Make Believe Mailer Vol. 17: A Review Of Gesu No Kiwami Otome's "Ryoseibai"
A couple weeks ago, the Japanese morning TV show I normally have on featured something unusual -- music. Start-of-the-day programming features plenty of pieces linked to music, from "Perfume are making a new video, let's get a sneak peak!" to "check out footage from a Dreams Come True show!" But this was different -- the announcers were focused on a specific song, and dissecting it line by line. TBS transformed into Rap Genius.
The song was by Gesu No Kiwami Otome, and they were combing it over trying to find clues about lead singer Enon Kawatani's affair with TV talent Becky.
After an unlikely breakout in 2015, Gesu has become fated to always be linked to Becky, and this January's Ryoseibai -- what probably looked like a victory lap for the quartet a week-and-a-half before its release -- doomed to be clouded by the scandal. Whenever the news or a variety show touches on the affair, Gesu's music ends up soundtracking shots of a forlorn Becky at the news conference where she sorta apologized for all the trouble. Ryoseibai still debuted at the top of the Oricon charts, and the group hasn't had any major repercussions yet (unlike Becky), yet the celebrity context around it has consumed it.
Imagining a world where Kawatani and Becky kept a tighter lid on their LINE accounts is a fun mental exercise -- would Ryoseibai get as much attention? Would it have been looked up purely in terms of its zig-zagging songs? Ronald Taylor for The Japan Times ultimately approached it this way, and comes to the conclusion that for all the high-points the album is a bit too stuffed, an opinion I've seen echoed elsewhere. I agree -- Ryoseibai suffers from the same affliction so many major-label collections do, the desire to maximize every available inch of space afforded to them. Gesu's songs excel by themselves -- they take sudden detours into jazz interludes and piano solos, but eventually wrap around back to a sticky chorus. Alone, they are among the strangest songs to be appearing in commercials and on radio shows. Yet one after another, the joy of sudden twists starts to wear off. You can only ride Mr. Toad's Wild Ride so many times before you know the train is going to hit you.
But there's one final swivel -- Gesu gained attention in 2015 primarily for that unpredictable sound, and now in 2016 tend to be looked over lyrically, which brings about a very different revelation. Ryoseibai is one of the most miserable albums to be a top-seller in recent memory when looking over the album insert.
When news of the affair initially broke, plenty online noted the irony of Ryoseibai's title -- translated, it means "Both Sides Are At Fault." Well before any drama, Kawatani told the editor-in-chief of Musica magazine he just wanted a word featuring three kanji characters for the title -- that "Ryoseibai" just sort of worked. Let's work with this, and not even think about the tabloid-fodder to be...the songs on Ryoseibai are a parade of self-loathing, the characters on these Kawatani-penned songs constantly picking themselves apart and in one instant Kawatani hinting at how he feels as part of the major-label music game.
Gesu No Kiwami Otome have always been on the cynical side -- look at this page of translations and you'll find metaphor-rich love songs and numbers commenting on Japanese society -- and what made their rise in 2015 fun was that they were basically the inverse Sekai No Owari. Whereas that quartet is almost stupidly optimistic, Gesu approached everything from a negative starting point and let varying degrees of light come in later. Both, though, write songs drawing from teenage feelings -- naive hopefulness and pubescent distrust -- and it's worth remembering Gesu used to dress up like high schoolers.
But Ryoseibai sticks out for how much it negatively obsesses with the self. And Kawatani isn't, and was never, hiding it. The singles released last year in the build up to this collection include "Otonatic" ("Adult-ish," an angry cut wherein Kawatani's narrator declares "I'm no adult") and "Romance Ga Ariamaru" ("Romance In Excess" which finds a character lamenting how they've overindulged in love...c'mon!). The vague problems of being a teen (feeling oppressed by adults, having absurdly romantic expectations of love) get swapped out for more direct adult dilemmas (not wanting to put up with other people's shit, screwing too much). When their big hit first emerged last year, it felt like a charming bit of pop prone to proggy twists with a philosophical bend. Near the end of Ryoseibai it suddenly feels far more like a quarter-life crisis, that no amount of la-la-las can hide.
