Issue #78: Finger Runs
Highlighting the new Finger Runs album, JUDY AND MARY's "Sobakasu, and the songs heard in this season's J-dramas
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Look, I did not foresee myself writing about a song by Rina Sawayama from few years ago to start off this column either, but I really did not expect “Chosen Family” to be dropped in my favorite TV drama from this winter season, Tsukuritai Onna To Tabetai Onna (or She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat).
The show was far from subtle with it. Airing Monday to Thursday, the 15-minute episodes during the second week mostly focused on Kasuga (Emi Nishino) and her father, who’s been insistently calling her, pressuring her to go back home to take care of her ill grandmother. On the week’s final episode she finally spoke up to him about not ever returning home, hanging up the phone but not before he accused her of abandoning her family. After all this, she turns on the car radio, where a DJ introduces a song for those who hope to find a place that will accept them for who they are. And out comes Sawayama’s voice emerging from warbling synths that sound like an incoming signal from a distant star—I immediately knew what the song was before it went into its titular chorus.
“Chosen Family” by Rina Sawayama [Dirty Hit, 2020]
My initial surprise came from Tsuku Tabe choosing to play such a current pop song since the show doesn’t necessarily go out of its way to establish any particular taste for music or art. Adapted from the manga of the same name, the NHK drama follows office temp Nomoto (Higa Minami) befriending her neighbor Kasuga by making dishes and eating meals together but soon develops feelings for her as more than just friends. For the scene with “Chosen Family,” I thought the radio DJ would play an older J-pop song of a slight AOR flavor, like Tomoyo Harada’s “ping-pong” that aired on the previous season—not the kind of music by an international pop star with her clout minted also by the stans on the internet.
And I definitely did not think the show would use a song that plays so literally to the situation hand, especially when last season’s insert of Harada’s “ping-pong” was memorable in part from how it cued up the music so smoothly. Featuring specifically the duet version with Asako Toki, the song played, again, from Kasuga’s car radio as her and Nomoto went on their first drive together. “This is a great song, isn’t it,” the latter character asks the former as you hear Harada and Toki lovingly sing about playing ping pong against each other over a jubilant string arrangement. As the music in that moment subtly touches on the unspoken attraction between the two in the car, I can’t now hear the duet as anything other than a sapphic song.
The queer themes of “Chosen Family” should not be lost from Tsuku Tabe. After all, the show follows Nomoto exploring her sexuality and identity as a lesbian. That said, for that scene with Kasuga, Sawayama’s song, and its titular chorus in particular, seemed to apply for something broader as it responded to family matters relating outside of queer identity. The needle-drop simultaneously felt too straightforward yet too ambiguous, its gesture too clear in its intent yet answering only vaguely to the conflict at hand. It’s maybe something less to blame on the show than the song, which also suffers from its own grandiosity, making its purpose known too well.
Because for how painfully earnest the song itself, the syncing in the drama still feels well-intended as it does honest to the personality of Tsuku Tabe. The show remains wholesome through and through as it discusses complicated topics like dysfunctional families, heteronormativity and eating disorders with an open mind. Nomoto supports Kasuga with sincere love, too, when the latter confides in her about what’s going on with her family. While she cries from slight embarrassment of being oblivious to Kasuga’s problems, she doesn’t hold back as she tells her how much she cares about her neighbor, until she almost confesses her love to her. That moment will come the next week, but that night, they leave it right there before they resume dinner.
***
And here are 3 more songs from this season’s Japanese dramas.
“Takaramono” by Aina the End [Avex Trax]
…from Sayonara Maestro ~Chichi To Watashi No Appassionato~ (Sundays, 9 p.m.; TBS)
In a funny turn of events, Hidetoshi Nishijima went from playing the boyfriend whose livelihood involved heading to the supermarket after work so he can cook for him and his partner to the dad who can’t make eggs for his children to save his life. Starring in Sayonara Maestro: Chichi To Watashi No Appassionato, he’s now conductor Shunpei Natsume, who’s returned to Japan to look after his kids who he’s been disconnected from since an incident 5 years prior. But while he struggles to win back his love from daughter Hibiki (Mana Ashida), he at least convinced me on this Aina the End song.
The production for Sayonara Maestro’s title track has barely a hint of rock music. If there’s a presence of a band, it’s in the vein of the string-laden processions you’d hear in the more wedding-friendly singles of, say, Ryokuoushoku Shakai. But to be fair, a prog-metal arrangement from Ling Tosite Sigure’s TK also would have no business in the world of a cozy Sunday-night family drama. If anything, Aina being the singer for this sentimental song is the thing that makes it work. The lyrics showing appreciation sounds that much of a relief coming from a voice that often sings about more tortured emotions with a spiked intensity. She can peacefully lean on the fluff of the arrangement as she rests in the love of her significant other.
