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Old 2012.10.14, 09:34 PM   #913
Tokyo Jihad
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Location: San Antonio! Hoody Hoo
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This is patently un-true, see Petrolz and Appa. Generic would be the very last thing to label them with. While I never said I cared about Ringo writing her own lyrics, not sure where that comes from, I certainly question her lack of integrity these days. In fact, its extremely apparent if we go back to Ukigumo and Izawa. Compare their work with the bands they lead to the band they share with Shiina Ringo. For Ukigumo and Izawa its pretty hard not to see Jihen is their commercial cash cow where they sidestep saying anything artistic and serious for the sake of making a product. It is only more difficult to see this with Shiina as she no longer treats her work away from the band any different.

The fact you pick out Oasis to defend Variety is pretty shortsighted. While I wouldn't say Variety took inspiration from the Gallagher bros, there are many many converging ideas. Both bands (hence forth I will refer to Jihen as the specific post-Adult era incarnation) aimed to make music for wide appeal. You use arena rock in a derogatory manner, yet I assume you don't bat an eye at Bon Voyage. If having a huge crowd singing along, waving crowds isn't essentially the same thing that happens at Oasis concerts, then someone has been playing a very elaborate trick on me over the years. Both bands liberally borrow from 60's popular music. Profoundly original has never been an accusation of Oasis; listening to both Definitely Maybe and Variety will produce extensive homage-lists. None very subtle. While it's difficult to delve any deeper from here without pulling out >opinion there is one key difference why Oasis works and Jihen doesn't. The difference is artistic choice. Yes, I'm applying the A-word to Oasis when even the band themselves would balk. But there was certainly one artistic choice the band ever made that was their biggest blessing and their biggest curse. When they chose music to take "inspiration" read: borrow from, they took artistic license in the scope from where they would choose and how they applied. They borrowed from The Who, Zepplin, Slade, T.Rex, all very analogous bands. When they would borrow from outside this heavy brit-rock range, like nicking a riff from Abba, or a melody from a TV ad, they repurposed it, owned it and remade it in their sound. This gave the band focus (and no less helped them reach a very large audience.) Of course, the con came a few years afterwards when maybe you grew tired of Oasis being predictable, but they nonetheless had a focused sound.
That's always been Jihen's heel. They never had focus. They would sample from 60's popular music from everywhere, reconstitute it completely straight, and hope that wide sampling would meet wide audience. Jihen would sample from disco, jpop, hard rock, broadway, etc and just make a disco song, a jpop song, a hard rock song, and a broadway song. Then butt them all together and call it finished. It all feels uncrafted. Oasis may not be particularly heady music, but what they do is anything but uncrafted.

Do listen to more pop-rock albums before thinking of crowning any. And before you say otherwise, do listen more.
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