Camera Obscura @ Fever

(At Fever in Shindaita on January 28, 2010.)

Not the most flattering but the least blurry photoｓ I took of Traceyanne Campbell from Camera Obscura. The Glasgow band paid their first visit to Japan to coincide with the belated Japan release of their third album, 2006's Let's Get Out of this Country. The excellent set list culled heavily from that album and their subsequent My Maudlin Career. Playing with practiced efficiency, the band had the audience swooning anew with the opening notes to each sparkling pop song.

Some standouts:

Leisure

(In Kamiyama-cho.)

Looking forward to a bit of downtime at the koto, shamisen, and biwa repair shop.

The Shadow is Darker

A koto (the 13-stringed instrument in the above photo), shamisen (a three-stringed Japanese banjo), biwa (Japanese lute) repair shop in Kamiyama-cho. On any given day, there is a man kneeling at a low desk, tinkering with an ancient-looking instrument. Nice to know business is steady.

Fab in Any Form

The Beatles in Kubrick form at a store in Shibuya, a testament to their enduring popularity. The day I meet a kid who cannot recognize a Beatles song is the day I will feel genuinely old.


Still, I find myself wondering when that will be. After all, The Beatles reached the pinnacle of their career when my father was young, but I can watch the opening scene of A Hard Day's Night for the twentieth time and still find myself irrepressibly charmed. A black-and-white, 45-year-old film that took place in a bygone era, yet the band in their youth always feels like a blast of fresh air.

The Happiness Project

The Happiness Project, a Toronto-based group that plays music based on human voices. Leader Charles Spearin recorded his neighbors talking about what happiness means to them, and his band of nearly 10 musicians plays over those voices. The instruments and the tempo of the compositions vary according to the speaker's timber of voice, statements, and their disposition. Not all of it worked, but it was interesting to find out just how musical the human voice is--in some cases, they are directly on pitch and can be played like notes on a piano.

A video on their website gives you a good idea.

http://www.happiness-project.ca/

Candles for Blossom Dearie

(Tarlum in Yoyogikoen.)

These candles aren't actually for Blossom Dearie, the jazz singer who passed away on Sunday. She was 84. We'll call it a mental ode: in my mind, I stole a bunch of candles from a cafe and made an altar for her.

A horribly sentimental edit of the film "My Life Without Me", set to Blossom Dearie's "Try Your Wings", which was featured in the film. In it, she is described as a little old lady in her eighties, with a tiny voice, still performing nightly in New York. I would have liked to see her live.

Bad Man's World

Jenny Lewis-"Bad Man's World"

As much as I love this song, with its heavy-handedness; I can't help thinking that Jenny Lewis just wanted an excuse to sing, "I'm a bad, bad girl."