So far in 2019, there have been two prominent J-pop songs about J-pop itself, at least to some degrees. Teenager SASUKE practically gives the industry an entire pep talk with a song going to great lengths to tell you J-pop will never end (raising the stakes significantly with a line about how “Japanese people will…
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart are calling it a day! Whatever SoundCloud rapper playing around with J-pop ideas or weirdo electronic texture lover captures my attention, indie-pop is always going to be foundational for me (can’t shake those teenage years!) and this was a group hitting on that feeling even as adolescence zoomed…
On the one hand — it remains incredible how much Yunovation can pull off with a melodica. The Osaka artist’s calling card is her proficiency with the instrument, and first album Hogaraka Ni shows just how deft she can be with something most people view as a toy foisted on easily distracted pre-schoolers. “Roki Store”…
I’m not sure how many more words I can pull out of my brain to praise “Take Me Out,” the nervous centerpiece of the pureness EP and a huge breakthrough for everyone involved in this song. It’s tough to capture this fizzy moment playing out inside somebody before anything happens in music, especially when a…
Kudo Kamome’s voice can turn even a jaunty tune into something concealing some unease. Her two 2018 releases wowed in how they shifted pop onto its side, taking the experimental energy of Japanese underground communities and seeing how that might sound against more accessible sounds. Almost a year since Apple Sleep, her voice plays a…