Make Believe Mailer 40: Five First Quarter Faves
The Theme Is: Flights Of Fancy
You don’t want to see the drafts of this newsletter! It’s a boneyard of half-finished meditations on the music they play inside Muji stores, SoundCloud rap and MLB walk-up music. One type of post I wanted to do more in 2022 was spending more time looking at individual albums, or even multiple releases together that shared thematic / musical connections. Criticism! Somehow, this has yet to happen.
So with the first quarter of 2022 done, let’s honor five albums that would have gotten this treatment if I had an ounce of planning ability within my head / had less pays-the-bills work (not complaining!). Connecting almost all of them is a turn to the uptempo and an embrace of the escapist, not in the sense of ignoring the realities of modern life — in fact, I’d say all of them are painfully aware of contemporary limitations — but rather finding ways to transcend them.
iri — Neon
The city gets a bad rap sometimes. Sure, everyone pretty much has to move to a major metropolis area in order to exist, but this bummer reality shouldn’t cloud out the possibilities…of simply having a great time, even for just one night out. This feeling floats in a lot of the music young pop act iri creates. Aided by modern interpretations of funk and dance-pop courtesy producers like Yaffle, Kan Sano and Shin Sakiura, she explores timeless feelings of loneliness and longing while still leaving space for a little bit of upbeat fun.
Latest full-length Neon finds her balancing the complex feelings of city life more than before. Her 2020 album Sparkle was a mission statement, showing how iri fit into and ultimately stood out as J-pop’s Reiwa era settled in. Now she’s exploring more moods, slowing down on songs like “Hajiimari No Hi” and “baton” to turn feelings over, or envisioning the end of relationships over synth blurs on “darling.” She’s also just embracing a good — but still somewhat emotionally complex — time, dabbling in Spanish on the easy-breezy guitar groove of “Waver” and giving over to ecstasy via the thumping “Matenrou.” It’s Tokyo life condensed into one dizzying night out. Listen above.
Anna Takeuchi — Tickets
There’s one vibe on Tickets, and it’s pure, eyes-turned-to-emoji-hearts joy. You can’t half-ass happiness, and Anna Takeuchi recognizes that putting on a full-blown musical production beats a greeting card every time. This is as maximalist as an artist primarily using an acoustic guitar to create can get, and maybe the best pure pop album out of Japan so far this year, defined as every single song gets stuck inside your head (“I’m feeling for you!” on “Issei Ichiguu Feeling” refuse to leave my brain).
The secret to Takeuchi’s love bomb lies in her embrace of styles outside of her usual purview. She slips into rap-like delivery at a few key moments, while more prominently she’s taking a lot of structural cues from dance music, whether that’s disco strut on “Te No Hira Kasanereba” or flirtations with filter house on “YOU + ME =” or just house on the dizzying “+imagination.” The busier, the better, and Tickets offers a complete mood overhaul for 2022 that’s sure to make it one of the year’s best. Listen above.
Mondo Grosso — Big World
The pandemic looms large over all of these albums, even if it never creeps into the songs present proper. Big World offers an exception to that, being very much a response to the last two years. Mondo Grosso mastermind Shinichi Osawa has stated in interviews this set of songs most certainly were influenced by the fallout from this health crisis — you can tell he’s, most generous reading extended, been frustrated by it, though he sounds more thoughtful in published features — and just the general “bleh” mood of the last few years. There’s not much subtlety either — “we’re losing our minds / we’ve forgotten the joy of dancing” goes a line in “Forgotten.”
Whatever the cause, Osawa and his cast of guest artists on Big World seek some kind of graceful elevation out of the muck. The best moments here give in to wide-eyed romanticism in the face of bleakness. “In This World” captures this best, but manifests itself through silliness with help from CHAI (“Oh No!”) and teenage feels via shoegaze topped off by Asuka Saito of Nogizaka46 (“Stranger”). When it finds room to soar, Mondo Grosso offers some of the best ways to feel, and in the process enjoy some emotional refuge. Listen above.
Haruno — 25
J-pop is still very much going through a “post-Vocaloid” period, but with more mutations on what that means emerging. Haruno first wowed this blog back in 2018 with Filia, a set of Vocaloid-centered songs showing how synthesized singing could still sound beautiful. While more an experiment than anything else — Haruno had sung themselves before, and would mix it up on releases after — it highlighted his songwriting skills, regardless of who provided the voice.
Now, just a few years later…Haruno is now kind of an emerging star, with 25 being their breakthrough. Didn’t see that coming, but it’s well deserved based on this set of dance pop adding splashes of color to the scene. Haruno lays down some skippy garage to hop over on “Cash Out,” and gets the best vocal performance out of yama I’ve yet to hear on “D(evil).” It can get a little too mellow at points, but Haruno avoids late-afternoon nap territory by adding enough of a skitter and step to the songs here. Listen above.
Koda Kumi — Heart
Seriously though…Koda Kumi kinda went off here.
Perhaps this is a case of no expectations heading in, and maybe by the end of the summer I’ll forget all about this one…yet I keep coming back to Heart, Kumi’s 17th full-length album. This isn’t a Bad Mode type artistic breakthrough form a J-pop superstar. Rather it’s just…really fun, with Kumi both leaning into her strengths and continuing to try out new styles (though, critically, she never falls into anything too outside of her range). Just lots of little details that work — the manipulated vocals on the lurching “Bow Wow,” the clock-clattering of “Red,” how “Outta My Control” is some Auto-tune away from being HyperPop. Even the stupider bits prove catchy…hey “Doo-Bee-Doo-Bop!” What’s a better break from reality than Koda Kumi thriving in 2022? Listen above.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies