Shaun Curran - The Japan Times

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Shaun Curran

For Shaun Curran's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

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 modern barometer of a band's potential.

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 selling of the year.

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 third album, "Sucker," to sold-out gigs in Toyko and Osaka.

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 outdated: "Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance" is as concerned with the dance floor as it is the state of the world in which it was conceived.

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 encore later tonight, are disgruntled at the untidy state that greets me. "I'm sorry about the mess," offers drummer Ben Thatcher (26), politely.

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 at the forthcoming Grammys — it does so as one of Britain's biggest bands. Even twerker-in-chief Miley Cyrus, pop's great provocateur, is not only a fan but a collaborator. It is, frankly, an unusual concoction to find a mass audience.

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 reminiscent of the quiet/loud dynamic that characterizes his songs.

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 promotion of its followup, "Neon Bible."

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 in her own sphere. Her songs drip with anxiety, vulnerability and sexual intrigue.

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 as multi-layered pop at its most colorful. Lauren Mayberry's vocals, complementing the synthesized sounds of Martin Doherty and Iain Cook, are honeyed and innocently delivered yet belie the dark and uncompromising nature of the words she sings: 21st-century chart music seldom deals in such cloaked miserablism as "I'm in misery where you can seem as old as your omens" or is as ambiguously menacing as "I'll be a thorn in your side till you die."

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. It seemed like an apt moment to assess the well-being of the Glasgow four-piece: Nine years previously, Franz Ferdinand itself had walked away with the accolade for its self-titled debut, a record that reinvigorated the British guitar music scene with charismatic, intelligent and downright brilliant tunes, making good on the band's promise to create "music for girls to dance to."

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 of the 1980s, will forever remain the 49-year-old's signature, and Marr has spent the intervening years since the band's acrimonious demise deliberately "getting away from" the sound that defined both the group and an entire era.

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 United States?

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / FUJI ROCK 2013

Jul 31, 2013

You've been to Japan as visitors before, how does this trip compare?

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / FUJI ROCK 2013

Jul 31, 2013

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.

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.

The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces

By Stephen Mansfield

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Live like a lord or lady for a night at Ozu Castle

Live like a lord or lady for a night at Ozu Castle

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