About three weeks ago, three piece rock band from Osaka, TETORA, released a new video for their song 「抱きしめてるもの」, which roughly translates to, “What I hold onto”. The lyrics seem to be about appreciating the good and bad, and how, even though the speaker ‘holds onto it’, it doesn’t necessarily mean that those experiences are positive. Rather, it’s about being with the people (or person) that matter. At least, that’s what I understand from the repeating lyric, “I don’t need anything other than us.”
The theme of relationships runs throughout most, if not all of TETORA’s songs. What makes them unique, however, is how they magnify small moments like doing dishes, walking together, or going to the laundromat to tell their story. Using these images to call up a variety of scenes, they encourage the listener to put themselves in that situation to move through the song together. Paired with Hayune’s husky cries, it’s easy to feel how these seemingly small things mean so much more.
For instance, in「ずるい人」or “Sly person”, the images of the empty park and bedroom make the heartache of the song that much more poignant, showing how someone had been there, but isn’t anymore.
Their simplicity in terms of their songwriting and videos is honestly my favorite thing about this band. Even their album art for ‘me me‘, their most recent album, show pictures of things like an ear, toes, a bedroom, and plants. It seems that they really want us to hone in on the things we often take for granted, reflecting on both the beautiful and painful.
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