Available at Amazon Japan
| Aiha Higurashi - Perfect Days |
| Frank,
open confessions are not typical of Japanese culture in general, and
its music is no exception. Even enka, a traditional and highly
emotional musical form that is possibly the most "Japanese" of pop
forms, uses heightened, theatrical emotion as its bread and butter…but
it's a highly stylized and audience driven expression, more concerned
with getting people together in the name of sentimental unity than with
the vocalist spilling their guts. In this sense, as well as a few others, Aiha Higurashi is an anomaly. When she's in confessional mode (which is most of the time,) she's an exposed nerve, direct and unromantic in ways that are very "un-Japanese." Plenty of artists write love songs, but they usually shoot for universality, a kind of everyman that allows the listener to insert themselves into the scene. Higurashi, especially in her solo career and in her band Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her (just two of her many outlets, along with Ravolta and Loves!) doesn't leave any room for listener projection: she's got far too much on her mind, and she's too intent on getting it across as clearly as possible, both in her music and in interviews. When she sings, she's not just singing about herself, she's singing to someone specific, an approach that has made much of her work almost uncomfortably personal. Perfect Days, her most recent release, takes this tendency to its furthest extremes. Countless artists have made breakup albums, but there's a wider trauma at work here, one that reaches beyond simply missing a lover. "Can people change their minds? / Can I be loved as much as I wish? / Do I need to pray to the stars? / I wish I could have that one true love" she murmurs in "The Sun And Moon," going on to say, in spoken word: "If the people around you have changed, you gotta believe in the one who is closest to you. And you should ask for some help sometime, I bet you'll need it to live and go forward towards your future." Is she talking to her former lover, or herself? The ambiguity hardly matters; music as self therapy is rarely as blunt and unguarded as this. She's always been upfront about her manic depression (another thing that just doesn't happen in Japanese society,) and more than any of her albums, Perfect Days doesn't come across as an outlet so much as a defense mechanism. "Sorry I Am Crazy" doesn't just deliver on the promise of the title, but embodies it, with sparse, obsessively focused lyrics and jittery music. Perfect Days' bright, solo acoustic performances add positive, if wounded vibes to the lyrics, the one exception being the ironically titled "Some Sunny Day." Stark, ghostly tones hover in the background as Higurashi moans "all I want is you" over and over. It's cliché to say that a singer sounds like they're trying not to cry, but here, she literally sounds like it took enormous amounts of self control just to finish the vocal. The gentle trembling in her voice when she sings "All my life sucks, but yours is so beautiful" isn't a pose. In the past, Higurashi's obsession with the fractured, plastic skronk of her beloved NYC New/No Wave added a distancing layer of aggressive cool, an approach that Perfect Days all but ignores. It's her most organic sounding effort to date, all plucked acoustic guitars and warm vocals that would sound right at home playing over the speakers at a coffee house. That simplicity may seem like a given in terms of the singer songwriter approach she takes here, but in the context of Higurashi's musically aggressive career, it's as striking and revealing as her tear streaked makeup on the album's cover. "I try to simplify myself and open the window of my mind, to let people know me. I'm alive, I'm hurt, but I'm OK!" Higurashi said in an interview earlier this year. Perfect Days' atypically smooth sounds aren't just a musical decision, they're necessary, a sugar coating for what sounds like the bitterest pill she's ever had to swallow. |