Few groups in Japan…or anywhere else, really, at a time when pop music is suffocatingly serious (save for hip-hop)…balance humor with longing as well as Kindan No Tasuketsu. “Goodbye My Cinderella (Kindan Ver.)” isn’t the song to use as a jumping off point into a deeper discussion of this, because last year’s “Chasing The Eurobeat”…
The mid point of…pretty much any year means I’m desperately trying to catch up on all the music I’ve fallen behind on hearing from the past six months. 2017 has been particularly backlogged, and I’ve been trying to just go hogwild through my list of “probably check this out” albums. So far, the highlight has…
Osaka-born dream-pop-maker The Neon City shares a lot of demos online, so it’s nice to see her drop one without that word, hinting that this is more solid than the presumed sketches she’s posted before. “Sunset Drive” is a bit of a throwback tune, built around some of the brightest synthesizer notes she’s laid down…
Vaporwave — or things that can easily be tagged as such — is a tricky thing. The bulk of it, especially in the last three years, is disposable, slowed down songs and jingles poorly imitating the artists who were the first to get the genre going. What they are lacking is emotional resonance — a…
Kyoto’s Homecomings have excelled at turning the heartbreaks of daily life into big musical fireworks over their last two albums, and through two major-label releases have subtly expanded on this mid-tempo approach. There’s nothing wrong with an artist choosing to explore consistency over radical artistic swings, and for the most part you know what to…