Make Believe Melodies For November 15, 2021
Checking In On Some Old Favorties
Emerald Four — “Kiri No Koen”
Even a sunny day in Emerald Four’s hands can turn shadowy. The Kyoto project long existed as a duo creating spacious synth-pop, offering up two of the best Japanese albums of the 2010s via 2013’s is-this-what-it’s-like-to-drift-through-the-cosmos-alone-with-only-your-thoughts-core of Nothing Can Hurt Me and 2016’s shinier but nevertheless introspective I Want To Be A Saint. Since then, it changed drastically — original vocalist Sairi Ojima stepped away, but other half Daiuke Adachi decided to keep Emerald Four going, albeit as a band with an entirely new set of people involved.
“Kiri No Koen” along with another number from a couple weeks back show that a lot has changed for Emerald Four — synthesizer is less central, with guitars and drums being more prominent. Like fellow blog-favorite Mei Ehara, Emerald Four is now in tune with major Japanese rock and pop trends, sounding easier and breezier. Yet just like Ehara’s work as of late, Emerald Four bring a new perspective linking to their prior releases. “Kiri No Koen” hides familiar unease underneath it’s sunny near-reggae bounce. The synths they do sprinkle in add a sharpness in contrast to the groove, while the lyrics float towards the surreal, describing a park where one can slip away to play in the haze and avoid the realities of adult life. Cute idea, but delivered as disorienting rather than playful, like falling into a limbo that has slides. Which is the Emerald Four I know so well. Listen above.
Puffyshoes — Again
A reunion with Tokyo duo Puffyshoes shouldn’t last more than 10 minutes given the quick-hit nature of their garage rock, so Again works wonderfully in that regard. The simple pop stickiness and naive sweetness of the pair’s music remains intact as it was a decade ago, but now comes with experience-honed melancholy. Romantic longing was always coming out of Puffyshoes’ songs, but now add existential exhaustion and a desire to do it all over again from the beginning on the titular track. Get it here, or listen above.
THIS IS NATS — What Is HYPERPOP?
Don’t we all want to know?
THIS IS NATS doesn’t offer an answer as much as offer her own chaotic interpretation of what that could be. Which for her is…DAOKO, but with a TikTok-length attention span. Songs just change course midway through, or feature so many dizzying touches as to feel like 100 sketches overlaid on top of one another (see the chipmunked vocals, Mario coin bonks, bass surges and more on opener “Big Love” for a particularly busy example). It also gets at why music falling under this tag continues to impress me — artists are happy to define it however they want. Listen above.
YUNG TRASH Featuring e5 — “Косилка”
If e5 is involved, it’s an instant listen. This track finds her featuring alongside YUNG TRASH, but both let their vocals perform digital trapeze by being unafraid to warp their singing. Fun outro too! Listen above.
Greeen Linez — Secrets Of Dawn
Sometimes I want to write something ~ ominous ~ like “stay tuned for more on this album…” despite only having vague ideas of what I’d even want to do. Busy schedule, procrastination, terrible time management…hey, probably a little of all three! That said…stay tuned for more on this album, as it’s a really great one from the pair, who are celebrating 10 years together and doing so by digging deep into ambient without losing the funkier moments (“Watch The Clock”). Get it here, or listen above.
Mai Melody And Calum X — “Yami No Naka”
A new artist debuts with a moody synth-pop number backed by bubble-popping details and a dramatic build. Mai Melody links with Calum X (from Tokyo electronic collective dosing) for a number tapping into the more somber side of this youth movement in the Japanese underground, and showing a knack for building the emotional stakes. Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of November 1, 2021 To November 7, 2021
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 the 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.
[Yoda voice] The reality show pop wars begun, they have.
INI — A (508,474 Copies Sold)
This month’s somewhat of an epoch shifter, or at least has the potential to be looked back as one depending on where J-pop goes moving forward. NiziU release their first full-length album in a few weeks, JO1 will put on their first big live show (I think I’ll be there?), Who Is Princess? is…still airing. And INI and BE:FIRST — the two latest K-pop-tinged (errrr, in INI’s case, half-K-pop-controlled) outfits to emerge out of Produce-style reality competitions. There’s two-years worth of trends colliding in November, from Korean companies directly entering the J-pop sphere to create new groups and see how they do to an updated version of narrative boy band building, using TV shows and fan engagement to decide who makes the final project, and there’s a lot of roads that could follow. Will this model and these new companies / groups be able to challenge Johnny & Associates acts? Do these groups have the best chance of going abroad via coasting on the exhaust from K-pop’s current moment, or are they just domestic phenomenon? Will this be a new sound for J-pop to escape into, or will the current reign of glum rock reflecting the general mood carry on?
