore ended up selling noticeably less than Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. But those fans that jumped ship missed out on the finest music the Smashing Pumpkins and Billy Corgan would ever produce. Adore is the sound of a stripped-back Smashing Pumpkins, the band taking their music apart and re-building it from the ground up. The music was uncertain and brittle mirroring Corgan’s worries and fears. 

Adore often feels like an elegy to the recently departed. Corgan dealing with the death of his mother in the rolling acoustic of Once Upon A Time, Crestfallen’s tear-stained lament, and the sombre epic For Martha. Perfect, its electronic beat going over similar terrain to 1979, is quite clearly a lover-letter to abandoned drummer Jimmy Chamberlain. The squelching stomp of Pug is a bitter riposte to his ex-wife.

Chamberlain’s absence allowed the band to open up their sound to different elements and textures, doing away with any real drums and injecting many of the songs with electronic percussive crunch that sounded like jackboots marching over gravel.

The parts of the album that shy away from the more processed elements are focussed around Corgan and his piano. It’s these songs that provide the real, stark, stand-out moments on the album. The desperation of Annie-Dog (took me years to figure out what ‘Hong Kong glue’ meant – I was naïve) and the heartache of Blank Page (which features live drums by Matt Walker); these are songs without their make-up on - raw and exposed to the world. Corgan’s voice is dry and croaky as he plays simple chords on his piano.

The name Smashing Pumpkins may have been written on the sleeve of the album, but for all intent and purposes Adore is pretty much a Billy Corgan solo album, more so then any other Smashing Pumpkins record (we are talking pre-reunion here). Even still, there are a couple of moments that feature the band playing together and sounding, well, like a band. Shame is one of those rare moments. Corgan on piano, Iha on E-bowed guitar, Wretzky on bass, huddled around a simple drum machine like they would have been when they first started out. It’s no coincidence then that this is one of album’s standout moments, proper shivers down the spine territory. The other is For Martha, another special moment where the whole band are present, pulling together to create something magical that lifts the album towards the heavens.

Adore may have been a strategic re-think by Corgan, an attempt to re-focus the band’s music after the departure of Chamberlain, but fragments of the elements that are ‘typically’ Smashing Pumpkins can still be found littered throughout the record. The distorted sonic abuse of Pug is the closest Adore gets to that classic Smashing Pumpkins wall-of-sound; Tear is the band at their melodramatic best, indulgent, dramatic and over the top; and even on this most downbeat of records there is still room for the Smashing Pumpkins trope of intentionally misspelling words or inserting puns in to song titles – Appels + Oranjes, Behold The Night Mare, Tear. 

By 1998 grunge was dead. Pop, R’n’B and Nu-Metal reigned supreme. Adore was an album out of step and out of time and found itself lost in the cracks of this shifting musical landscape. To paraphrase Sharon Osbourne, Billy Corgan might have been a bald twat in a dress, but for a short period of time he channeled his sadness, loss and heartache in to a record of genuine emotional integrity and crafted a collection of songs that were beautiful, elegant, and above all else, honest. 

Smashing Pumpkins release the Adore box set on Monday 6 October 2014.

Smashing Pumpkins website

Billy Corgan - AEGEA

AEGEA is a private press release from Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan. The version that I have is the third pressing, which is a lavender coloured 12 inch record with music on both sides of the vinyl. The third pressing is a one disc release as opposed to the a two-disc set that the previous versions where. The first two pressings where on aqua and red coloured vinyl, respectively. My third pressing of AEGEA is numbered 680 out of 1000. 

Interest in the record could be registered via the Smashing Pumpkins website, and then an email was sent to those who had registered containing a link to a webpage where the record could be ordered from. The record was sold and distributed via Billy Corgan's teashop in Chicago called Madame Zuzu's Tea House. 

This release really has been a DIY effort and may be a direction Billy Corgan will want to pursue for releasing music in the future - keeping the production and distribution in-house and delivering it directly to fans without the need to go through record labels. 

After placing my order I had to wait a couple of weeks for it to arrive as it was being posted to the UK. 

The music was recorded by Billy Corgan in 2007 during a period of recording that took place just before the reunited Smashing Pumpkins made their first live appearance (22 May in Paris) after they originally split in December 2000. 

