I’m not silly enough to think indie-pop music will ever go away completely. As long as there are romantic boys and girls with guitars and access to twee.net (so, a lot of people), this stuff will always be around, all over the world (see the great Fear Of Men album that came out this year). Still, it feels like the Japanese boom in indie-pop that flared up last year should be over now, a new trend replacing the simply-strummed songs that have been a SoundCloud staple over the past 12 months. Thing is, it isn’t going anywhere…more and more of these acts pop up all the time, and longer-running outfits releasing proper albums. It is a big step up for these bands, jumping from the bedroom to the shelves of stores across Japan.
One of our favorites, Tokyo’s reverb-loving Boyish, will release their first proper album on Dead Funny Records on March 27. It’s called Everything You Say (that’s the title art above), and it features a lot of great Boyish songs that have been floating around over the past year like “Cupid,” The Hidden Secrets,” “Waiting In The Summer” and more. It practically plays like a best-of for the young group, a proper collection of their finest work from 2012 put into one place. “Crazy For You” appeared on an EP last year, but on Everything You Say appears in a new recording that sounds a tad crisper than what came last year. That said, the song still captures everything good about Boyish and Japan’s indie-pop scene; lovely, melancholic lyrics, a good bounce and a sense of DIY-ness pervading the whole track (can a voice sound DIY? Because Boyish’s vocals sure do). Listen below, and grab the album when it drops.