Make Believe Melodies For March 5, 2024
"What kind of behavior is illegal?"
Shino Kobayashi — The Wind Carries Scents Of Flowers
The strength of Japan’s indie-pop community lies in its familiarity. More so than maybe any other genre in the country, I can’t think of a corner more consistently pleasant than the jangly, guitar-centered stuff that always finds a way to circulate regardless of what tastes change. The Wind Carries Scents Of Flowers, the long-blooming second album from singer-songwriter Shino Kobayashi, is a collective effort at celebrating the ethos and sound of this world. The lineup of artists involved in the writing, recording and production of it features heavyweights in the world of lightweight sounds — members of bossa nova revivalists Small Garden, the guitarist of “neo acoustic” project The Laundries, and my personal favorite from this eternally sunny world Mayumi Ikemizu, better known as Three Berry Ice Cream1. Together, they help Kobayashi create a warm, naturalistic set moving from pleasant acoustic meditations to hoppier indie-pop cuts.
As important as the community is to The Wind Carries Scents Of Flowers, it’s ultimately Kobayashi’s singing that gives this one the character that makes it shine so bright. Always sounding content and warm, whether working over stripped-down bossa on “5 Meter No Eien” or rollicking guitar romps like “Shiroi Koibito,” she makes every inclusion here feel especially inviting. I have no hesitation admitting this is sonic comfort food personally — indie-pop, in its general embrace of classic sounds (guitars) and feelings (a teenage earnestness bordering on the wimpy), has always been something I come back to, regardless of whatever the hell else is dominating my attention at the time — but Kobayashi’s eight-years-in-the-making return highlights all the ways those familiar touches can still resonate, and how one artist can make the familiar still sound so fresh. Get it here, or listen above.
T.M.P — “DO IT!!”
A motivational speech packed into two minutes. Osaka’s T.M.P stand as the most joyous musical project going in Japan, with genuinely life-affirming mergers of rock and internet-damaged electronic sounds aimed at the pit. “DO IT!!” opens with synths summoning the positive power of group_inou and lets samples of Lil John spike out of them. From there, the pair create a sweat-stained dance-pop cut using positivity as propulsion. Listen above.
in the blue shirt — “Into Deep (What I Need)”
Kansai’s in the blue shirt appears to be cooking up something — he shared this two-song set today, so perhaps a creative groundswell is afoot — and “Into Deep (What I Need)” revisits the sample-centric rush of his earliest work. He piles sliced-up singing together to create a dizzying bit of dance euphoria. Get it here.
Milky and cyber milk chan — “You’ll Miss My Sine.wav”
The meeting of the milks we didn’t know we needed…I guess call up Milk Talk next time? A frantic cut that starts disorienting and only grows more blurry as it zooms ahead. Listen above.
SATOH — “you hate caffeine”
The new-era rock sound emerging out of Japan’s “hyperpop” scene doesn’t always land, but rising duo SATOH offer as great an example of how it can work with “you hate caffeine.” The digi-era touches are subtle — it’s all slight vocal twisting, never going overboard but rather offering an electric glaze to their singing that reminds me of PAS TASTA — and instead they lean into a guitar-powered sprint that is just catchy as heck. Listen above.
A.G.O And haruno — “EGO”
Presenting almost as a lead-in to the final song of the week, to highlight developments in J-pop tempo, though I really like how this one refuses to catch its breath. Listen above.
eill — “25”
An inescapable element of NewJeans is the group’s youth. Part of that is just factual — there are literal minors in this group, which makes a lot of the flowery words surrounding them sorta silly. But hey, let’s not dwell on terrible writing cliches from 2023 and instead look at the art, which does revel in youthful energy and, at it’s best, captures the nerves and anxiety of thrilling new feelings set to a speedy sound. It’s about the excitement of youth, even when that’s kind of scary.
Look, everyone is trying to be NewJeans now to the point where saying “ahhh, very NewJeans, yes” is every bit as lazy as the things in criticism that make me roll my eyes…but the newest single from eill? Very NewJeans. There’s the tempo, yes, but also a video utilizing fuzzy VHS footage of her dancing in a mall. Yet central to the song being something much more than a stab at timing is something that really only comes with age, and is actually an element completely absent from NewJeans’ music to date….self-awareness, and a sense of humor.
