Conventional Wisdom: My First Japanese CDs - Cowboy Bebop: No Disc

First of all, that is one trollish album title, even more so in the age of MP3s. With that out of the way, I must reiterate something I said in the previous blog: Cowboy Bebop felt like an album, No Disc and Blue feel like soundtracks. That’s no slight on the quality of the songs themselves, but No Disc in particular feels like a collection of songs that just happen to be from the same source rather than a cohesive unit. It’s also got WAAAAAAY less Jazz on it than the previous album, with the three 10-ish second “Vitamin” tracks almost feeling like they’re just there to ensure that record buyers see the name “Seatbelts” on the track list more than they would otherwise. And as it is, most of the officially-branded Seatbelts tracks don’t really sound like what the previous album primed most listeners to expect. “Bindy” is a weird, “Miserlou”-esque Arabian melody, “ELM” is an almost celtic-sounding New Age guitar song, and “Forever Broke” is an even bluse-ier guitar version of the previous album’s “Spokey Dokey”. Really, only the horns-based jam “Gateway” and the piano workout “The Egg and You” (another return to the a previously introduced melody) sound like “normal” Seatbelts songs, though even then the latter sounds more like a tribute to Vince Guaraldi.

Ironically, the most Big Jazz Band-sounding songs are vocal tracks that go credited to their singers. “You Make Me Cool” by Masayoshi Furukawa is stuck between trying to be the theme to a James Bond film and a detective noir film, coming out more like incidental music from The Incredibles (or maybe Ocean’s Eleven) “Want It All Back” by Mai Yamane sounds a bit like if Ben Folds was the headliner at some fancy New York nightclub, along with some more iffy lyrical choices. Actually, Yamane gets hit with this twice, also singing the blues-y “Don’t Bother None” and forcing us all to wonder what world Tim Jensen lives in to think “the old guy next to me is loud as day” is a thing other people say. I feel like I’m beating up on Tim Jensen a lot in these blogs, and I don’t mean to, so let’s also acknowledge that Chris Mosdell’s lyrics for “The Singing Sea” are pretty embarrassing too if you actually stop and listen to them. It’s too bad, too, because I think “The Singing Sea” is my favorite song on all of No Disc, a slow, moody, Noir-ish expansion of the melody introduced in the previous album’s “Cosmos” to a full song. Tulivu-Donna Cumberbatch sings the heck out of it, so that you can ALMOST ignore the dollar store Lewis Carroll lyrics.

And then there’s the other stuff, the songs that are only on the same album as each other because Yoko Kanno wrote them all to be used on the Cowboy Bebop show. Aside from those stylistically diverse songs I already mentioned, there’s the VERY strange choice of album opener: “American Money” a.k.a. “the song they play on Big Shot, the bounty hunter TV show.” I mean, yeah, TV theme song to open a collection of songs from a TV show, but it’s still weird.  When the other two album openers are "Tank!" and "Blue," "American Money" just feels kinda puny by comparison.  Weird in a different way is “LIVE in Baghdad,” a full-on Metal song by JAM Project alumni Masaaki Endoh, though this does admittedly seem less weird now that I’ve heard Yoko Kanno write songs for the likes of Go Go Nana Ni San Ni Rei. Still, as the only Heavy Metal song in all of Cowboy Bebop, it does stand out quite a bit. Standing out in it’s own way is “Fantaisie Sign” by Carla Vallet, a Shibuya-kei track that would sound right at home on a Pizzicato Five album. Actually, if not for the super-fast techno beats, “Fantaisie Sign” would work pretty well on the first album, tucked between “Waltz for Zizi” and “Piano Black.” And just plain weird for weirdness’ sake is the immortal “Cats On Mars,” by Gabriela Robin, who’s totally not just Yoko Kanno herself singing under a pseudonym, what would give you THAT idea? Between the loopy, almost out of tune synths and “Gabriela’s” nonsense gibberish lyrics, “Cats On Mars” was my favorite song off of No Disc for a long time, and it’s still up on my top three. I’m not sure what the exact ranking behind “The Singing Sea” is, but “Cats On Mars” is in a dead heat with the other Gabriela Robin song “Green Bird,” that dainty little church choir ditty that plays when Spike falls out of the window. Talking about anime soundtracks allows you to write all SORTS of weird sentences!  (Actually, as I'm in the process of proofreading this post, I feel compelled to add "ELM" to the list as well.  I'd never really disliked it or anything, but I've found a whole new appreciation for the song since sitting down and re-listening to the whole album.  Heck, I've kind of had it on a loop as I write this, which says a lot)

No Disc is bursting with amazing music, but it’s always sort of felt like “that other album” to me, the one just filling up space between Cowboy Bebop and Blue. Again, I listen to a number of these songs a lot in the context of my own larger playlists, but I can’t even remember the last time I’d just sat down and listened to No Disc all the way through as a unified musical experience.  And as I said before, that's something I've done a LOT with this album's predecessor.  Maybe it’s because the other two albums have more thematic cohesion, maybe it’s because they both open with a bang where No Disc starts off with a bit of a question mark, maybe it’s just Middle Child Syndrome. Or MAYBE it’s because No Disc contains “Power of Kung Food Remix,” an impossibly lame remix of “Tank!” (with some random quote of “Road To The West” thrown in) that automatically deducts points from the album just on general principal. Yes, I am absolutely petty and grumpy enough to complain about remixes like a bitter old man. Get off of my lawn.