New release roll

Out of all of the new releases that have come out today, I pick the following as my favorite...

Prague - Distort

Genre: pop-rock
Song style: Slow but dancey pop-rock

This song gives me a very different impression of Prague versus their previous single I covered (Light Infection). They seem more grown-up here and sound quite a bit like サカナクション. Just so you know, I believe the jittering in the beginning of the video is intentional.

Along with this single CD of "Distort", there are also singles from:

Vamps - Devil Side (covered yesterday)
Screw - "Cursed Hurricane" - a very stereotypical softish visual-kei type song. I think they can do better.
Flow - "Calling" - way too stereotypical and poppy a tune, so hard to put on this blog. But I remember getting a better impression of Flow elsewhere, so they may go up on here another time.

I'm sure many more artists have new releases, but it's so hard to keep track! So perhaps expect a stream of new songs coming after today too.

Light Infection

Prague - Light Infection

Genre: pop-rock
Song style: light with a lot of vocal movement

This song feels so close but not quite there. Almost catchy and fun, but the singer goes all over the place, which sometimes ends up in him missing the note he's looking for. But I'm interested to see if this band ends up going the indie route or the mainstream route. They started just at the end of last year (September 2009), and will be releasing their third single CD "Distort" on May 12 (and I believe the song is out - though no music video has hit the youtube waves). I wish the best of luck to these guys.

By the way, I saw Jonetsu Marie and Shabondama High School, and they were amazing! Very charismatic and they put on a great show that even translated well to an American audience. I didn't end up watching Uzuhi or Spirit + Noise, but I saw Uzuhi at their merch booth.