After a triumphant year that saw her release one of the year’s absolute stunners, May.e has decided to end the year by releasing a second full-length album called Shiseikatsu for free online. It, seemingly, is built in very much the same style as her debut Mattiola. She plays an acoustic guitar and sings. Her voice at times becomes echoey or gets double tracked, her minimal palette of sounds swirling into something larger and more attention-grabbing than you’d expect from the same tools used by horrible coffee shop garbage acts around the world. These are slow-burning numbers, built not on sonic fireworks but the ability to be totally absorbing. Her voice sounds fantastic.
Let’s talk more about that voice.
May.e’s singing has always been the key to her music…the guitar is just a canvas for her voice to spiral off in whatever direction she chooses. That was evident on Mattiola and the many covers she posted online before her debut. Yet…and I speak as someone whose native language is English…the true beauty of what she was doing could be lost because her lyrics were in English. This is because when one can actually make out the words to a song, an element of trying to decipher the meaning of everything…of trying to piece together what the artist is saying and sorting out a meaning. So it was with May.e’s first album, listening carefully through the haze to make out the words and attempt to arrange them into a great narrative (Mattiola is an album about love…that’s as far as I cracked it). It is this effect that allows sites like Songmeanings.net…or, more presently, Rap Genius…to exist at all.
Shiseikatsu is sung entirely in Japanese and…for me at least, I assume Japanese listeners would have the reverse experience with May.e…truly drives home just how staggeringly gorgeous the singing is. I have no idea what’s going on here. I am not fluent in Japanese and do not have the time to sit down and translate the words here. I don’t want to, because they just sound so good and are delivered in a way that sells any emotion better than any dictionary definition could. She controls her singing well, capable of making whispers and shouts sound equally urgent here. Some of the sparser songs…see the skeletal “Time Goes”…highlight this especially well. The reason May.e has created some of 2013’s best music…and this album definitely slingshots up the list…is because she’s an absolute ace at using the human voice as texture.