This time around, all the zigs and zags of Gesu's music sounds like a way to deflect away from the loathing at its core, if not sometimes release (see the album's most fun song, "Mr. Gesu X," which dissolves into near-punk for its final half). But it's there, the people occupying these songs drink canned beer while lamenting on the past and wondering where their identity went. The songs are vague enough and linguistically twisty that trying to connect any of this to Kawatani's private life would seem foolish...except for "Serial Singer," a downtrodden number about...singing and creating songs. It's positioned before a number about the mind-numbing feel of an office job, and the placement feels deliberate.
You don't need to play music TMZ with Ryoseibai, because for all of its sonic adventures it ultimately sounds like little fun, unless reading a transcript of a therapy session sounds like a good time. It's a bloated collection that shows the sonic limits of this group, but it's also as self-loathing an album you'll ever see top Japanese charts.
Japanese Music Highlights From The Past Week
I feel like last week was extra busy personally, and all the interesting new music I heard was electronic sounds I could get welcomingly lost in. There was also woozy electro-pop courtesy of Nagoya's Sweesweesweets and new Boogie Idol.
Hey, new Sapphire Slows (well, along with Russian artist Dub I Prosto Derevo), emerging a little bit after last year's Red Bull Music Academy in Paris.
Speaking of Red Bull...Suiyoubi No Campanella's (ohh sorry, ahead of her shows at SXSW she's now "Wednesday Campanella," because Japanese is too hard for that dual English/Italian demographic) teamed up with them for new single "Chupacabra." She's someone worth mentioning in regards to the interesting direction a lot of J-pop is going in 2016, which I mused on in relation to an Avex song Seiho produced recently.
Oomori Seiko released a new video recently...on the fence with this one.
News And Views
Utada Hikaru, who a couple of months ago refuted a news story announcing she would be returning to the J-pop industry in April, announced she will be returning to the J-pop industry in April. How dumb was this whole episode? I get that this is just how Utada rolls -- despite a reputation a few steps ahead of Namie Amuro and Ayumi Hamasaki, her management seems every bit as if not worse than your typical J-pop megastar -- but when the initial Yahoo! story emerged, people online were so jazzed about her comeback. And then she shot it down only to...announce it herself, to slightly less fanfare? Utada made a lot of forward-thinking pop at the turn of the century...but this reminds that she's every bit as stuck in the past as other J-pop throwbacks. Welp, I'll still listen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Back to the out of the ordinary...the face of the city-pop revival cero appeared on SMAP X SMAP, and it was every bit as incredible and bizarre as you'd expect. Peep the video fast. cero themselves come off as charmingly nervous to be in this situation, while the performance of "Summer Soul" is...as good as it can be considering they were stuck with SMAP singing over it and air-grinding to it. Imagine, if SMAP really had dissolved we wouldn't have gotten to see this guy wink!
Twitter account of the week goes to @pic_of_MUKAI, your daily space for pictures of Shutoku Mukai (Number Girl, Zazen Boys)
Record Store Day Japan announced this year's line-up of special releases...hit me up if you want any, I'll only charge you 50x as much for them. Get me in on the Record Store Day racket.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of Feb. 29 - March 06
Every week, I'll share the top-charting single from the Oricon Charts, aka "you have to listen to another Johnny's song, dummy."
#1 KAT-TUN "Unlock" (194, 911 Copies Sold)
As much as I'd like to dismiss this right away, I have to admit...until Kis-My-ft2 came along and started dabbling in EDM, KAT-TUN always managed to be the most relevant sounding boy band in the agencies' stable. This amounted to "electro-pop-ish," but they have one legit solid single (2010's "Going!," a number slathered in sweet, sweet Auto-tune) which is more than a lot of the groups in the universe they occupy. "Unlock" isn't nearly as efficient -- first you have to ignore the nonsense lyrics, then you have to accept the only thing going for it is some sharp bass and general pulsing vibe -- but it tries harder than most which...has to count for something?
Should have just wrote "unlock the swag? No, they don't."
Look At Me!
For Red Bull Music Academy Daily, I wrote about protest music in the aftermath of the 3/11 Great East Japan Earthquake and...more specifically...following the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Been working on this one for a while, and happy with how it came out.
In lighter news, I wrote a guide to Japanese acts at SXSW for MTV 81. If you are going and you don't see Maltine Showcase, I don't even know.
Gudetama Shade Of The Week
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
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Header by Alan Castree (AC Galaga)