Consisting of pieces of experimental electronic music, the focus of the tracks is on creating textures and moods rather than actual melodies or what could be called 'proper songs'. It is ambient and ghostly, with notes drifting, shifting shape, before evaporating in to nothingness. There's a meditative quality running throughout and it feels like the music is moving along organically and not being forced in to any particular direction. 

Is it indulgent? Of course it is, this is Billy Corgan we are talking about. I'm not really sure who this will appeal to apart from Billy Corgan/Smashing Pumpkins fans who want to collect everything that he puts out. This is a very niche sounding record and is far removed from his work with Smashing Pumpkins (and Zwan) as you can imagine. But I admire him for releasing something (however limited) in to the wider world that is so uncharacteristic of the music that he is more commonly known to make. 

Apologies for the quality of the photographs that I have uploaded here. I've posted them for reference and my iPhone lense is shamefully dirty. 

If you wanted to listen to the music of AEGEA without trying to get your hands on a copy of the record, it has been uploaded to YouTube accompanied by some appropriately murky visuals. You can view/listen below:

Billy Corgan Facebook

Live Review of Remember Remember and Kogumaza / Recent Album Reviews For LeftLion

Remember Remember are signed to Mogwai's Rock Action record label and have just released their wonderful third album titled Forgetting The Present. Graeme, who the band revolves around, has recently moved to Nottingham and they played a gig in the city at The Chameleon with Kogumaza. You can read my review of the show on the LeftLion website. 

Also up on the LeftLion website are the Nottingham Music Reviews from issue #59 of the magazine. I reviewed recent releases from Grey Hairs, Sleaford Mods, Kundalini, and Timothy J Simpson.

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu - Pika Pika Fantajin

Pika Pika Fantajin is the third album from Japan's J-pop megastar Kyary Pamyu Pamyu following 2013's reputation cementing Nanda Collection. Famous for her twisted, satirical take on Japan's Kawaii culture, as well as her visually stunning and elaborate music videos; in my opinion she is also one of the world's most entertaining and interesting pop performers.  

Pika Pika Fantajin (ピカピカふぁんたじん)     

The album's title track and nothing more than a musical intro that acts to build-up anticipation for what is about to come.  

Kira Kira Killer (きらきらキラー)    

Here we have Kyary Pamyu Pamyu the cheerleader, gleefully shouting and chanting her way through this hyperactive opener and well and truly high-kicking the album open. It's another pop banger that is relentless in its energy. The bleepy synths have been pushed in to overdrive, everyone involved sounds like they've overdosed on E-numbers and Red Bull, while Kyary frantically shouts and sings with irresistible enthusiasm.   

        

Yume no Hajima Ring Ring (ゆめのはじまりんりん -album mix-)   

My thoughts on this utterly delightful song can be found elsewhere on this blog. Still very much my favourite Kyary Pamyu Pamyu track and proves that she can perform songs with depth and meaning, a route I would be interested to see her explore more as she matures as a performer. What I do want to say is that this is the album mix and adds more lush synth sounds to the original while also slightly changing the structure. I'm really not sure that it suits the delicate, thoughtful nature of the song to be honest and much prefer the original's more organic sound. I presume this has been re-mixed to be in keeping with the rest of the album's more electronic textures, but every time I listen to it it I think what have they done to this song? If you have both versions of Yume no Hajima Ring Ring I would suggest swapping out the album version for the much more rewarding single version. 

        

Mottai Night Land (もったいないとらんど)    

It feels like this song has been around for ages now; and it has, being originally released back in November of last year. The reasons for this is that, as with many J-pop songs, it was commissioned for an advert; which sounds wrong to many Western music fans because we are used to it being the other way round - adverts using pre-existing songs rather than commissioning artists to write a track specifically for an advert. This is classic Kyary Pamyu Pamyu - irresistibly catchy chorus that you will be unable to shake from your head, twinkling and playful pianos and glockenspiels, an overwhelming sense of hyperactivity as if the song is chasing its own tail, and with a bizarre dream-like quality to it all. An all-round, punch-the-air, great pop song. 

