New Kindan No Tasuketsu: “Goodbye My Cinderella (Kindan Ver.)”

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” served that purpose both visually and musically. “Goodbye My Cinderella” just continues that path, kicking off with a rap section and featuring a video set against all sorts of Tumblr artifacts (it originally emerged in April, but undergoes a slight remake here). But from there, new group member Monico steps up and delivers melancholy singing over neon synthesizer notes, going from something sweet to something urgent as the music increases in pace, like a nervous heartbeat. Whatever goofy marble busts shooting lasers out of their eyes you see in the video, the song delivers a very real feeling. Listen above.