“In The Sun” falls somewhere between the pleasant shoe-staring of “I Don’t Know” and the holy fire that was “Someday.” Berserker Children Club here embrace loud guitars and vocals that blur into the noise around it on “In The Sun,” resulting in a strong shoegaze song with a pop center. It is a marked improvement…
Rare are the times when you stumble across a SoundCloud or Bandcamp page unironically tagging itself as J-Pop. Even rarer…finding an earnest stab at the outright poppy through these sites that isn’t terrible. There are certainly exceptions – everything on Maltine that goes by that, mostly – but try spending some time with that tag….
There are a handful of bands in Japan right now that have been hyped up in the last few years that are capable of good music but seem jussssssssssst short of being something really special. andymori was close, but chose the easy money rehashing indie-pop 101. Kinoco Hotel has the look and live show, but…
The first three songs on For Tracy Hyde’s All About Ivy are lovely indie-pop numbers. They continue the sound the group has been mostly working with over the past year, guitar-pop topped off by vocals sung in Japanese. There are individual elements in each song that jump out as especially impressive – the drumming in…
It’s bare – just a voice and some guitar. But, like may.e throughout this year, the duo Ropes manage to draw out a lot of power from this minimalist set-up. Whereas may.e turns simplicity into sonic ecstasy, Ropes deal in a sort of loving chilliness that is like a whisper to the ear. The main…