Serious Hitomi (シリアスひとみ)   

Blimey, where did this come from? Seemingly out of nowhere we've got Kyary Pamyu Pamyu channeling the B52s and making them sound like they were from the future. This is a monster of a chiptune powered new-wave pop song. That fuzzed-up guitar riff hits you from the off, it's completely unexpected, and pins you back for what is a rollercoaster of delight that screeches by pumped-up on its own adrenalin. She is dragging that classic 1960s girl group sound, via early 80s new wave, very much in to the 21st century.  Surfy, garage rock guitars, wailing synths, and classic pop melodies all collide to make what is undoubtedly one of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's best songs. It's stretched out to over 5 minutes, but the song just whizzes by it is that frantic; and by the time it's over, all you want to do is give it another spin. You can read an English translation of the lyrics on the Super Happy Awesome blog.

       

do do pi do (Capsule cover)       

A cover of a song by her producer, Capsule. There's a lot going on here, but at the same time there isn't. Pretty one paced, but nevertheless a tight sounding modern dance song. Against a backdrop of 'housey' sounding pianos we hear Kyary gently singing, her vocals flowing in and out of the music, adding texture rather than being pushed up front as they would be on a more straight forward 'pop song'. This sounds like festival time in the robot factory. At first I pegged it as filler, but the more I've listened to it the more it has grown on me, and it's the relative simplicity and subtlety of the repetitive pianos and drifting vocals that make it work and turn it in to one of the best songs on Pika Pika Fantajin. You can listen to original here if you want to compare. 

Family Party (ファミリーパーティー -album mix-)    

Written specifically for a Japanese anime film it has the feeling of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu-by-numbers unfortunately. Although props must go to the epic sounding 8bit intro. She has performed and will go on to perform better songs. Family Party probably works better within the setting of the film, but as a track on an album that is full of well-crafted and intelligent pop songs, it just doesn't stand up.  

   

Ring a Bell    

Following Family Party another blip at the start of the second half of Pika Pika Fantajin. This is Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's first ever song that she's performed entirely in English. And it's a pretty big disappointment. It's evident that her non-Japanese speaking fans don't mind that she doesn't sing in English. They buy her albums, watch her videos and and pack out her shows even though the majority of them can't understand what she is singing. I don't think they are crying out for English language Kyary Pamyu Pamyu songs. But they've been given one anyway, and it's full of simple lyrics about going to the studio and ringing a bell. A pretty pointless exercise that I'm hoping she won't repeat again and uses it as a learning experience.     

   

Tokyo Highway (トーキョーハイウェイ)    

A classic sounding Capsule produced song. Slick electronica that bounces along locked in to a mechanized rhythm, with Kyary's high, wistful vocals cutting through the mix and taking the song skywards. It doesn't do a lot, but does what it needs to do, the song has been left plenty of room to breath and move along organically. Euphoric house that shows that Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is perfectly at home fronting slick, modern dance songs just as she is making frantic schizoid pop. 

      

Koi Koi Koi (こいこいこい)    

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu has a certain style or genre of novelty song that she does every now and again, and this is one of them. Over twinkling, playful, instrumentation, we essentially have her singing the song title over and over again. It has the feeling of a very eerie children's nursery rhyme. Far removed from her banging electro-pop tracks that she can do so well. Even if Koi Koi Koi doesn't exactly work, it's nice to see her putting her hand at something different and attempting to give the album texture and different styles of song. 

    

Sungoi Aura (すんごいオーラ -album mix-)    

Pika Pika Fantajin feels like an album of two halves. Whereas the first 6 songs are among some of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's best songs and really get the album off to a flying start, the second half is very hit-and-miss, feels patchy, and the album loses its momentum because of this. I wonder though if this was a deliberate ploy: top load the album with the grade-A pop material and then leave the second half to the more odd and peculiar songs for those who don't have the attention span to listen to full albums anymore? Anyway, those people who don't pick their way through the second half are going to miss out on wonderful, playful songs like Sungoi Aura. Parping drums, tin whistles, rolling piano, and another hooky melody. It's a classic Capsule and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu combination and one of their more organic sounding songs in a similar vein to Yume no Hajima Ring Ring. This song isn't immediate and doesn't go out of it's way to smash itself in to your ears, but its gradually unfolding charms eventually win you over. 

  

Explorer (エクスプローラー)

The final song ends on a hopeful sounding note. Against a military style backing, all marching band drums and whistles, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu sounds victorious and grateful. I have no idea what she is singing about, but it sounds like a thank you note to those of you who have listened to the album and have supported her career up to this point so far. It's elated, positive and poignant end to an album that will go some way to cementing her reputation as one of the world's finest pop stars. 

Pika Pika Fantajin by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is available to buy via iTunes. 

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu website