REVIEW: LISA - ALTER EGO

3.5/5

New Music Pink Friday

Anything BTS can do, BLACKPINK! can do better...with exclamation. YouTube views. Spotify streams. And now, it seems, solo success for the international K-Pop act. Around the same time 'Number One Girl' Rosé closed out the calendar with her 'Rosie' album, featuring huge hit and actual anthem 'Apt.' with Bruno Mars (so chorus catchy, I use it to teach English to Japanese kids at school), bandmate LISA was fronting Billboard magazine, across the continents with different country covers like a 'Cowboy Carter'. Now, with the instantly iconic album artwork of her born pink 'Alter-Ego', she shows us her sister side. Albeit keeping it in the border breaking dance halls that this 'Rockstar' made her first name only needed (like Beyoncé) household one in. Rocking the house like she does her Thai rapping home, in the scope with one of YG Entertainment and Interscope's biggest records yet. Putting 2025 into focus like 'Rosie' did, pulling the curtain on 2024's closer.

'The White Lotus' star is in a resort of riches all her own, with something else to show us. Smash singles for this 'New Woman' (featuring Rosalía for Rosé's friend), 'Born Again' (with Doja Cat and Raye). All as JENNIE is making 'ExtraL' music and videos with Doechii. Determined to 'Fxck Up The World' with the free bands of Future, Lisa is on one. Yet it's the inspired interpolation of Sixpence None The Richer's classic 'Kiss Me' that really is industry influential under the milky twilight. "Kiss me under the Paris twilight/Kiss me out on the moonlit floor/Kiss me under the Paris twilight (Ah-ah)/So kiss me," she sings on 'Moonlit Floor (Kiss Me)'. She also samples Tame Impala's 'New Person, Same Old Mistakes' on 'Rockstar', and brings out rolling stone other ones on further features. Tyla is by her side on 'When I'm With You' and THE Megan Thee Stallion lets her hair down on 'Rapunzel' Surely a smash for the huge hit future. There are also Vixi and Kiki solo versions of these tracks, if you didn't think Lisa could do it on her own.

Please! Don't you know how much this star shines? Even if BLACKPINK! are on a hiatus like their friends from Seoul. This incredible 'Elastigirl' has got it, all the way to the growl of a 'Badgrrrl' and the curtain drawing 'Dream' you don't want to wake from. A slow swan song singing, "I've been thinking/That I got no idea what you're thinking/Are you happy? Are you sad?/Are you always gonna hate me for that night in Tokyo?/When it ended, I kinda hoped that it'd be open-ended/But you never looked back/Well, I guess you can't hold on to something once you let it go", here underneath the Tokyo SkyTree neon night (ask her to teach you Japanese, and she'll say "hai"). Bringing the 'Thunder' all through the night like Prince, this princess come Queen sees the morning light on the relaxed vibe of 'Chill'. But heed her warning, "With a heart so cold, I give you ch-ch-chills (ooh-ooh)/With a kiss so cold from the ice that’s on my grill (ooh-ooh)/If it ain't for fun, I'm runnin' for the hills/Only want you for the thrill/Come on fast, it won't last/Boy, you need to ch-ch-chill", like this hip-hop throwback call and response.

That's just the 'Lifestyle' of the one who rocks, "Fast cars, drop tops and tank tops/Diamonds on my tick-tock/That's just my lifestyle, oh-woah/LA to Bangkok/Can't stop, so we don't stop/That's just my lifestyle, oh-woah." LISA has been around the world like Stansfield (and that sample), and I, I, and you, you know she's the truth. When BLACKPINK! get back together it's going to be a blockbuster, but this 'Alter Ego' is still one alternative act that blooms like a lotus, and her own growing confidence that deserves the cockiness of a rapper. This is the best 'Alter Ego' since R&B singer and 'Fast and the Furious' and 'Transformers' franchise star Tyrese showed his rapping side, Black Ty. A dynamite debut from the dynamic star. Cocksure and charismatic from California's Paradise Sound Recording Studio in Los Angeles and the Legend Music of Phuket. This feels like Hollywood and home. Some critics are calling out the cohesion, but that's just their own ego's talking. LISA has always known how to blend styles like the purple one, and now as she pink switches up, she hits like a Dodger. Blending English and Spanish language like LA, Thailand's own reaches even more hearts, minds and egos. Name a better alternative! TIM DAVID HARVEY.

Playlist Picks: 'Rockstar', 'Moonlit Floor (Kiss Me)', 'Dream'.

Spin This: Rosé - 'Rosie'.

EXHIBITION REVIEW: RYUICHI SAKAMOTO 'SEEING SOUND, HEARING TIME' @ MOT, Tokyo Japan

4/5

Sound And Vision

@ Museum Of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan.

Magnum, like his 'Opus', the late, great Ryuichi Sakamoto was more than music. The classic composer, and Japan's answer to the dearly departed Ennio Morricone, scored all sorts of sounds, sure. From the electronic (his Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) group), to the soundtrack (like the Oscar winning Alejandro G. Iñárritu movie 'The Revenant', starring Leonardo DiCaprio, changing the landscape of cinematic music). Yet his art hit even harder to the heart than all of that. The death of this dearly departed artist subdued a reserved Japan even more. Sure, he was in ill-health, but at 71, it seemed far too soon for a man who was looking his most iconic in later year glasses and shades of grey. Still pioneering new worlds of sound. Holding quarantined meetings in Tokyo's Park Hyatt Hotel in Shinjuku (instantly recognizable in its rooms for being made famous by Sofia Coppola's classic 'Lost In Translation' starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson) with Suga Of South Korean pop sensation BTS, as they crafted a classic collaboration. He wasn't done. Real artists and their art never are.

