What is it with the 60s, anyway? I know there was the Summer of Love and all that stuff, but that was more than forty years ago. It's older than me, and I'm old.

As we inch towards the 50th anniversary (yep, that's one half century) of the Beatles' appearing on Ed Sullivan, the moment when (musically, anyway) the 60s well and truly kicked into high gear, there's still a profound fascination with hippies, psychedelic music, pop art, etc. that far surpasses nostalgia for any other time period. I suppose you could blame the demographic bulge of the Baby Boomers, and their neverending appetite for reissues, reassessments, and general nostalgia for a time when people might actually have wanted to see them run naked through a field. Still doesn't explain the fixation the Japanese underground has on the period, though: Group Sounds (i.e. GS) has what amounts to a minor religion going in the clubs and record stores of Tokyoland.

GS wasn't just a Merseybeat rip, though. It quickly flowered into a strong scene that took clear inspiration from the West, but wasted no time in creating its own distinct personality in terms of scene culture (even if seemingly every record from the time period had a Beatles cover.) Enter Salome No Kuchibiru (i.e. Salome's Lips,) a 60s "copy band" if there ever was one. Led by multi instrumentalist Satoshi Mizuno and the unsettlingly flawless vocalist Kyoko Tachibana (seriously, the picture on the band's site doesn't convey…live, she looks like an animated doll,) they're simultaneously pure pastiche and weirdly original, much like GS itself. They even have go go dancers.

恋と愛と恋愛について (Koi To Ai Torenai Ni Tsuite, i.e. About Love, Love, and Love) is the band's second album, and a marked improvement over their still-pretty-good debut "In The Beautiful World." It's not just a matter of honing their skills. Entertaining as it was, "In The Beautiful World" announced itself a little too predictably, telegraphing the band's nostalgic intentions every few seconds, and sticking pretty close to formula.

That's mostly gone, or at least gotten under control: Koi To Ai Torenai Ni Tsuite is only intermittent in its desire to hit you over the head with grooviness, but even these moments gain new heft in contrast with the relaxed, considerably less stylized identity the band has grown into. "雨のひだまり" ("Ame No Hidamari," i.e. "Hidamari's Rain") could be from any time, but it specifically makes me think of what might have happened if David Gedge's Cinerama had been less insecure and more romantic. The bittersweet violins are a glorious touch, adding a grandeur that embraces a powerful melancholy, one which has no specific 60s signifiers at all, but which is nonetheless akin to such beautiful heartbreak as "Walk Away Renee" or "Needles And Pins." "よいそら" ("Yoi Sora," i.e. "Beautiful Sky") is pure 70s AM radio, sitting in the weird little crack between country, easy listening and funk that one hit wonders like the Climax Blues Band made their own.

Those two tracks stand out, but the majority of the album follows in the footsteps of the opening track "黒い太陽" ("Kuroi Taiyou," i.e. "Black Sun,") a velvet blacklight polka dot concoction that practically hammers images of those go go dancers into your skull. Not a bad thing, particularly since it also contains a healthy dose of the dark, almost gothic vitality that the better GS tracks lifted from enka (an aggressively mournful, very very Japanese pop music emotionally akin to tracks like Gene Pitney's "Town Without Pity.")

Those tracks may be where Salome No Kuchibiru live, but departures like "Ame No Hidamari" show where they can go, and probably should go, if they can maintain the dizzying quality of that effort. The band will most likely always have one foot firmly planted in the nostalgic, but Koi To Ai Torenai Tsuite shows their stride can reach very far indeed.

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Available at Amazon Japan