100s

[Sazelyt]

I just listened to a song from this band (I don't know if it is called All or is it just the album's name, anyways). It is more like an evolved classic rock style (close to Billy Joel, Elton John of the past). And, the song feels really different compared to what I was listening recently. I don't have much information on the band, other than what I have read on Japan Times Online:

Kazuyoshi Nakamura made a name for himself here as a solo artist in the late 1990s, fusing his Beatlesesque melodies with a more traditional J-pop sound at a time when Oasis were selling hundreds of thousands of albums a week.

"ALL!!!!!!" is officially the second album of his group project 100s, and it's full of bright, summery power-pop tunes that display Nakamura's love of '60s British music while adding some driving new wave-like rhythms and synths. Like The New Pornographers, the songs are catchy and effortlessly push the right melodic buttons, but whereas his Vancouver contemporaries frequently cram up to five songs'-worth of tunes into one track, Nakamura's compositions are more conventionally constructed. That's not to say that "ALL!!!!!!" is bereft of invention, as "Na, Mirai" confirms, the latter updating the intense pop energy of "This Year's Model"-era Elvis Costello with some clever twists in the production and a cheesy — yet effective — arms-in-the-air chorus.

by IAN MARTIN