In his passing, Sakamoto left us with so much more. Just like the 'seeing sound, hearing time' exhibition that you can now catch in the MOT of the Museum Of Contemporary Art, here in Tokyo, Japan. Overlooked by the stirring and strong structure of the Tokyo SkyTree. And what a moment of truth this really is, in the amazing architecture of a concrete building I haven't seen since corona. The last time being for an epic exhibit from the Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, matching pop artist Yokoo Tadanori and his wonderful work that has inspired everyone from Yuki Mishima to The Beatles. Here, Sakamoto's showcase shows collaborations with many an amazing artist. Shiro Takatani, Daito Manabe, Carsten Nicolai, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Zakkubalan and Toshio Iwai. Not to mention a special collaboration with Fujiko Nakaya. And, yes, if you've already taken this in fellow Tokyoites, that is the one and only Tilda Swinton sleeping in a motel room, hauntingly like only she can. Mirroring her latest movie of 'The Room Next Door' with Julianne Moore and director Pedro Almodóvar. All marching along in a shadow, like the last TeamLab Borderless digital exhibition projected onto Kanazawa Castle. As timelessly traditional and future forward as this Tokyo home itself.

The actor, composer, record producer and keyboardist hits another note as an artist who transcends space and time, not to mention the hereafter, with what he shows our eyes and ears. Speaking to us from the great beyond with the prose of poetry and jarring and beautiful soundscapes that awake all of our senses and show us life is but a dream. Coming to us just before saying Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, this epic exhibition, which is drawing more crowds than crossing the streets of Shibuya, will march forwards until the end of next month. And you should catch it, whilst you can, because its meaningful message will stay with you for much longer after. This library of sound, drawing from Ryuichi's reservoir, features outside and inside installations. The foggy smoke outside, near the speakers, influencing the black mirrors of the Instagram crowd. But from the iPads and phones of his home and studio life, it's the perfect piano standing on its own that will move you to tears like seeing the John Lennon one at The Beatles Story, from Tokyo, to Liverpool, what a way to go (imagine). Especially when you learn what it survived. All before you see Sakamoto's own one, played perfectly, powerfully and poignantly by the man himself in the silhouette of a haunting hologram. This is the closest you can get to what we lost. And what we will if we don't see sound and hear time in the perfect harmony of what means everything to you and me. TIM DAVID HARVEY.

REVIEW: THE LUMINEERS - AUTOMATIC

4/5

Automatic For The People

Don't adjust your sets. The Lumineers are back. The "I belong with you, you belong with me. You're my sweetheart" folk singers return with their first album since the 'Brightside' of 2022. Live in technicolor as we all tune in. Spurred on by their one-shot video lead single, that is anything but the 'Same Old Song'. But with that being said, and the second single, of the 'You're All I Got/So Long' duality, the luminous Lumineer legacy amongst their Bon Iver and Augustine luminaries is one of a signature sound that hits the sweet spot between spiritual and anthemic. This half-hour Dualtone record, released on New Music on St. Valentine’s Day Friday, is a prism of love, live in living colour. Following their big swing, 'Live At Wrigley Field,' last year, they are carrying on like a Chicago Cub.

Dialled to eleven, with Dave Baron tapping in on production for this indie act, this amazing, accented album was recorded at the Utopia studios of Woodstock, New York for that beautiful Bohemian feeling in a rhapsody of real records. Actual albums have a home again in the first quarter-century of the new millennium. And it may only be mid-February, like the Kendrick Super Bowl in NOLA or NBA All-Star weekend in a Chef Curry Golden State, but you can already chalk this one up, as one of the better albums of 2025. Get those Grammies ready for this awesome album artwork antenna. Not bad for an album recorded in less than a month, 'A##hole'. Looking at the blurred line absurdities of the modern world, all the way to the 'So Long' closer after some short 'Sunflowers' like Van Gogh. These Lumineers are struggling to tell the difference between what's real and fake. But we know what the former is...them.

Numbing ourselves between boredom and overstimulation, like the fingering treadmills that are our smartphones, The Lumineers turn that same television that the Red Hot Chili Peppers told you to throw away, back on. This 'Automatic' album is for the people, with lyrics to go, like the television card teased words on the same social media they are waging and raging against. Yet, together, Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites write wonders for those songs in your back pocket, leafed for their own independent version of the great middle-American songbook. Stirring 'Strings' from the heart of 'Colorado', dreaming wild, like Casey Affleck and Walton Goggins playing real life brothers with a dream. This album reaches for a 'Better Day' with standouts like 'Plasticine' and 'Ativan', but in a bounty of beautiful break-up ballads to make up, it's 'Keys On The Table' you shouldn't leave, like the one(s) you let get away.

This one restores your faith in modern love gone in ways that would make Bowie ashamed with lines like, "And if you've lost the faith, boy/Leave your keys up on the table/Evеrybody knows, everybody knows/Scared you had a bad hеart/And you're sleeping in the carpark/Everybody knows you're all I got/You're all I got." But just like the album title track repeats the 'Automatic' name', another favourite, 'You're All I Got', harks back to these jangling keys. "Feelin' bored and runnin' from the shame/Livin' for the love of yesterday/Lawyer fees, stretch limousines/Pull the cord and flush it down the drain/Let the light come down on me/Let the light come down on me/You're all I got/You're all that I got." Darkened by divorce at the door, but still taking and talking love like a champ, The Lumineers show us that even in the depths of depression, the heart and soul is near. And they can shed light and remember what really means something to them, when those three little words turn into two and alimony. We need a new way in this day, especially with love, and the lovely Lumineers are trying to help show it. The rest should be automatic. TIM DAVID HARVEY.

Playlist Picks: 'Same Old Song', 'Keys On The Table', 'Sunflowers'.

Spin This: Augustines - 'Augustines'