Make Believe Melodies Logo

Voice Return: Tenkiame’s So Sad About Us

Azusa Suga has been a busy bee over the last few years. Besides running netlabel Canata Records, he’s been involved in a bunch of musical projects, including our favorite vaporwave-leaning time machine Shortcake Collage Tape. He was also, at one point, the lead singer of For Tracy Hyde, a rock outfit with an indie-pop bend releasing music through Canata. They got more attention, though, and eventually added Lovely Summer Chan as a vocalist — a shrewd move in terms of trying to jump up to the next level.

Suga is still with For Tracy Hyde — and that band is still going, just in a quiet stretch at the moment it appears — but he’s also started a new band called Tenkiame, one where he returns to the role of singer in all his unchained glory. It’s a little bit of a “Classic Coke” deal with For Tracy Hyde, albeit one where Suga and company have edged away from twee trappings in favor of shoegaze (how he has described the band) along with a style of rock favored by bands such as Japan’s Art-School (a group For Tracy Hyde has at times sounded like, though made a bit more clear here). So Sad About Us, fittingly, turns the feedback up a bit, although on songs such as opener “Splash!” Suga’s impassioned singing is coming through clearly, never being submerged by the noise. Things get sludgier in a Dinosaur Jr. way on “Candy,” but Suga ultimately embraces a pop approach to rock where the songs here are always aiming at catchiness, regardless of how distorted they get. Get it here, or listen below.