KODA KUMI
Trick
(Rhythm Zone/Avex)
Available on CD, CD/DVD and on iTunes Japan

This is the highest a Koda Kumi album has gotten on my year-end top ten (Black Cherry and Kingdom were both at #7 in 2007 and 2008 respectively) and for good reason. The preceding albums were great, but Kuu-chin stepped up her game this time around. The only bad thing about the album is that Avex missed a golden opportunity to use her collaboration with Fergie (“Ain’t It Cool”) and her killer remake of Shocking Blue’s “Venus” as a first step to break her in the States. The seven-week wait for her next studio album is going to be a long one.

MIKE HALE
Lives Like Mine
(Suburban Home)
Available on CD, LP, iTunes, AmazonMP3 and eMusic

This gentleman’s recent back story begs to ask the question: How devoted are you to your art? Weeks before former Gumball member Mike Hale was to release this, his second solo album, he had made the decision to quit his day job, put his belongings in storage, and travel the globe with no fixed address, concentrating solely on his music (both as a solo artist and with his trio In The Red). (Going even further in the determination department, Hale’s label Suburban Home also offered the album as a free download, which only help raise awareness of Hale’s work – and made for a nice tideover as the initial vinyl edition was delayed in manufacture). Hale’s solo records are very stripped down affairs, consisting mainly of Mike and his guitar; On this release, he also plays electric piano on a couple of cuts. Lives Like Mine (and its highly recommended predecessor, 2008’s Broken with No Hope) is emo music gone both pure and mature.

SCANDAL
Best Scandal
(Epic)
Available on CD, CD/DVD, and on iTunes Japan

The full-length album we’ve all been waiting for since their independently released Yah! Yah! Yah! Hello Scandal EP came out over a year ago. The title is and isn’t appropriate since this is supposed to be their first studio album and not a retrospective, but all of their singles, including the three first featured on the EP are present and accounted for. But there’s plenty of new material to dig into along with the hits and it was pretty much worth the wait. If you haven’t caught on to these spiritual heirs to the Whiteberry/Zone throne, this album will catch your ass up real quick.

SLAYER
World Painted Blood
(American/Columbia)
Available on CD, 180-gram LP, iTunes and AmazonMP3
SUNN O)))
Monoliths and Dimensions
(Southern Lord)
Available on CD, 180-gram double LP, iTunes, AmazonMP3 and eMusic

First of all, the Slayer record is a Slayer record. You’re either going to buy it or you’re not. They’ve been the most consistent band in terms of personnel (only the drum chair has gone through turmoil a few times), and ever since founding member Dave Lombardo resumed his place behind the aforementioned instrument, fuggedaboutit. Nothing is ever going to out-heavy their classic Reign In Blood, but this came so close that it was breathing down that album’s neck.

If you want heavier than even that, here’s your new favorite band: Sunn O))). Live, they’re just two guys with robes, downtuned Les Pauls letting out droning riffs, and a shitload of vintage tube amps turned up to 20 (they’re probably the only band I know of that has their own branded earplugs!) and ready to reconfigure your DNA after the first two chords. While that’s a set up that some armchair amateur wannabe critics love to mock (do a search for the band on YouTube and you’ll see quite a few parody videos), it makes for some intense music. With this new release, the band adds to their studio sound with a female choir, horns (including Sun Ra Arkestra veteran Julian Priester), strings, and sometime Mayhem lead vocalist Attila Csihar. Best listened to in a dark room late at night – or when it’s morning and you don’t want it to be morning yet. And don’t be surprised if it puts a smile on your face. This was my first Sunn O))) album ever, and it won’t be my last. And if that’s not convincing enough of an endorsement of this album for you, let Anthony Fantano from the video blog The Needle Drop explain further:

ACE FREHLEY
Anomaly
(Bronx Born)
Available on CD, double-LP, iTunes and AmazonMP3

