Poor Vacation went and gave last year’s already-grooveable “Long Goodbye” a warmer-months makeover with this “(Summer Version).” For the season, Poor Vacation adds more electronic touches to the song, giving it an easy-breazy disco vibe that still allows the longing at the center of the original “Long Goodbye” to come through. Now, it just shimmers more after the hook. Listen above.
Osaka indie-pop trio Les Glass Glacé has two new songs online right now that are worth your time if you like delicate-but-bouncy music. “Sixpence Might Change Your Whole World” is the highlight, a bit of twinkly twee hop-scotch featuring keyboards and the lyric “ex-boyfriend couldn’t understand/ sixpence might change your whole world.” It’s gleeful stuff…
Nagoya rockers Soulkids will ring in the new decade by dropping a new single on Jan. 20, titled “アネモネ” (translates to “Anemone,” Japanese class paying off). The band has posted a snippet of the track online, and it’s a nice little guitar-centric track. Not much there, but something to get excited by.
About a month ago, I went out on a Monday night to catch Tokyo indie-pop group BOYISH. One of the acts before them were a duo named Colorado Coronado, a band whose name I had seen before on SoundCloud, but had always filed away as “probably more indie-pop.” The past six months have been so…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrS4etrxb7s&hl=en_US&fs=1&] Two separate articles about 2009’s favorite stoner genre chillwave appeared in the Japanese media this past weekend, all but guaranteeing a new crop of Japan-based artists staying inside and sampling Italian disco records. English publication The Japan Times ran a primer about the genre, featuring interviews with Ducktails and Memory Tapes. It’s a solid…
Roughness helps Evening Cinema stand out from the ever-smoothing Japanese rock crowd. Intentionally or not, the group’s harsh vocals add a sandpapered-edge to twinkling pop full of tight bass lines and sparkly keyboard notes. “Wagamama” shows this isn’t just a demo situation, but rather that the elements just not quite fitting — but coming close…
Remember when the “city pop revival” was the premier wave of nostalgia running through Japanese music? For those who are a little exhausted by what came next — an intense rash of “oh man, the ’90s!” speared by SMAP, Hikaru Utada and the crushing march of time — we have a new three-song set from…