Rinngo's a Star — page 2

Though her melodies managed to stay just within the boundaries of mainstream pop, she brought a hard-core, grungy pique to many of her songs, from her frequently rough-hewn vocals to unconventional arrangements. "Pop in Japan means conformity, being the same as everyone else," says Atsushi Shikano, managing editor of Rockin' On Japan, one of the country's most popular music magazines. "But Sheena did exactly the opposite. Her way of singing, word choices, extreme sound, radical visual images, the bitchy way she sang—no one thought of doing that before. But she showed that people wanted something different." Indeed, fans snapped up nearly 1.5 million copies of her debut album.

Since then, however, Sheena has proved that there is more to her act than raucous yet catchy melodies and an impressive vocal range combined with shocking images. An accomplished pianist, guitarist and drummer, Sheena writes all of her own material. And though it is fashionable among new-era J-pop divas such as Ayumi Hamasaki and Hikaru Utada to write much of their own stuff, Sheena's musical development and emotional growth—as demonstrated by her latest album—have been astonishing, and astonishingly rapid.

After releasing Shoso Strip, an impressive (and even more popular) sophomore effort in 2000, and a collection of cover songs in 2002, this year's Karuki, Zamen, Kuri no Hana (KZK)—which translates as Chlorine, Semen, Chestnut Flower—is a quantum leap forward, something akin to Radiohead's jump from their well-received 1995 album The Bends, to their jarring, enigmatic, universally acclaimed classic OK Computer two years later. A varied and hypnotizing collection of 11 linked songs, KZK swings between ethereal yet densely layered ballads to all-out hard-rock anthems with screaming refrains that sometimes just fade away and at other times jangle to an awkward, syncopated halt. Through its 45-minute running time, KZK contracts and expands like the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album; it's a bursting yet impressively seamless pastiche of influences including (but not limited to) '40s Big Band and swing, Indian sitar, avant-garde atonal music, trance-house psychedelia, church-organ fugues, electronic multiprocessed voice-overs and traditional Japanese koto, shamisen and flute music. The album is also a showcase of Sheena's voice, which alternates from Marilyn Monroe baby-doll lullabies to rich, velvety crooning. Like OK Computer before it, KZK baffles at first and then, after a few listens, becomes addictive. "Her first two albums were pop, very easy to understand," says Oricon's Katsuragi. "This one is harder to approach. It is something you keep chewing on and taste for a long time."

For Sheena, this album (which she also produced) marked the first time she had the budget and the artistic control to create exactly the kind of music she wanted. Here in Toshiba EMI's Tokyo headquarters, she is wearing slim, blue jeans, a sweater and a flowered silk scarf. This is a significant wrinkle in the Sheena mystique: in person she's the exact opposite of the dangerous and eccentric image she projects to the media. She brings the snacks to her own interview, speaks in flawlessly polite Japanese and asks if anybody minds if she smokes. Speaking with an easy charm and almost girlish enthusiasm, she chats brightly about shopping, American slang and her favorite European cities. Turning to music, however, she becomes more passionate, discussing over a two-hour, wide-ranging conversation everything from the finer points of orchestral arrangement, to the derivative nature of most Japanese hip-hop, to the importance of playing live shows at small, intimate venues. KZK, she says, "has been the realization of a dream." She thinks that her efforts and those of others have reflected a slow change in the industry. "For a long time I thought J-pop was weird and really artificial sounding. I have always tried to create something more genuine."

For all its heavy processing and high production values, KZK manages to deliver a deeply personal message. Rockin' On Japan editor Shikano sees it as a young musician's full flowering as an artist. "This album is pure musical pursuit," he says. Though the album is far from the smash hit her first two original efforts were, it has sold a respectable 400,000 copies, proving there is a significant audience willing to follow risk-taking artists. That's an encouraging sign for an industry looking for examples of what can work in a persistently depressed market. Seiji Kameda, an arranger and producer who has worked with Sheena since she was 17, says, "She always wanted to be a musical pioneer." At just 24, Rinngo Sheena has proved that she already is.

With reporting by Yuki Oda and Michiko Toyama/Tokyo