Upbeat!: Seagull Travel’s “Kill Me My Girl”

Sometimes, when dealing with song titles written in Japanese, I sorta ignore what the track is actually called and just give it a play while working on other things (read: updating Tumblr, looking at sports .GIFs). Seagull Travel’s, the project of Kanagawa’s Ryuichi Nakamura, sounded like a lovely bit of upbeat electro-pop when I first took a listen, probably while reading e-mail or something. Guided by burbling synths and Nakamura’s digitally glazed vocals, it is a perky number hinting at a lot of sonic promise from Seagull Travels.

Then I actually looked at (and translated) the song title – “Kill Me My Girl.”

Well, that’s a twist. The happy-music-sad-lyrics trick isn’t novel whatsoever – plenty of Japanese indie outfits this year alone have been using that approach to great success in 2013 alone – but that doesn’t mean it can’t be effective. Seagull Travel makes it work here, because of just how damn giggly it sounds. It really does catch you off guard when he starts singing “please please kill me baby” (which could be sweet too, but murder usually isn’t a cheery subject, even as metaphor!). Listen below.