Song of the Week: Week 22: Rebirth Brass Band

Apologies for the hiatus. Things got busy - travel, deadlines and all that jazz. Speaking of jazz, I generally don't like it. I can respect the commitment and talent of jazz players but will always think of Jimmy Rabbitte from the film The Commitments saying "Jazz is musical wanking! If you want to wank, use that thing in your hand, not your sax!". All that being said, I do have a profound love of Mississippi/Delta Blues (not so big on the Chicago stuff) and thoroughly enjoy soul and old-school New Orleans swing/jazz.

You can probably see where I'm going with this... to the song of the week of course. It's Friday. What better day to get funked up? Break out your dancing shoes and sashay your way across the dance floor.

Rebirth Brass Band - I Feel Like Funkin' It Up

As I've missed a few weeks, this week is going to double down. And it would be hard to go in a direction further from the New Orleans brass band stylings heard above. In fact, these gems will take us all the way to Tokyo. Yojiro Noda (known as the Japanese Tom Yorke - complete with one eye slightly shut) has been on my radar for a while now (with this band Radwimps and his solo project Illion) but it was my sister, Carmen's, trip to the far East (where she currently is) that brought Yojiro to Song of the Week fame.

At first I had written a paragraph making specific Radiohead comparisons, but after listening to everything I could find online by Radwimps, I'm at a lost for comparisons. There's a unique variety of emo-esque pop-punk, soft-introverted ballads, 90s alternative, noughties guitar-indie, some Foals-ish guitar and even a song that reminds me way too much of Crazytown. I don't even know what to think anymore. It doesn't help that all the Japanese titles have made it difficult for me to keep track of which song is which. At the end of the day, many of us don't listen to Japanese indie (ish, he's a big star now) music, so here's your chance. There's a couple different ones below (as I couldn't decide), take a listen and let me know what you think.

Carmen, hear anything of this chap out there?

Radwimps - おしゃかしゃま