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Tracklist | |
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01. Fukurou 02. Juice Story 03. Travel Center 04. Light Blue 05. Baby Revolution 06. Straw Bag 07. Future Machine 08. Hippy Junky Surfer 09. Hey Hey You You 10. Church 11. Namikimichi |
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Review | |
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Well as the resident obsessive fan of all things Kenichi Asai, it comes as no real surprise it would be me who chose to review this album. A bit of background if you will; firstly I was a bit late in discovering Sherbets. By the time I first heard them, they had already gone into a period of inactivity with Kenichi busy working on the project that would become Jude. A few years on and several Jude albums later it seemed like Sherbets was nothing but a memory. They had never been particularly well received by the Japanese public due to the more artistic nature of some of the songs and Jude were going from strength to strength; winning new fans in addition to the people who had been following Kenichi's various bands since the start. Then on January 12th 2005, out of the blue came a bombshell: I happened to be browsing the Sexy Stones Records (record label for both Sherbets and Jude) site as I often do and something caught my eye on the news page: A New Sherbets Album, Natural. It even had a track list and a release date set for March 9th, 2005. Though I had dreamed of such an occurrence, it wasn't something I thought I would ever see. So naturally I went around telling everyone in sight this marvellous news and boring anyone who was online at the time to tears with speculation about it. As soon as Amazon put it up for pre-order you had better believe I pre-ordered it. This was like the second coming. The day came, Saturday, April 2nd. I finally got my hands on it. For it to top Vietnam 1964 was always going to be a tall order. Before I get into praising the album too much, I'm going to point out that it's maybe not as accessible as some of the earlier Sherbets albums and it took a few listens for me to really warm up to it. Overall it lacks some of the out and out rock stylings of earlier songs like "High School" (Siberia) in favour of sticking purely to the more dreamy style of songs like "Osama To Kojiki" (Vietnam 1964). In some ways Natural is a very apt title for the album; the first few tracks certainly are like smaller pieces of a whole flowing together in a way that feels, for want of a better word, natural. The whole album has a very relaxed, dreamy quality which you might argue has always been the Sherbets sound but it seems a little somehow different, more mature: the arrangements sound tighter than they did on previous albums and it has a more polished feel to it overall. This is the perfect album to just lie on your bed and listen to on a day when you have nothing to do. It makes you want to close your eyes and just let the music wash over you while you daydream about an idyllic world. In terms of standout tracks; "Travel Center", "Straw Bag" and "Future Machine" are all pretty strong songs, but the highlight of the whole experience is "Light Blue" which is an embodiment of everything Sherbets are; dreamy, uplifting, intricate and strangely haunting. To summarise; if you don't like music that's a bit ethereal and dreamy, this isn't the album for you, there is an absence of harder sounding songs but that doesn't detract from it in the slightest. It may not win Sherbets many new fans but for existing fans it's a reaffirmation of their faith. Give it a chance, listen to it a few times through and it gets under your skin and puts a big old smile on your face. |
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