Listen to it on Spotify.
Pardon the delay. I had to unexpectedly go into work on the free day I had scheduled myself to knock out the writing for the Album of the Week, which was the day before the original publishing date of this issue. This is what happens when you let work sit down to the wire, I suppose. But hopefully a day late isn’t too late for you all. At the very least, the issue is now all complete with no missing sections, so you get an idol album, a look back on one of my favorite anime songs (though I hardly associate it as an anime song nowdays), and three new singles for you.
Happy listening!
Album of the Week
Finger Runs by Finger Runs [Lonesome]
*Recommended track: “SPICE” | Listen to it on Spotify
On their first-ever interview since the idol group’s formation in late 2022, the members of Finger Runs sounded excited to claim first on their chosen concept of “big beat idols.” “It’s a genre of electronic music, and there was no other group doing this when I looked it up, so we are the pioneers!,” the quintet’s Yui Ogasawara said to online magazine StoryWriter. For a taste of the ’90s dance subgenre, the five was apparently shown the music of Fatboy Slim by the group’s producer Koji Tanaka. And out of big beat’s famous names, Norman Cook and his boisterous rock-by-way-of-house checks out as a fine reference point for Finger Runs after hearing the group’s peppy anthems in their self-titled debut.
Out of the AqbiRec camp, Finger Runs is also the most fit group to adopt the sounds spun in a track like “The Rockafeller Skank.” While the group’s foundation lie more with punk than R&B and soul, the start-stop stutter of the guitar riff driving “Check It Nova” blurs the line between post-punk jitters and cut-and-sample choppiness, especially as it zigzags along an equally-swift drum ’n’ bass break. As essential as the production’s dance-minded incorporation of rock music is the idols’ endearing embrace of hip-hop. Whereas Cook borrowed the cool of Lord Finesse, Finger Runs establish their cool themselves through their own take on the hip-hop dance group, shown best in their chorus. “I’m just a lonely girl, lonely girl / I wanted to be chased rather than chase,” they sing before they pepper it with their titular, rapper-like hook: “Shake it out, shake it out, check it!”
The raw punk riffs and rowdy hooks like the one in “Check It Nova” reinforce a scrappy kind of charm in the idols of Finger Runs. That said, though they come from the lineage of Bellring Shojo Heart, who has held a notorious reputation as a group who could neither sing nor dance, Finger Runs have upheld a respectable amount of professionalism in their performances. If the alt-idol mold of the 2010s defined in part by BellHeart centered on treating amateurism as virtue, a past B-side like sleek electro-pop “Bluelight Knight” followed a refined ethos that straightens out any inherent roughness in the track. Finger Runs is surely less polished than major-label dance-pop groups, but they’re also not shooting their shot completely in the dark in hopes that something sticks.
What sets the group’s self-titled debut apart from their couple runs of singles is a much looser approach to concept as well as character. Finger Runs arrived sharply defined with “Escape!!,” but after hearing the self-titled, following that airtight execution of rave and trance could have costed them an opportunity for levity in the long run. While the reference points are similar on this album, the dance styles here allow for more silliness — a great respite from the deep seriousness of psych-trance-concept sister group MIGMA SHELTER. Take B-boy jam “NY? NY?” that sounds like the idols’ spy mission theme, or siren-blaring rave of “ZecchoVENUS” which might be the escape sequence thereafter. The explosions in the background seem hard to ignore and yet the idols hit the cadences on point in their verses, unfazed from the commotion.
“I just want to live however I want,” goes my favorite hook from the self-titled album, doubling as a kind of mantra for the record as it appears on the first proper track. From the sound of the goofy slap bass of “Asso,” the synth squiggle of “G” to the bombastic drum breaks of “Red Sprite,” the preferred lifestyle of Finger Runs as heard on the album seems to be the one that favors more of the obnoxious than the clean-cut. “Our choreographer Nancy and director Tanaka say we are a group who do things that are not-quite-cool but does them seriously,” Ogasawara said. “But because we take it seriously, it becomes cool.” The determination for loose fun is undeniable in Finger Runs, establishing a singular personality for the group in the process.
Singles Club
“Savior” by AAAMYYY [Warner Music Japan]
Coming after an album filled with mentions of prayers and reincarnation, I can’t help but hear the lyrics in AAAMYYY’s new single with a slight religious bent. “You are always there for me / my savior,” she sings in the titular chorus. But while her verses seemingly channel gospel when they stand on their own, the overall song hardly feels rhapsodic. “Savior” sees the singer instead hand her token of appreciation with an unassuming casualness, thanks to a breezy R&B production that glides along with a slink and sleekness reminiscent of UK garage, all without the actual skipping drums. Her delivery is passionate yet remains deceptively smooth.
Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “Planet” by Ako; “Maximizer” by Mashinomi
“Whale” by downt [P-Vine]
Downt’s frontwoman Yui Togashi tries her best to keep cool in “Whale,” the first offering from her indie-rock band’s upcoming new album, Underlight & Aftertime. She attempts to compartmentalize about a dozen conflicting emotions. First, she’s got to get over denial, then a yearning to fill this deep void before she ultimately settles into resentment at whoever left her with this aching emptiness. “Where are you / after leaving behind this hesitant city,” she sings the final lyrics, her once-dejected vocals now raised into a full scream out of frustration. But as the heartbreak slowly unravels underneath, the unwavering music offers hardly any sympathy, the downcast emo riffs chugging along like it’s all just another day in the life.
Underlight & Aftertime is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “kadode” by Layla; “Somatsu” by TIDAL CLUB
“skyskysky” by Peterparker69 x Tennyson [self-released]
Peterparker69’s last ode to escaping this dull world came with a rock-and-slide dance move fit to accompany the unbothered vibes flowing in the duo’s hippie synth-pop. In “skyskysky,” Jeter and Y ohtrixpointnever now peace out to boredom as hyperpop cowboys, giddying up on a galloping glitch-pop beat. While the hiccuping production burps out fuzzy, atomized sounds—the scrambled textures rubbing off perhaps from phritz being in the mix—the duo rides along without a care until they fully lose sense of why they even go into this mess to begin with. “There was something, something I wanted to tell you / But I don’t know what I wanna say now,” goes a refrain. The fast life must be good if they get this lost in it; they no doubt make it sound freeing.
Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “489” by HAKU; “everyday” by tarozan
This Week in 1996…
“Sobakasu” by JUDY AND MARY [Epic, 1996]
No. 1 during the week of March 4, 1996 | Listen to it on YouTube/Spotify
JUDY AND MARY only had been given three days to write “Sobakasu” for a then-new anime series. But as if that wasn’t enough of a problem, the band had no information on the show they were writing the song for. Out of hints, Frontwoman YUKI looked to shojo manga for inspiration, writing lyrics about a misfit girl hopelessly in love. “The thorns stuck to my chest won’t go away / but the froggies and the bunnies laugh along with me,” she sings a pair of whimsical lines at one point. I might not be one to talk since I did not watch the respective show even as research for this column (but rather out of principle), but it’d take me a dozen tries to correctly guess what she wrote here corresponds to the swordsman’s tale of Rurouni Kenshin.
Adapted from one of the biggest ’90s mangas, the anime Rurouni Kenshin eventually took off both domestically and internationally. The show no doubt helped give JUDY AND MARY their most successful single as well as their sole claim to number one on Oricon. If the anime didn’t already overshadow the actual contents of “Sobakasu,” the band themselves make it easy to gloss over the fine details of the song.
Lyrics can seem like tedious things when your band has a singer like YUKI, whose wrecking ball of a voice says plenty enough by itself. The way she just devours the delightful top line in the hollered chorus of “Sobakasu” had been stuck in my memory since I was a child, yet it’s only recently that I’ve really internalized what she’s singing about. “It’s actually a sad night / I wonder why? / I can’t even remember his smile,” she sings. A wistful scene like this comes as rather a surprise when heard from a voice like YUKI’s that’s more suited as a vehicle to express sheer thrill and excitement.
Not that the band’s jagged riffs suggests any more sorrow than YUKI. It’d be impressive if anyone can detect melancholy from the intro guitar solo that not so much greets you than it belligerently stumbles into the track. And the rhythm section continues to bang out a gleeful beat that portrays more a mind skipping from the thought of love. The song’s glam-inflected, sweet-toothed punk isn’t so different from the band’s other ramshackle tunes riding the highs of infatuation, like “Over Drive,” what was then their most commercially successful single. But in reality, the spiky music reveals a less innocent romance where things don’t quite align as they should.
Perhaps the emotional disconnect is a product of a rushed job. JUDY AND MARY wrote what they could in the brief time they had and the scant amount of the source material in which to base the song. If anything remains faithful in the finished record, it’s maybe that feeling of being thrown around, whether from the circumstances surrounding the band during the actual recording or the heartbreak written in the song that leaves its character with a bitter aftertaste. Regardless of the content of its lyrics, what’s undeniable about the song’s bellowed chorus is its cathartic power. While YUKI is busy working through something in “Sobakasu” that the singer herself can’t even put a finger on, her voice tells more than enough.
You can listen to all of the songs covered so far in this section in this playlist here.
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