Big Orange Crayonmusical thingsCibo Matto Stereo Type A Warner Bros. Records (Yeech) Butter 08's Butter was one of the best albums ever. It was schizophrenic in the best of ways, having some amazing furious songs like "9mm" and "Its the Rage" and great laid back songs like "Mono Lisa" and "Butterfucker", with each song being its own perfect universe but fitting in beautifully with the other tracks on the disc. It crossed over the lines of every genre imaginable and back with perfect ease. Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori then moved on from Butter 08 to form Cibo Matto (say "Chee bow Mah toe") and released Viva La Woman and that was one of the best albums ever. It had a great deal of the same thing, with "Birthday Cake" representing the rock out side and songs like "Sugar Water" to lay down the grooves. Not to mention "Le Pain Perdu" which deserves its own sentence for incorporating elements of funk, swing, rock, hip-hop, and pop into one mind-blowingly amazing song. I noticed a pattern and took a chance on their new album, Stereo Type A. In a lot of ways it has the same things: "Clouds" is slow and groovy and "Sci-Fi Wasabi" and "Blue Train" have the harder edge and so on, but I think the album doesn't quite live up to the two previous albums. Don't get me wrong, this is a great album on its own, but there isn't a "Its the Rage" or "Birthday Cake" to make me jump up and down. Its mellow. I guess that's it and I wasn't expecting it. Now normally, I wouldn't call songs like "Blue Train" mellow, but on the whole, the album doesn't have the energy of Viva La Woman or Butter. It is a great deal funkier than the past albums, though and that's a good thing, especially on "Lint of Love" and "Speechless". I definitly would buy this album again if given the opportunity though. The whole album is damn funky. "Sci-Fi Wasabi" is a great bit of quirky hip-hop that I can't stop listening to and I can't get the chorus from "Spoon" out of my head. I'm happy with this. I'm content, but I hope that the girls, who are now accompanied by Sean Lennon (who did the keyboard solo on "Its the Rage" for butter 08) full time apparently, get really pissed off about something and write a few more fast, angry songs. Total score: 672 out of 724 |