Friends Recommends #2: Emotional Balance and Post-Rock Catharsis
Our guest writers here to recommend you great new drops of classic rock, indie rock and emo
By now as we enter our fifth month of the year, 2024 should have given us plenty of great new music. And so the second installment of Friends Recommends formally covers exciting releases from this calendar year, the picks all chosen by our friends here with This Side of Japan. You’ve seen a couple of their names in past issues, and I’m stoked to invite over a new one as well into the fold. I can’t cover everything, so I’m glad they’re here to make up for what I can’t.
Enjoy!
Kanra recommends…
“Uyo” by downt [P-Vine]
SAKANA EP by up-and-coming indie-rock band downt was a release I played on loop constantly by the end of 2022, sneakily becoming one of my favorites that year. And my expectations were through the roof for their followup, Underlight & Aftertime. What I got was a somewhat darker, looser set of songs that continued to both expand and refine the group’s sound. “Uyo” is my favorite of the new pieces for this album, stretching out to exactly 5 minutes but never feeling its length. It starts in a quiet twinkle-emo space, just like “See You Again” on SAKANA, before it explodes, singer Togashi making damn sure that every word she says counts. Had the lumbering 8-minute epic “13gatsu” been left off the actual record, this beautiful and potent bit of post-rock catharsis could’ve made for a very effective album closer. —Kanra
Underlight & Aftertime is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
You can find Kanra on Twitter and Substack.
Leika recommends…
“Lightweight” by Johnnivan [P-Vine]
Waseda University has produced some of the biggest movers and shakers of Japan such as the current prime minister (it’s Fumio Kishida right now, BTW) and world-renowned writer Haruki Murakami. And now the canon would like to welcome the indie-rock band Johnnivan. More important than the group’s background, though, is those of its members, from Japan, South Korea, and notably, its English-singing lead Jonathan Sullivan who identifies with both American and Japanese nationality.
In their interview from 2022 with the Angura YouTube channel, the 5-member band talk about their goals of not just consistently making good music but also improving themselves, with the goal of a 10-album streak in mind, making each better than the last. Now in 2024, as they ramp up to album number 3, Johnnivan lean into classic rock with their new single “Lightweight.” The song embodies a conflict between vibes and thought: you're at a dark house party experiencing unfiltered euphoria when your good friend Sullivan stumbles into the room trapping you along with his anxieties and resists any support uttering, “And tell me not to worry / How am I not to worry” and “I don’t need anything / I think I need the Lord.” Despite being self-aware enough to make note of the symptoms of his unease, he’s stuck and left behind: even as the song reaches its anthemic climax, he can find no resolution. Unfortunately, not even your elite education can save you from such human troubles. —Leika
Listen to it on Spotify/Bandcamp.
Catch Leika out and about in sunny California and on Twitter and Instagram.
Mustafa recommends…
“Konomama” by Layla [Office Augusta]
“I’m just trying to live for tomorrow.”
Layla have been one of the most important personal discoveries I’ve made in recent years, with their music defining so many memories ever since I found them in late 2022. I have so much admiration and respect for Aria and Miura, the duo behind the project, and how they’ve pushed through challenges over the years to continue creating and playing music together, shining as a beacon of everything I believe in artistry and authenticity.
In my eyes, “Konomama” does exactly what Miura described last year as his hopes for the future of Layla: surpass and subvert the expectations of their listeners. The duo excel at pushing emotions into overdrive—it’s one of the things I love most about their music. And the song opens with an electric guitar that sounds as if it’s about to lead into an energetic first verse, only for it to be immediately followed by a drone that sounds just like an amp powering down. Miura’s subtly rough guitars eventually culminate with the gentle, softer notes, uniting to express the song’s themes: that lethargy and compromise of the daily can be something beautiful.
Serious topics of hardship, loneliness and lost connections come to mind when I think of Layla’s music, so it makes “Konomama” all the more unique to me as it instead focuses on facing more on the mundane and trying to identify signs of meaning amidst it all. All of my favourite songs from Layla feature heartfelt or frustrated cries of choruses, but here, I love the way Aria sings carefully and measured through a faint filter that makes it sound like her words are rising up from under water. In the chorus, her voice quivers ever so slightly as if she feels, yet immediately resists, the urge to raise her voice, and her inflection of “kono ma-maaa” masterfully sounds like a tired sigh manifest as speech.
A song like “Konomama” that demonstrates balance instead of overflow lends it a special place in the work of Layla. The duo frame their observations as a self-fulfilling question without need of an answer. Accepting life’s idle moments in the song, instead of contesting it, is a wonderful approach to tackle the universal feeling of stagnation. “Konomama” is a song that only they could express in this precise manner, and yet another achievement in their incomparable discography. —Mustafa
Tsuzuku EP is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
You can find Mustafa on Twitter and Substack. You can also check out his interview with Layla here.
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