It’s amusing how Gene Simmons must have thought that laying Wal-Mart’s money on the line would result in Kiss’s best album ever in the hype that led up to Sonic Boom (which did make it into Billboard’s Top 5, despite the fact that, as noted when I reviewed the album, it’s a rather weak effort that’s only a shade or two better than their previous two studio releases, the boring Carnival of Souls and the quick-buck-fake-reunion exercise Psycho Circus). As revealed a month prior to Sonic Boom’s artistic bust, Ace Frehley had something more valuable to lay on the line with his first solo studio album in twenty years: his balls and his word. And he delivered simply by putting the music first. The result? A reminder of the one element that attracted a great deal of people to Kiss in the first place – as well as of the fact that you can stick a six-figure salary, a few Les Paul guitars, and a Space Ace cosplay kit into the hands of a former hair-band failure turned Gene Simmons lackey, but he’ll never play, sing, or write even a fourth as good as one Paul Daniel Frehley. Or in other words, this was a repeat of how badass Ace’s first solo album in more ways than one – he outshined his (now-former) bandmates yet again.

MEAT PUPPETS
Sewn Together
(Megaforce)
Available on CD, colored-vinyl LP, iTunes and AmazonMP3
GIRLS GENERATION (SDSN)
Genie: The Second Mini-Album
(SM Entertainment)
Available on CD

One of the reasons this year’s list took me awhile to finalize is because there were some albums I simply couldn’t bring myself to cut out of the list. This installment is one of the most extreme cases.

The Pups’ first album since brothers/founding members Curt and Cris Kirkwood reconvened, Rise To Your Knees (Anodyne, 2007), was a nice restart, but wasn’t completely up to the level of their classic back catalog. This time around, however, the group returned with all cylinders firing, recalling much of their glory days (Up On The Sun, Mirage, Too High To Die, Huevos) without breaking as much of a sweat. The album’s title seems more indicative of the band’s unlikely label for this release (the more metal-oriented Megaforce label) than for the state of the band’s lineup, which is playing like they never left in the first place.

As for the group known in their native Korea as So Nyeo Shi Dae: K-Pop isn’t something that I ever seriously delved into, and to be honest, I still really haven’t, except for this particular band (via the recommendation of my female counterpart, Vee from PinkWota.com). Genie, their current EP, got me hooked in with the title track and went from there. Besides the very catchy title song, the shameless 80’s pop of “Girlfriend” and the Strauss-interpoating “My Child” are the EP’s other high watermarks that had me going back and getting the rest of the group’s back catalog, which didn’t hook me as quickly as this EP did. But that’s OK, because if this EP is their current creative high point, then that’s enough to have me looking forward to future releases from them.

The tradition continues. For the fourth year in a row, I’m listing the albums that for me musically defined 2009. Unlike last year, when the posts for this series were so damn irregular, I’m sticking to a more regular schedule and am actually going to cram in ten pieces between now and Christmas Eve… which means that at some point there’s liable to be a day or two when I put installments up within minutes of each other.

For those of you that remember the previous three years of the best-of list from here and from this blog’s predecessor, you know that there’s going to be a mix of primarily J-Pop and Western music. You also may remember that on at least two of those three occasions, Morning Musume’s then-current studio albums held the top spots (the first time being when Rainbow 7 was in a three-way tie for first with Panic! At The Disco and The Game.

It’s anybody’s ball game this year. I’ve had my list for this series written down in a Word file for at least a week, and now is the time to unleash it. The first few installments for this year-end series are already completed and the rest are in their draft phases as we speak, so things are going to be a little busier and more on time than before. There’s also a tentative Best Singles of 2009 that is in a rough stage draft right now (which in this case means I have a bunch of candidates sitting in an iTunes playlist), but that may be a bonus installment more than anything if it gets completed. For now, stay tuned – I’m already doing the final edit and the HTML coding on the #10 and #9 installments, and those will be up within hours… maybe even within an hour of this post going up.

I almost did something here on TGML that I haven’t done since I launched this site, and that’s almost allowed a calendar month to pass without posting something here.

Sorry about that.

My fingers and brain haven’t been idle, and I haven’t not been paying attention to what this blog normally covers. But life has gotten a bit goofy of late – I’ve been trying to get my novel manuscript finished, another old hobby of mine has been adding some inspiration to my life, and as of this writing, my wedding date is less than seven months away. I also had to change computers yet again since I posted last here, which sucks, but I have a better machine at my disposal so I really have no other excuse to not pursue all the projects I need to do, this blog included.

It’s also been a while since I contributed an installment of “Diggin’ in the Crates” to YODC, but I’ll make up for that as well. I’ve only just scratched the surface when it comes to that project.

