This is the album that my old buddy Steve and I bought solely because of a tiny article in Tower Records’ “Pulse” magazine. It told of a new band whose writers’ chief influences covered the gamut of everything Steve and I liked.

Oddly enough, we weren’t disappointed. “Toy Matinee” is a great pop record. It’s got some of the snappiest lyrics anywhere, it’s chock full of catchy beats and nifty hooks, and it tugs at your emotions. “Last Plane Out” and “Turn It On Salvador” are brilliantly smirking pieces. “The Toy Matinee” is a gorgeously sad song, and one of my all time favorites all on its own. “Queen of Misery” and “There Was A Little Boy” are a bit dark, while “We Always Come Home” is gentle and homey in a non-tacky way.

I love this album, and I always intended to save the best for last. (Sure, nobody’s awake to see it. It’s the principle of the thing, donchaknow?) The promo contains parts of “Last Plane Out,” “Queen of Misery,” “The Toy Matinee” and “We Always Come Home.” Enjoy, please, won’t you?

Toy Matinee promo

What do you get when you take a prolific composer and producer and have her rework some of her most familiar music, add some original material and release the album Stateside? You get Yuki Kajiura’s “Fiction.”

Kajiura has a fairly distinctive style even apart from the fact that a lot of her songs’ lyrics are written in languages other than Japanese. And no, not all of the songs on the album are English either, as a couple of the tracks from the anime series Noir are represented here, namely “Salva Nos” and “Canta per Me,” albeit in renditions far more grandiose than the originals. The versions of “Key of the Twilight” and “Fake Wings” (from .hack) are fairly straightforward but no less enjoyable for that fact.

It’s the lesser-known tracks that really make the album, though. “Cynical World” is pretty, peppy and dark all at once. “Fiction” and “Vanity” are a hauntingly beautiful pair of songs. “Zodiacal Sign” is a collection of what could be considered “action sequence” background music from another anime title, and “Open Your Heart” is sweetly uplifting, almost too sweetly perhaps, but by that point on the album one tends not to mind too much.

Don’t let the fact that half of this album started life as music for anime series turn you away. Try the promo, which features “Key of the Twilight,” “Open Your Heart,” “Cynical World” and “Fiction.” Unless what you hear really turns you off, I wholeheartedly recommend this album to you.

YK – Fiction promo

I’d say that this is known as the post-Phil Collins album by Genesis, except for the fact that it’s barely known at all. This is the album that landed with a resounding, if curiously muffled, thud on Amercia’s shores.

Poor Ray Wilson. He didn’t deserve to only get signed on for one shaky, uncertain, occasionally brilliant album and then have the band dissolve out from underneath of him. How does a guy follow in the footsteps of not one but two household-name frontmen?

“Calling All Stations” is, like most post-Abacab Genesis albums, something of a progressive/pop hybrid. There are smart hooks and power chords interspersed with delicate keyboard work and occasionally clunky lyrics, just like we’d come to expect from the band’s last half-dozen releases. The only radio-friendly track, “Congo,” is a decent piece of pop-rock in its own right, as is the title track, “Calling All Stations.” “Alien Afternoon” is whimsical Genesis in the mid-70’s mode with modern technology behind it. Romantic ballads, a Genesis staple thanks in large part to the departed Mr. Collins, are here aplenty in the form of “If That’s What You Need,” “Shipwrecked” and especially “Not About Us.” The album is capped with the social-consciousness epic, “One Man’s Fool,” which isn’t nearly as clunky as you’d expect from a song just this side of being something U2 might have produced if they went for baroque prog-rock stylings.

All in all, it’s not the best album they made but it shows considerable promise for what might have been. Ray’s singing and the songs he contributed to in other ways were certainly getting my hopes up for the next album… which, of course, we’ll never hear. Ah well.

Today’s promo consists of “The Dividing Line,” “Congo,” “Not About Us” and a brief bit of “One Man’s Fool.” I had the damnedest time fitting four clips into this one, folks… though maybe I could’ve used less of the “Dividing” bass riff. Hmm.

Genesis – CAS Promo

I bought this album because of a music video. A creator of AMVs whose work I admired greatly, Justin Emerson (aka the now-retired ErMaC), used a track from BT’s “Movement In Still Life” album for a video that I didn’t enjoy as much as some of his other work but I kept watching it anyway… so I could listen to the song.

The album is very much in the party-mix category, with a variety of dance beats, barnburners (“Never Gonna Come Back Down”) and hip-hop influences (“Smartbomb” and “Mic-Chekka”), but there are also beautiful bits like “Satellite” (used in the music video) and the dancier “Dreaming” (which, oddly enough, I want to use in my next AMV).

For the promo, I pulled “Satellite,” “Dreaming,” “Smartbomb” and “Running Down The Way Up.” I don’t think this one works quite as smoothly as the Dada promo, but it’s not really all that shabby either.

Oh, and in order to get “Sam” to speak his part correctly, I had to tell him the artist’s name is “Bee Tea.” Heh.

BT – Movement promo

In 1992, KGON still played new music by newer bands, and I was a board-op on the weekends. In among the Nirvana and Pearl Jam tracks was a snarky, upbeat little piece by a band you probably haven’t heard of. The band is Dada, and the song “Dizz Knee Land” is from their debut album, “Puzzle.” When KGON went all-classic-rock, the other board-op and I (whatever happened to Loren, anyway, I wonder?) raided the music library (with permission, mind you) for stuff they weren’t going to play anymore, and I picked up one of the copies of the album.

I can’t really explain why I like this one so much. It’s not really my normal style, being a sort of laid back California sound, mostly low-key, and not exactly the cheeriest record ever made. There’s a haunting beauty to tracks like “Surround,” “Dorina” and “Here Today Gone Tomorrow,” as well as a quirky sense of humor that shows up in the lyrics of the aforementioned single as well as the sexy romp “Posters” and odd fare like “Dog” and “Timothy,” one of my favorite tracks.

I’ve uploaded and linked the promo I made, so you can hear bits of four tracks: “Dizz Knee Land,” “Mary Sunshine Rain,” “Surround,” and “Who You Are.” And if you decide to pick up “Puzzle” and wonder what other albums to buy, I heartily recommend their self-titled 1998 album. The only other one of their I own is “American Highway Flower,” which I’m not completely sold on. Don’t let that stop you from trying it out yourself, mind you.

(Say, what do you know? I got the entire review done in time for the 9:30 posting. Go, me!)

Dada – Puzzle promo