Generally, I think both the above songs are good, though BE:FIRST’s “Shining One” from a couple months ago might be the best version of this sort of thing to emerge from this boom (SKY-HI, who oversees this project, hops back in his “Limo” for that one, with Taku Takahashi riding shotgun). Will it stick though? I’m always personally drawn more to these pop interpretations of, like, “future bass” or whatever tag on SoundCloud from 2014 you want to dredge up to describe this, but I do think every male group has a much harder challenge ahead of them. NiziU — whose “Chopstick” will probably end up around these parts in the near future — has basically been positioned as “TWICE, but younger and all Japanese,” and they have far less competition in the country. These outfits, meanwhile…well, BTS is still top of the heap in Japan, and groups such as NCT and SEVENTEEN aren’t slouching either.
While many view the arrival of JO1 and INI…and their early success…as a challenge to Johnny’s, they also have to face off against the groups informing their sound and image from Korea (doubly so if they venture abroad, which I think they want to do). All these new kids on the block need to find something a bit more to differentiate them from the current aesthetics of K-pop, or else it could be a losing battle.
Before we leave the Oricon Trail, let’s mosey on down a little further to see what’s come in at number five…
Bravo, Mariya Takeuchi, bravo. Funny enough, that’s way higher than “Plastic Love” ever charted in the 1980s!
News And Views
Rino Sashihara celebrated her YouTube channel eclipsing a million followers by interviewing…Yasushi Akimoto. Lots of interesting tidbits scattered throughout, like how Akimoto himself was one of the bigger proponents of Sashihara starting a channel in the first place (which gels with what he told Miyu Takeuchi when she started her covers project). That’s a weird reminder that, for all the old-school sales strategies, AKB48 has always been weirdly ahead of the curve online.
Other YouTube meets AKB48 stories this week…not so great!
The O-East series of venues located in Shibuya have a new naming deal in place, meaning from the start of December you can catch live music at…Spotify O-East, Spotify O-West, Spotify O-Crest and Spotify O-Nest. As far as corporate branding exercises goes, it’s hardly the stupidest name slapped on a building in Japan — I see you PayPay Dome — but this one does remind of the challenges Spotify faces in the Japanese market. Owing to a late start, the slow embrace of subscription streaming in general and the fact Apple Music just does better here, Spotify needs to get their name out to music fans…at physical spaces, which doesn’t gel with the company’s main aim (get people to stay home and listen to a playlist). It’s a lot like the drama they co-produced with TV Tokyo about podcasting earlier this year — the company has made gains in the market, but still needs to turn to existing staples of music / entertainment culture to build upwards.
JR Skiski song compilation, tapping into a sort of nostalgia you didn’t even have.
Speaking of potentially unearned looks towards the past, “Plastic Love’s” new, full music video appeared on YouTube this week. They posted a “short version” of it a few years back which understandeably made many grumpy, but this time waiting work, as it coincided with the physical release of “Plastic Love” on vinyl. Can’t get to number five on Oricon without some marketing, folks.
Going to try to buy the physical copy tomorrow, but James Hadfield interviewed Jun Togawa in the latest issue of The Wire. Every snippet I’ve seen is gold. And, good reminder that much like Mariya Takeuchi, Togawa has been re-upping older songs in recent weeks to celebrate her career.
Genuinely weird seeing 4s4ki tapped to help promote the new Mini Cooper…HyperPop having it’s mainstream moment, or just its online advertising one?
Ayumi Hamasaki, doing better after her medical scare.
We are days away from NHK announcing the lineup for Kohaku Uta Gassen, and all the intrigue right now centers around potential changes to how the show functions. Since starting in 1951, the New Year’s extravaganza has divided male and female artists into teams…white and red respectively. Yet when they announced the “moderators” for this year’s edition, they weren’t assigned to one side or the other…they are just moderators. Many believe that’s due to greater awareness of gender equality (or at least the importance of advancing towards it, especially on our music programming), and has lead to a lot of speculation if those teams will vanish this year.
Shujo Prime online has an interesting dive into it, lacking in anything official from NHK but full of sweet, sweet speculation. Besides the gender angle, they also wonder if more “social messaging” will be present at this year’s Kohaku thanks to “the rise in interest in SDGs” referring to the United Nations program that certain globally celebrated Asian acts have helped promote in recent times. We also get debut speculation, from the likely (Fuji Kaze) to what feels like fantasy (BTS, c’mon they have to be getting better offers than Kohaku), and kind of a tangent about how the acceleration of digital media during the pandemic has lead to fragmentation of music (duh) which is just a way of them saying…was there any huge hit in Japan this year?1Enough Kohaku, have bird man.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
This is a side narrative emerging in Japanese media which…I’d say is 60 percent wrong, 40 percent right. There have absolutely been big hits this year, though I do think a lot of them are basically carrying over from 2020, which has made this year feel off (because it is off, the pandemic was way worse in Japan in 2021 than last year, and caused more disruption). That said…Ado’s “Usseewa” is the answer even if it didn’t really carry over into the second half of the year, but the fact that it sparked a mini moral panic alone earns it that title.