Make Believe Melodies For September 26, 2022
Into The Spotlight
Mao Nakatsu — room
While not totally out of sight, there’s a sense of excitement about stepping forward into the spotlight surging through Mao Nakatsu’s first full-length album room. Initially receiving attention for songs written for rappers such as Ken The 390 and Max, the Kagoshima-born singer/songwriter has shared singles in the years since, but always avoided making a statement. Which was largely fine…she provided R&B transmissions from the modern cityscape, nodding to dustier sounds without ever succumbing to nostalgia, always grounding her music in a modern urgency…of nights out, of connections gone well and sour, of simply living in the capital.
Debut album room gathers all these urban observations and sets them to on of the best pop&b backdrops of the year. Even when referencing retro sounds, Nakatsu adds an emotional tenseness to her lyrics that grounds her songs in today. “My R&R Baby” nearly directly references “Stay With Me,” but the way those machine-beats and synths shoot up into a much more strained vocal instantly cast it into a hectic 21st century light. The loose electro-boogie of “Anone.” conceals odd percussive elements that disrupt the ‘80s dreaming, while closer “Tokyo” offers an ode to the city covered in fading echoes (displayed via manipulated vocal samples), adding melancholy to the song. Whatever the number channels, Nakatsu’s voice grounds it in the now, making for a strong first step into the light and one of the year’s most pleasant surprises. Listen above.
xiexie — 33
I caught the back half of rock outfit xiexie’s performance at Fuji Rock’s Rookie-A-Go-Go stage this past July, pulled in by the vaguely shoegaze riffs (“sounds familiar”) which had me sticking around until the very end (“wait, what’s the secret here?”). New EP 33 shares the same mix, nodding to influences seemingly every single Chuo Line band has absorbed over the decades — extending to like, The Drums and Mac Demarco, the patron saints of Japanese indie in the early and late 2010s respectively — but rearranging them into something just a little less predictable. While the slow-burn swell of opener “sea bird” feels like a play at livehouse cred, I’m mostly bewitched by the whistle-accented glide of “hanehane” and the tender jangle of closer “parallel alligator.” Besides being a compact history book of foreign influence on Japan’s underground rock community, xiexie show how shaking it up can produce solid results and a lot of promise. Listen above.
Jeter — “Mallowball”
As year-end season looms, it remains incredible that several contenders for personal favorite song of the year come from a group called peterparker69. When you can balance the musical equivalent of shitposting with emotionally deft dance-pop, you can call yourself whatever you want. Jeter, half of that project, underlines this ability on solo offering “Mallowball,” a bleary-eyed number featuring treadmill-like tempo shifts and warped vocals, but coming together with urgency around lyrics offering comfort and desire for connection. Listen above.
te’resa — “I Wanna Be Your Girl!”
Nothing subtle here — pure pop pleasure derived from the tizzy attraction stirs in all of us. te’resa’s previous two singles this year incorporated more dancefloor-eyeing speeds, presenting her as a bridge between smoke-scented clubs and the mainstream. “I Wanna Be Your Girl!” edits out any of those signifiers in favor of big, gooey feeling backed by bass elastics and an energy that bubbles over into total release come the hook. That the duo of Hideya Kojima (of Oresama) and NTsKi bring this fizz out is both surprising…at least on paper…and totally reasonable, given their respective abilities to always ground their work in relateable feelings. Here, they let it go to overdrive. Listen above.
Neibiss And Pasocom Music Club — “PARK”
God, it’s so nice hearing Pasocom Music Club having fun. The duo lay down a bobbing beat and perfectly airy synthesized pipe blurts, a perfectly plastic backdrop for Neibiss to geek out over. That rap group especially plays well with this side of Japanese electronic music, as they also shined with tofubeats earlier this year. Though credit to them just going for it straight-ahead like too…they offer the highlight verses on Weny Pond Dian’s recent “Play!,” below.
ASOBOiSM — “Jibun No Kigen Wa Jibun De Toru”
J-pop artist ASOBOiSM’s first new work in nearly a year takes a step back to figure out feelings and let the music play at half speed in the process, while still letting her hop-scotch vocals move forward without any slowdown. An absorbing and intimate number from a creator usually choosing to go for fun rather than reflection. Listen above.
4s4ki And maeshima soshi — “Cho 5 Jigen”
What can I say, I’m a sucker for all things 4s4ki. The real hook here is that this song serves as the opening theme to some goofy-lookin’ drama, but if we live in a society where pop mutations serves as lead in tunes to silly televised stories, we are progressing towards something good. Listen above.
Dhira Bongs And Gotch — “Make Me Fallin In Love Again”
The latest example of surprise pan-Asia collaboration featuring a Japanese artist. Gotch of Asian Kung-fu Generation teams up with Indonesian artist Dhira Bongs on a song from her newest album A Tiny Bit Of Gold In The Dark Ocean. A solid track, albeit one carried by Bongs (and the saxophone, oh my), as Gotch feels a little out of place here — when I think of his main group, I don’t think “sax-assisted sad strolls about missing your baby”). Still, another entry regarding a trend that continues to rumble along. Listen above.
