that foreign music blog🌎

Hey y’all~  Happy new year! I’ve been in something of a slump these past few months and amusing myself with videogame walk-throughs rather than exploring music, as even my trips to Tower Records have almost completely stopped. There were a few incidents when I was prompted to go buy a CD or two, but I haven’t actively been listening to anything. It lends a sort of an empty feeling for someone who surrounds themselves with music; suddenly nothing sparks that inspiration to rush to buy concert tickets or binge watch music videos. Then, as if in desperation, my brain brought up dusty memories of indie band: go!go!vanillas.

I’ve mentioned them before in a post—maybe two years ago. I hadn’t been so impressed by them at the time, but because my friends ended up really liking them, I kept going back to their videos with hopes of their sound at last growing on me. And then it finally did. You could say that they hit me quite hard, too. I recently found their albums on Spotify and I’ve been listening to them nonstop–like every song!

go!go!vanillas is a band that has talent, but I suppose my interest in them really was all a matter of timing. Whether it be that I wasn’t in the right mindset, or I wasn’t listening to the right songs, there was something that prevented me from discovering just how good these guys are. Although, now that I know more about them, I find it strange that I’d held such an aversion to them; they’re not only friendly with a bunch of bands that I love (04 Limited Sazabys, The Oral Cigarettes, KEYTALK, sumika), but the lead singer’s acclaimed guitar-hero is Albert Hammond Jr. from The Strokes. With all that put together, you’d think they’d easily rise to be my favorite band. However, for a long time, I’d really only been able to stomach a few songs.

One of those songs was ‘MAGIC‘, off their 2014, “Magic Number”, which features their hit ‘Ema‘. Even now this is a song I often have on repeat. I’ve probably mentioned it before, but I really appreciate the Irish melodics, as it’s not something I often hear in Japanese rock, and it really brings out the band’s strong Western influences. Then, following the same vein, I fell in love with “Ohayou Culture“. The more I played back these same two videos, the number of go!go!vanillas videos in my recommendations grew until I discovered something fairly new. I was drawn in by the dark thumbnail and the moment I hit the play button, that wall between myself and my love for the band was completely shattered. I was reeled in for the long haul. A FAN.

The video was ‘No. 999‘. It’s a fun, fast-paced melody with a hilarious video that gives you a bit of insight into their playful personalities. After that, it was like I was inadvertently playing catch up. I went hiking just last weekend and challenged myself to go through all their albums for the entirety of the trip, testing the band’s ability to keep me energized. Honestly, even when I wanted to change the artist to something a bit faster, I tried to appreciate each song that played until I was skipping along the dirt and lip-syncing the words I could catch.

Hiking with an artist is kind of ritual I do when I find a band that I want to explore. It gives me a chance to fully immerse myself in the music, absent of modern distractions. While the journey isn’t always as expected, as I may come to find that I don’t like the artist as much as I thought I would, it’s always something I look forward to and was happy to able to do for the first time in a while. It also resulted in me riding the train back home with their album ‘Fools’ on repeat.

go!go!vanillas is a band whose sound hasn’t really changed during their four or five years of being active. They’ve actually refined their sound, adding elements of funk and revival rock, or trying softer melodies with piano. I was impressed by how well the band had managed to keep to their roots, but if you watch their videos, you get a sense of just how genuine each member is.  It’s extremely refreshing to see, even after gaining a bit of fame, four grown men being silly on camera.

And, since we’re talking about WHO they are, I’ll just go ahead and introduce them. It took a while for me to figure out their names because I wasn’t familiar with the kanji and…I couldn’t find any romanized versions…UNTIL I FOUND THEM ON TWITTER….WHICH WAS EMBARRASSING, BUT HEY.

From left to right, we have: Jett Seiya (drums), Tatsuya Maki (Vox/guitar), Keisuke ‘Pretty’ Hasegawa (bass), Shintaro Yanagisawa (Vox/lead guitar). Shintaro actually has some songs he’s written himself, which is something else I appreciate about this band. They really have two vocalists and two very strong guitarists. The musicianship between all four of them is quite good, though, and “Counteraction” off their album, “Kameleon Lights” is a good example of this. It’s actually one of my favorite songs, but with how much I’ve been jamming to their music these past few weeks, it’s been difficult to cherry-pick only a few.

I’m happy to start this new year with a new band I can obsess over, though, even if it’s just for a hot minute. It absolutely sucks to go through those inevitable periods of music feeling stale, and I can only hope that this tingling excitement can last until their concert in April.