I have been plotting two little series for this blog and I’ll be attacking both of those throughout December. Stay tuned here and at my Facebook and Twitter pages. Thanks for your patience.

AKB48
RIVER
(King Records)
Available on CD/DVD, CD, and on iTunes Japan
Rating:

I’ve been enjoying AKB48’s singles output in the wake of “Oogoe Diamond”, with that song and this past summer’s “Namida Surprise” being personal highlights. Their new single may have broken that streak somewhat.

“RIVER” starts off in an unusual way for a J-pop single. Unison chants from group are accompanied by the sound of stomp dancing. This introduction is different, but at over 40 seconds, it is also a tad overlong. Had this tack been done by an American pop group, the length introduction would have been excuse enough for listeners to reach for the radio dial and change the station – not a good idea when you’re trying to attract new listeners. When the song proper comes in, we do get a good AKB48 song. The problem is, it’s only good enough for an album track – and not as an opener, but more like at the halfway point of an album (where Side Two would traditionally start on a vinyl record) – it doesn’t seem to work as A-side material.

“Kimi no Koto ga Suki Dakara” (credited to the “Undergirls”, although not the same line-up as on “Tobenai Agehachou” – there’s no Meetan to be found), on the other hand, is more worthy of being the single’s A-side, with the verses recalling the band’s DefSTAR-era material and the choruses being in a similar vein to the band’s more recent singles. Had this song been the A-side, it would have made for a stronger single.

“Hikoukigumo”, credited to the “Theater Girls”, was originally a stage song from Team A’s 5^th Stage that was recorded with an entirely different lineup. While the intent behind having three different lineups on the single – highlighting members that haven’t gotten much exposure on past single releases – is worthy, the fact that producer/lyricist Yasushi Akimoto is recycling material for B-sides (“Shonichi”  from one of Team B’s stages was one of the “Namida Surprise” B-sides) should be some cause for concern. Could this be why we haven’t seen an actual studio album (that wasn’t a soundtrack to one of their stage shows) from the group yet?

For what is probably going to be (if past discographical history is any indication) the last AKB48 single of the year, this three-song disc is unfortunately their weakest of their releases since they switched labels from DefSTAR to King. Hopefully, AKB48 and their creative team can use the next couple of months to recharge and get some stronger material out on the market.

3½ out of 5 stars. (Ouch – looks like AKB just found something in common with Kiss besides being on my iPod.)

KISS
Sonic Boom
(Kiss Records [North America]/Roadrunner [elsewhere])
Available as a 2CD/DVD set in North America and as a single CD elsewhere.
Rating:

Kiss fans have had every right to be skeptical over the past decade or so. The band’s last studio album, Psycho Circus, was really a “reunion” album with Ace Frehley and Peter Criss that had very little Ace Frehley and Peter Criss on it. They embarked on a “farewell tour” at the turn of the century that turned out not to be a farewell after all. And – most damningly – after the reluctant-to-repeat-himself Ace Frehley chose to depart the band in order to decompress before resuming his solo career, Gene Simmons made the controversial decision to replace the influential guitarist with ex-Black & Blue guitarist and sometime Simmons lackey Tommy Thayer without initially telling the public. (Peter Criss, “the most miserable man on the planet” according to Simmons, was already on the shitlist of his ex-bandmates during the so-called farewell tour and was replaced by Eric Singer.) Follow all that up with Simmons claiming in his autobiography that there was no longer a market for a new Kiss studio LP, and it’s understandable to think why an album called Sonic Boom might easily be dismissed – like some fans who heard a leak of the album on the heels of the release of Frehley’s Anomaly album already did – as sonic bunk.

But in the wake of Paul Stanley recording a follow-up to his 1978 solo album (and touring behind it) and Frehley working on Anomaly since 2007, it probably doesn’t take an Einstein to presume that Simmons was full of shit when it came to the Kiss Army wanting new material rather than another repackaging of back catalog.

In advance press when the album’s recording was announced, Stanley – who took the producer’s chair for the project – boasted that the album would have no ballads or outside writers, and would hark back to the band’s “glory days” both musically and sonically. Similar claims (sans the no-ballads comment) had been made about Psycho Circus. Here we go again?
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