Issue #81: Botanical
Discussing the new Plant cell album, Omega Tribe's big '80s hit with S. Kiyotaka and songs from this season's J-drama shows
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Going to be honest here, my readers, I’m not excited about too many dramas this season. I already had a less-than-usual amount on my Plan to Watch list, and a majority of those failed to fully grab me. Maybe I have to dip into the medical ones in hopes I can add to my week’s TV rotation? If you do have recommendations, please pass it to me. But the upside is a release of fun pop tunes regardless of my feelings on their respective shows, one of them really growing on me as a top favorite of the year.
Here are 5 songs from this season’s drama shows, plus my feelings on each.
“Sayonara Mata Itsuka!” by Kenshi Yonezu [Sony]
…from Tora Ni Tsubasa (Monday through Fridays, 8 a.m.; NHK)
What I’ve learned to love about asadoras is its elaborate telling of life in its totality. Keeping up with 15-minute episodes airing 8 a.m. Monday through Friday for a span of 6 months can surely be a commitment, but this long haul is a feature, not a bug, to the format. You arrive at its last airing week of a 120-something episode run in March or October and really feel how much has transpired in the life of its central character. So when Kenshi Yonezu inquires “will you remember it, 100 years from now,” in the theme song for the latest morning serial, Tora Ni Tsubasa, his lyrics seems to echo this big-picture perspective inherent in these shows.
Perhaps like many of us, Yonezu apparently went in with this idea of asadora themes being gentle, ballad-like music. These songs had to accompany an early-morning viewing, after all—nothing too loud and busy like, say, his twitchy rock number with millennium parade—while pleasing a whole range of audiences across the country as the program aired on NHK. Yet after getting a glimpse of the show’s main character, he was convinced he had to up the tempo a notch to properly suit her headstrong attitude. Sairi Ito plays Torako, a college girl learning law during the early Showa era when women faced much inequality in society. Yonezu’s song had to carry itself just as bright and confident.
What the singer-songwriter ends up with in “Sayonara Mata Itsuka!” is a breezy song that doesn’t so much roll with the punches than it just simply goes with the flow. For how grand its perspective which encompasses a literal century, the lyrics sees him gaze into a seemingly endless road with disarming ease. He sums up a good chunk of life as thus: “Fall in love with someone / get broken again / and soon off in our ways.” And hawking a blood-filled loogie at the sky in between. The overall shrugging tone in response, if not the song’s easy-going piano soul, reminds me of Fujii Kaze and his similar “keep on carry on” attitude towards life’s complexities. “The hell do I know,” is Yonezu’s own answer after wondering if anyone will remember anything 100 years from now. So, he posits, what is there to lose?
Listen to it on Spotify.
“Roller Coaster” by SIRUP, SUMIN & A.G.O. [Suppage]
…from RoOT (Tuesdays, 12 a.m.; TV Tokyo)
As a K-pop fan, it was a delight to see SUMIN be part of a tie-up song for a drama. “Roller Coaster” reunites the singer-songwriter with SIRUP for a dusky R&B cut that sets the mood for an incognito, late-night affair—a vibe much fitting its attached crime-mystery series, RoOT. Those who’ve enjoyed the 2021 hit anime ODDTAXI should find the story familiar with the show based on its spinoff manga Root of ODDTAXI, where it follows a pair of detectives pursuing the missing-person case central to the main anime. It’s a chic buddy-cop series tied through the dynamic between that duo: Ryota Bando as the clumsy, know-it-all newbie Sato offsets the stony cool of Yuumi Kawai’s Rena with needed humor. And especially for those already familiar with its background story, it helps the presentation is stylish from its cinematic direction and, of course, choice in music.
Listen to it on Spotify.
Album of the Week
Botanical by plant cell [self-released]
*Recommended track: “Speed Games at Daytona Beach” | Listen to it on Spotify/Bandcamp
Plant cell have always crafted the most evocative scenery through their dazzling dream-pop. But gorgeous as they stood in their color and shine, the epic monuments in the previous record, 2021’s Natural Reserve, often remained static. In Botanical, a renewed exuberance pumps through their songs like a rush of blood to the head. Shoegaze guitars jangle with glee in “Summer on Route 134,” and race car engines rev across the stereo field of “Speed Games at Daytona Beach” to really capture the zooming feeling. The band’s latest album teems with activity as if to signal that the new season has finally arrived.
