A rat in Harajuku
February 04, 2010
By
Song List Rat
Spread the word around. The Rat is back in town. Got Emiliana Torrini's song list. Same punctuation...
things were getting tight in the the song list business over january in australia. so i decided to fly the coup. the story goes like this. i was at the urinal at the perth international airport when two men nearby started talking in a very strange tongue. i could not make out any familiar sounds in their language. being a child of john howard i could only think terrorist!! i rushed out to alert my 14yo daughter of the immediate risk. "don't be stupid " she said "they are in a band from iceland and they are supporting emiliana torrini. i have asked them to put our names on the door at the astro hall in harajuku in two days time." all came to pass and two nights later we were ushered into the astro hall a small 400 capacity live music venue in tokyo. my first impression was live music in japan is not like live music in australia. the venue was a tiny rectangle with a large stage. everyone had a good view of the band even the small japanese. the sound and lighting were superb. the bar was tiny and potato chip sales were greater than those of alcohol. there was a wooden bench for merchandise where a japanese man was creating a skyscraper of tokyo proportions out of 1000en notes. eventually the pile of money fell over but there was never any sense that the money was at risk of being stolen. once emiliana began playing i realised i owed her an apology. i had heard many of her songs previously but had attributed them to bjork or lykke li. her performance was amazing with her vocal range needing to be seen to be heard so to speak. her backing band were also amazingly talented multi-instrumentalists in their own rights. emilianas' lyrics are also something special. telling stories of light ,landscape form,love and the ages of man. each song playing out the script for an art house movie. none more so than "me and armini". this was a song she and her song writing partner wrote one night while consuming a bottle of whiskey. upon arising the next morning emiliana had no recollection of writing the words all of which were penned by herself. the logical explanation was that there had been the spirit of a dead woman in the the whiskey and she was contacting a former lover through emiliana(emilana in the icelandic tradition can drink more than most) i could not help but wonder if she had also eaten the spirit of donovan phillips leitch live odorigui or dancing-eating style in a cod kedgeree. it was all over by 9.15pm and we were being pushed out by 4 of the politest bouncers ever dressed in blue boiler suits.
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