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November 22, 2024
 

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Shaun Curran
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 13, 2015
Wolf Alice's Summer Sonic stop is another step on the way to the top
When London indie-rock foursome Wolf Alice makes its Japan debut at the Summer Sonic festival this weekend, it will be three years, two EPs, one debut album and countless incendiary live gigs since it first sent alternative music blogs into a frenzy with a single track uploaded to SoundCloud, that most...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 23, 2015
Noel Gallagher brings his High Flying Birds back to Fuji Rock and where the 'mania' began
It doesn't take much to set Noel Gallagher off. We are sat in a backstage portacabin at London's peculiarly ragbag Clapham Calling festival, and I've just mentioned to the former Oasis songwriter that "Chasing Yesterday," the second solo album under his High Flying Birds banner, is the U.K.'s fastest...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 9, 2015
Charli XCX hits her J-pop groove
"I've tried to immerse myself in Japanese culture," says Charli XCX, international hit maker and Britain's next big pop-star-in-waiting. Of course, that's the sort of comment you might expect the 22-year-old to make on the eve of her first headline shows in the country this week, bringing her breakthrough...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 24, 2015
All grown up: Les McKeown leads reincarnated Bay City Rollers back to Tokyo
As singer of the Bay City Rollers, the tartan-clad teen-pop sensations that conquered the world in the 1970s, Les McKeown forged a special bond with Japan that endures today.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 10, 2015
Former Supergrass front man Gaz Coombes is bullish on 'Matador'
Gaz Coombes has grown up, but he hasn't grown old. The carefree effervescence that characterized his band Supergrass, Britpop's cheeky monkeys, has vanished, but five years into a solo career the band's erstwhile frontman refuses to settle into the traditional post-split career trajectory.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 26, 2015
Gruff Rhys follows ancestor's path on 'American Interior'
For his fourth solo album, "American Interior," Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys went the extra mile. Or more accurately, the extra 1,800 miles.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 12, 2015
Belle and Sebastian lean toward politics and away from twee on newest album
Belle and Sebastian are headed back to Japan, but are not quite as you remember them. For nearly 20 years the Glasgow indie darlings have been pigeonholed as producers of twee, lovelorn songs for corduroy-clad outcasts, but with their newly released ninth album, that stereotype is in danger of looking...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 13, 2015
Royal Blood reigns over British rock
The dressing room of Camden's Electric Ballroom in London is hardly the most glamorous of settings at the best of times, and for Royal Blood it is the early evening after the night before. The previous night, the blues rock duo played its biggest ever headline show at the venue and, preparing for an...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 6, 2015
Britain's alt-j finds inspiration in Miley Cyrus and Nara
An un-Googleable delta symbol name (∆), genre-hopping, challenging sounds and esoteric lyrics inspired by Japanese deer are not the usual recipe for surefire pop success. Yet when alt-j arrives in Japan for its debut headline show — catapulted by 1 million album sales, a Mercury prize and a nomination...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 14, 2014
Pixies to bring 'Indie Cindy' to Summer Sonic
Sat on the upper deck of his band's tour bus, Pixies frontman Black Francis shrugs his shoulders and screws up his face. This is, I've come to realize, how the man born Charles Thompson IV tends to field questions before, if and when the fancy takes him, forcefully making his point — a technique strangely...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 24, 2014
Arcade Fire returns to Japan for Fuji Rock as a bigger and happier band
Much has changed in Arcade Fire's world since the band was last in Japan. Back in February 2008, the Canadian six-piece, still propelled forward by the momentum created by its debut "Funeral," a record that attained perpetual cult status through nothing more than its sheer brilliance, was winding up...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 22, 2014
St. Vincent sits at a crossroads of 'the acceptable and the strange'
Chatting to Annie Clark, what is noticeable is how much she differs from her artistic alter ego. The music she creates as St. Vincent — ambitious art-rock that blends avant-garde sound with melodic richness — has been refined to the point that now, four albums in, she is an artist working entirely...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 4, 2014
Glasgow's Chvrches score a hit with debvt albvm
Scratch beneath the surface just a little and Chvrches' electro-pop becomes something of real substance. The Glasgow trio's songs, which recall that genre's golden era in the 1980s reimagined through meticulously modern production, initially appear throwaway in the truest sense but later reveal themselves...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 7, 2013
Franz Ferdinand gets it right on latest album
When I speak to Paul Thomson, drummer with Scottish art-poppers Franz Ferdinand, it is just over 36 hours since James Blake's second album, "Overgrown," was announced as the surprise winner of this year's Mercury Prize, the award for the best record to come out of the U.K. and Ireland in the past year....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 26, 2013
Suede plays it anew with 'Bloodsports' album
Ten years ago, Suede was in the process of fizzling out to a backdrop of apathy. For a band whose initial brilliance inadvertently help kick-start Britpop in the 1990s, it all seemed unedifying.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 8, 2013
Marr's new message
"What I've done is revert to type. I've gone back to my nature." It has taken 26 years, but Johnny Marr is finally ready to embrace his past. It is a legacy of immense weight: The five years he spent as guitarist and co-songwriter with The Smiths, the most influential and enduring British indie band...
CULTURE / Music / FUJI ROCK 2013
Jul 31, 2013
Fuji Rock is more than just music for first-timers
Unsure what to expect and feeling out of my comfort zone — I'd never even been to Japan before last week — I attended my first ever Fuji Rock Festival with a mixture of excitement, intrigue and apprehension — how would it compare to the dozens of festivals I had been to in Britain, Europe and the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUJI ROCK 2013
Jul 31, 2013
Tame Impala
You've been to Japan as visitors before, how does this trip compare?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUJI ROCK 2013
Jul 31, 2013
Toro y Moi
You've played Japan before, were they festivals?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 6, 2013
Travis returns with 'Where You Stand' after five-year break
You can't sell as many records as Travis have without dividing opinion.
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

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