Takashi Fujii — Music Restaurant Royal Host
Family restaurants in Japan hide quality underneath a chintzy exterior. Whether it be the faded Red-Vine-shade color pattern of Gusto (where robot cats now schlep your French fries to you), the stabs at American-ness at Denny’s, or the faux Italiano of Saizeriya, eating at any of these establishments can feel just off. But get past that cheesiness, and you’ll find…great deals, and pretty tasty food, often cheesy in a different way.
J-pop artifact-to-be of the year: this promo video finding Takashi Fujii reciting the history of Royal Host while also talking about the food…all further serving as an album digest.
Call it conceptual perfection, then, that comedian/entertainer/musician Takashi Fujii’s new album, which doubles as an honest-to-goodness tie-up with family restaurant chain Royal Host, captures this dynamic perfectly. This is one of the corniest presentations for an album you’ll ever encounter, even within the no-shame world of J-pop, but my god are the musical highlights here stellar.
Credit Fujii’s knack for working with emerging electronic creators — one of the earliest on the tofubeats’ train at the outset of his major label days — as this one features a killer lineup of producers. Moe Shop lays down electro-boogie goodness, Hidefumi Kenmochi flexes his party-starting skills while sliding in shamisen strokes, Pasocom Music Club deliver a classic speedy dash for him and Night Tempo even offers some throwback funk. This brand exercise generally sounds great, at least as long as Fujii doesn’t get too goofy with his vocals (see the Night Tempo-helmed “We Should Be Dancing,” a fun bounce-house track spoiled by the central singers being a little too eager, especially when dipping into English). Then again, that goofball charm is part of the appeal. Listen above.
Oricon Trail For The Week Of September 12, 2022 To September 18, 2022
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.
King & Prince — “TraceTrace” (500,560 Copies Sold)
Soma Genda is becoming one of those production-note staples in modern J-pop. He’s worked on recent releases from the likes Da-iCE, Kis-My-ft2 and a fair amount of the very solid debut album from girl group iScream, while also working with BoA during her late period and penning one Japanese song for Dreamcatcher. “TraceTrace” stands as his biggest number to date, and also shows off his general approach. He uses electronic touches — here spacious synth notes that end up sputtering as more instruments enter the mix — to bring out extra force from more familiar musical patterns, in this case sturdy funk come the chorus. It’s mostly interesting in spurts, building up to something relatively common (though, the continued entrenchment of rap in Johnny’s song remains an intriguing development), but does enough to stand out from other singles in this group’s catalog. Credit the the guy behind the boards. Listen above.
News And Views
My newsletter, my rules, so let’s start with a long gestating story…I wrote about the flow of pop culture from Japan to China for The Japan Times, looking at both the challenges companies / creators face along with the artistic benefits it provides. Not to spell it out too clearly, but it’s also the most prominent declaration of personal ethos I’ve made yet…primarily, that reducing the cultural output of any country into an “A vs. B” affair is ridiculous (and, frankly, should disqualify you as a serious pop culture writer, go get into economics or something) when the reality in the 2020s is that, in an interconnected world, ideas flow and influence, and few walls actually exist (well, save for government imposed ones).
Anyway, really happy this one came out. Read it here.I also looked at the history of pioneering Tokyo live house OZ — and a new reissue from Temporal Drift aiming to establish its place in rock history — for The Guardian. This is a sequel of sorts to the Les Rallizes Dénudés feature I did for Bandcamp Daily a few months back, but with more interviews and a lot more digging into the history of a truly important space in the capital’s live music history. Read it here.
Talked to Travis Japan about their recent stint on America’s Got Talent for Billboard. Most noteworthy bit is about the importance of stepping outside of their Japan bubble — where they are just showered with praise — in order to receive actual criticism. Read it here.
And last, I talked to Meitei about his new project as Tenka for The Japan Times. Great review of it by Sam Goldner in Pitchfork, too.
Let’s break up all this self promotion with a nod to one of the most obvious crossover events of the century…D4DJ meets NieR:Automata.
Yoshiki announces guest judges for his new talent competition show.
beabadoobee meets Lovely Summer Chan, they geek out over a variety of topics.
Kyary Pamyu Pamyu cancels European / UK tour this fall, with a subsequent tweet implying it’s because of…Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Unless I’m missing some other event on the continent that would call for prayers for peace.
Gamers rejoice
Purely in the views bucket…feel like a bunch of foreign acts have been annoucned to play in Japan over the next few months? Bruno Mars, Kid Cudi, The 9175 (again), sure I’m forgetting some…the borders open up, and the pop stars rush in.
Those dang boomers, making my vintage guitars expensive! Thankfully, inflation is stopping them from snapping up the tubas.
You know you’ve lived in Japan for a long time when the “Vanilla Theme Song” — a vaguely Eurobeat-type song promoting a part-time-job service played out of trucks circling around major urban neighborhoods — doesn’t phase you. That said…no streaming news in Japan this year is as big as said jingle being added to platforms across the board. Experience what it’s like to walk around Shinjuku in the early afternoon below.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies