View
My favorite SCLL album since Or, View highlights the band's long, luxuriant stretches of indie pop melodies, guided by the fragile-sounding vocals of Kana Otsubo.
#4. Yuyake Lamp
Uminomori
These are musicians I've been following since 2004 (when they were called Orange Plankton), and they're now friends. So, maybe there's a bias, but I do think their piano pop music stands out. Vocalist Yunn has two gifts: an unmistakable, dazzling high voice, and a talent for weaving memorable musical lines. The piano, bass, drum and flute arrangements are often jazzy. The album title means 'forest in the ocean'.
#3. Soutaisei Riron
Synchroniciteen
'Sanzenman Nen', or 'thirty million years', is my favorite track, with opening lines that go, ' I've been in love from thirty million years ago/I ride a train from Gakugei Daigaku-mae', an example of the eccentric way they arrange their lyrics. Soutaisei Riron's lyrics favor word play and sometimes the settings are science fiction or fantasy, things they share in common with other contemporary bands, whereas bands a decade ago seemed to be more into describing their lives and feelings with straight words. A sweeping generalization, and there are many exceptions, but that's the impression I get. What caused the change?
#2. Serani Poji
Merry Go Round Jailhouse
This is the first album in five years by a unit that started as a virtual girl pop unit led by a Sega musician Tomoko Sasaki playing music for the game 'Roommania #203'. Before, Yukichi of Cecil was Serani Poji's singer; this time, returning to recording, Sasaki herself is the vocalist of pop tunes that are like updates of the best of the 90's Shibuya-kei sound—my favorites are 'Toward the South', about a 7-year-old girl who dreams about running off to a southern island with her lover; 'Robot's Happiness', Kafka's Metamorphosis with a happy ending about a girl who enjoys her new life as an android; and 'Laughing Frog'.
#1. Ego Wrappin'
Naimono Nedari No Dead Heat
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Returning to 2009, there was one album I didn't know about at the time, but has become a favorite of mine, not only for that year but for all time—Bice's Kaerarenai Koi no Tameni ('For Love that Can't Be Changed'). Sadly, the woman who was Bice passed away last year. The poems whisper-sung by Bice (pronounced Bee-che) are about love, life and death—one song is titled 'The Two of Us Will Be Gone In 100 Years'—and the directness of the emotions is something I've rarely encountered. One of these days I'll write more about a masterpiece of a song in this album, called “Ordinary Days”.
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