Plant cell approach their “flowergaze” in a conceptual manner reminiscent to post-rock acts whose towering music are practically engineered to function in sync with the moving image. The lyrics, sung by vocalist Erikoro in a vaporous sigh, are often ambiguous, sparking enough of an image or feeling without intruding too much on the atmosphere. As the band exercise their cinematic eye with materials learned from Ride’s school of shoegaze — a tidal wash of reverb colliding with lush chamber flourishes as in the epochal “Vapour Trail”—Botanical recall for me the work of For Tracy Hyde and their dream pop seemingly designed with an imaginary blockbuster film in mind.
Image-driven as their music can be, though, a constant sense of propulsion flows in Botanical. A set of blustering riffs drive guitar tunes like “In the Sky” and “Speed Games at Daytona Beach” that tap into the awesome energy behind their respective titles. If the prettiness on the surface suggests a band averse to noise or tension, the latter song in particular presents an act down to get a little reckless to fulfill their hunger for thrill: “I don’t mind danger,” Erikoro sings the most personal lyric out of the whole album, further laying a brazen feel to the daredevil track.
The mellower titles, too, inspire this sense of wide-eyed fascination. Breezy string arrangements in songs like “Botanical Shower” or “Princess of Wales Roses” course through like a goosebumps-inducing rush as if to accompany the band’s own discovery of an otherworldly sight. These songs might stick closer to the dream-pop script: sighed lyrics, fuzzy guitars, orchestral embellishments riding a drifting tempo. But even at their most restrained, Plant cell are charged with a buzzing enthusiasm. If the band describes their music as being “like a landscape painting,” Botanical captures with excitement a life in motion.
Singles Club
“Boss Bitch (Remix)” by 7 ft. LANA & Elle Teresa [101]
7 (as in nana) didn’t color too far outside the lines in the original “Boss Bitch.” So imagine this rap nerd’s surprise from hearing the rapper really feel out the Memphis-rap vibe in the gothic fight music orchestrated by beat makers ZOT on the WAVE and Homunculu$ and put down one clean go at the Project Pat flow. To further hype up her title track, she also invites names who you hope she would’ve had called up with such a title. While NANA revs up the tough track with a snarling verse, Elle Teresa sounds right at home in this Dirty South beat—a few bass-music-ready hooks, and she’d turn this closer to a Sexyy Red track. An appearance from her friends and a fresh new verse of her own revamp 7’s album track into an anthem.
7 (Boss Bitch Edition) is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “WE WANT!!” by LANA ft. 7; “HYAKKIYAKO” by Tokyo Young Vision ft. Hideyoshi, SALU, Asiff, OSAMI & Big Mike
“One Step Closer” by Mameyudofu ft. Aitsuki Nakuru [MEGAREX]
The spectacle in “One Step Closer” lies in the starry electro-pop flourishes as the production works its way onto the wide-eyed chorus. Mameyudofu refrains from deploying too noisy a beat drop—those would score the following collab between the producer and featured vocalist Aitsuki Nakuru—though the single isn’t without some beat magic: my favorite is that chiptune-like breakdown during the bridge before it gears back to deliver its final big bang. “One step closer to dreams,” Nakuru sings in the chorus. “One step cloer to you.” And Mameyudofu’s EDM-pop production is all about evoking those romantic destinations that lie somewhere beyond reality.
Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “Buffer” by Empty Old City; “Jubilee” by Suisei Hoshimachi & Kaede Takagaki (CV: Saori Hayami)
“Hikari” by Still Dreams [Be Here Now]
Elsewhere on the effervescent Hikari EP, Still Dreams flex more of their production muscles—house drum breaks here, warped synth wiggles there. But I keep returning to the more low-key disco of the title track. For “Hikari,” the synth-pop duo locate a sweet middle point between nu-new-wave band and beat machine, fluid in their modest groove yet still dazzling with the flourishes. As vocalist Maaya wonders aloud, the cooled, sighing synths add an even deeper sense of ellipsis into her words. The song responds in kind as she starts to gain clarity, with the beat entering its flashy breakdown. Though, in “Hikari,” moments like these are brief.
Hikari EP is out now. Listen to it on Spotify/Bandcamp.
See also: “Ami” by AIR-CON BOOM BOOM ONESAN; “PLAY BOY” by MILK TALK
This Week in 1985…
This section is usually dedicated to the Oricon number ones throughout the chart’s history, but for this issue, I’ll write about a hit that did not make it to the very top.
“Futari No Natsu Monogatari Never Ending Summer” by S. Kiyotaka & Omega Tribe [VAP, 1985]
Highest position at #5 during the week of May 13, 1985 | Listen to it on Spotify/YouTube
Omega Tribe made summer their entire personality through their jazzy, hi-fi R&B music. Gleaming synths radiated heat waves in their songs as a saxophone sighed in the distance like a tropical mirage; then entered the crystal-clear voice of the band’s original vocalist Kiyotaka Sugiyama. Their full-lengths practically stood as concept albums fantasizing escapades in otherworldly vacation destinations— Aqua City, River’s Island. So when the band got a call from Japan Airlines for their travel commercial in 1985 after three albums, it was a surprise that it didn’t happen much sooner.
For that single, Omega Tribe struck upon a title that could describe anything else the band had done, and would end up writing in the future after their split: “Futari No Natsu No Monogatari Never Ending Summer,” or “The Tale of Our Never Ending Summer.” Similar to the characters in their past singles, its protagonist cherishes a one-night encounter unraveling in a dreamy scenery. Sugiyama narrates the events so tenderly, his delivery almost smooths over the steamy details. I recently made the mistake of cuing this up on karaoke not knowing most of the lyrics, having to prudishly work through flowery innuendos like “I stored my goodbyes in my chest / and held you like it was our last.”
As a magic-hour lighting casts upon the production of “Natsu Monogatari,” the reflective surface of its synths refracts more the melancholic glow of a sunset. The title dreams about forever yet its central romance hinges on the notion that their time together is nearing its end. An unspoken sadness deeply shades the intimate lyrics: “At the silver beach / holding your wet skin / and I return your tears into the sea,” the frontman sings in the chorus. But his grief is hidden from plain sight, the warmth of his voice letting the titular lyrics ring with a sense of bliss rather than a farewell. His words hit even more poignant as the blues bleed from such beatific music.
“Natsu Monogatari” shows the cracks in Omega Triba’s image of paradise, tapping into the unspoken-about truth about the bittersweet beauty behind a getaway: that every vacation must inevitably end, no matter how savory the experience. The message, though, comes off particularly ironic knowing in hindsight that the band was also about to dissolve as if to make good on the finite nature of their central themes.
“From the time of our debut, we were put together as a part of a team behind the project of S. Kiyotaka and Omega Tribe, where a producer built its sound and world through other lyricists and composers,” Kiyotaka said to local-events website DUKE in 2019. “We had to take it serious because we didn’t make the songs. We felt this duty to sell the songs well because they were given to us from other people. And I think it all ended in 3 years from us being burned out from that feeling of responsibility.”
Given how curated their sound is, and how concept-driven their records are, it’s not as surprising to see the music of Omega Tribe as being born from a producer’s mood board. But on a more symbolic note, the heavy presence of a studio producer’s hand validates the feel of their music that always for me resembled something out of this reality—not unreal nor artificial per se, just a little too good to be true. It emphasizes this subconscious understanding that whatever takes place within the world of the song is something not even Kiyotaka as the main character ultimately can keep with him as he must return to where he came from. “Natsu Monogatari” lets him cherish what he found, but like what would become of his band, he has to snap awake from his dream eventually.
You can listen to all of the songs covered so far in this section in this playlist here.
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