The latest from eill is about being an adult, even if you don’t think it. The opening lines are about watching friends get married and have kids (!?) while our protagonist frets about not even knowing how to clean her room. Yet it doesn’t take long for the song to reveal itself as a celebration of maturing at your own pace, and savoring one’s place (“I’m pretty fine” isn’t a huge flex — especially after a line about having a hangover — but one that sounds undeniable in the hook). The big potential hurdle to “25” is the line “you only live once / swag swag” right in the chorus, which I go back and forth between being clunky and a clever bit of washed-20-something awareness (given eill’s history of pop with an undercurrent of cynicism, I lean towards the latter). It’s sharp and funny, revealing maturity can be every bit as fun as youth. Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of February 19, 2024 To February 25, 2024
Back in the day, the Oricon Music Charts were the go-to path to music stardom in Japan. Acts of all sorts traversed these lands, trying to sell as many CDs as possible in order to land a good ranking on a chart choosing to only count physical sales, even as the Internet came to be and the number of versions offered for sale got ridiculous. Today, with the country finally in on digital, these roads are more barren and only looked at by the most fanatic of supporters needing something to celebrate. Yet every week, a new song sells enough plastic to take the top spot. So let’s take a trip down…the Oricon Trail.
Sakurazaka46 — “Ikutsu No Koro Ni Modoritai No Ka?”
Sakkurazaka46 do a particular song really well — a driving pop song undercut by anxiety caused by one’s place in the world. Few idols deal with existential dread as well as this biggie-sized group, but once again they’ve topped Oricon with a single focused on doubt (here, the sort caused by aging and realizing your best days might be behind you…bonus idol-meta points!) but with life-affirming lift. Listen above.
Consider Upgrading Today!
Go paid, and get one extra post a week! This week, the most inside baseball you could possibly ask for…the experience of covering the Crunchyroll Anime Awards.
News And Views
Speaking of…attending the Crunchyroll Anime Awards is a pretty wild experience in terms of seeing the spread of anime which…nothing new in realizing “oh, this is like mainstream mainstream now” but rather seeing the power this discipline has not just domestically but internationally. It’s well established that Japanese artists can use anime to catapult themselves into greater global attention, but slightly lesser discussed is how non-Japanese acts can embrace it to do well in the Japanese market. See several K-pop acts who were out in front of this trend.
I predicted a few months ago that more Western artists would be clamoring for opening and ending themes, and that eventually one would be a Billboard hit. Now I don’t think the latter is happening yet, but the path is set based on the artists selected to bookend episodes of highly anticipated new series Kaiju No. 8.
Yep, YUNGBLUD (with a writing assist from a member of Imagine Dragons) on the opening, and OneRepublic handling the closing. “Prominent” might not be quite the right word to describe them…though OneRepublic, low-key a defining act of the 2010s pop world for better or for worst…but then again this could be a boost for both, in Japan and potentially abroad depending how this series goes.
Sony Music Japan ending its experiment in the “virtual artist” space Prism Project about two years after launching it. I do have to push back against Digital Music News’ analysis, which ties this to the general cooling-off of Web 3.0 fireworks and “discerning taste" from consumers in regards to digitally created music, which I think is implying this was AI music but definitely wasn’t. That’s not why this flopped, as VTubers remain a growing industry with a lot of fans and capital. No, it flopped because nobody gave a shit about Prism Project.
Fuji Rock…announces more artists, with a few gems but also Noel Gallagher as a headliner, instantly making Sunday a skippable day. The general reaction I’m getting from people is that both it and Summer Sonic feel underwhelming thus far, with the caveat that with Fuji Rock anyone who loves Kraftwerk seems absolutely jazzed for July. I count myself in that cohort, and think in general Fuji Rock is fine (though god can we get over Oasis already), and I’m TBD on Summer Sonic.
Liked this video about Japan’s “hyper-rock” scene, overall pretty neat channel!
Also loved this video of Pikachu dancing to “Heavy Rotation.”
ROCK IN JAPAN, already the biggest festival in Japan, somehow gets even bigger for 2024. The event will be held over 10 days over the course of a month, in two prefectures (first in Chiba, then Ibaraki). Now, you could think of this as two festivals really, and I imagine you will see a lot of overlap between the two…which makes it stranger, since these locations aren’t far from one another, so it’s not like you are reaching that drastically different an audience. Should be a test to see just how much larger the festival industry can get.
LDH is such a bizarre company. This is an institution that has long choreographed efforts at being “global,” and want to know what’s crazy? It’s kind of working as of late! At least in Asia, after PSYCHIC FEVER (featuring JP THE WAVY) went viral with “Just Like Dat.” Part of that is because this project has spent a lot of time…like, literally…in Thailand, developing a following there. That’s great, and something that could help propel them to new heights!
So, what does LDH release in the midst of this? A “Notice on portrait rights and copyright” that tries to push back against a whole bunch of global trends. While I think there’s space to have discussions about ownership and free-for-all behavior, something like this is definitely built to reduce the sort of actions that could actually help spread LDH groups such as PSYCHIC FEVER.
Though it’s also just a wild document, full! of! exclamation points! and one of the funniest page breaks I’ve ever seen.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
OK, she’s actually best known as being a founding member of bridge, Kaji Hideki’s first band, but I’m a sucker for her solo sweetness in the years after.