Ai Kakihira – Ameagari no I Miss You Pt.2 （雨上がりの I Miss You Pt.2)
What a treat that you no longer have to carry bookshelves with you whenever you change homes. Ain’t it great that your music collection can just fit inside your phone? And aren’t you glad that you no longer have to make the trip to exotic music stores in other countries and devise strategic plans about how to best bring those records through airport security?
Everything’s just a bit more convenient if you’re a collector. Everything’s just a bit more available if you’re a music fan waiting to be dazzled by music to which, previously, you wouldn’t have had access. But it involves the greatest responsibility! You can’t be lazy anymore! What it means is that you have to actively search for excellent, exotic sounds through the swamplands of the internet.
Ai Kakihira’s “Ameagari no I Miss You Pt.2” for non-Japanese audiences will sound like a piece of danceable exotica with which you fall in love while flipping through YouTube videos. It’s the kind of music that, in decades prior, you well might’ve never encountered. Ai Kakihira’s sound is a mix of commercial pop and sophisticated dream pop/indie that has created may fans of Japanese music in Western countries. Like some of the best pop songs coming out of Japan in recent decades, its greatest strength is how little effort you need to make to like it.
Club 8 – Nervous At Heart
Other than people in the medical profession, your mother and a very small number of people in a very small number of bands, nobody’s promised to look out for you all the time. Nobody has a duty to make you feel comfortable or to tell you that despite however bad things get, it’ll be alright in the end. The aforementioned ones who do have sworn an oath, and no matter whether they’d prefer taking the day off, they can’t.
That doesn’t mean that you can bother those people, few as they are, with your problems whenever you feel like it. The medical professionals are swamped with patients, and they’ll only take a look at you if there’s a risk you might not pull through. Your mother’s heard it all and probably has better things to do. Realistically, you can only rely on those handful of bands that make music designed to get you through a rough patch.
Sweden’s Club 8’s members have collectively taken the oath and must take it seriously. From one album to another, the band is here to bring a bit more light on problems, to make nestling up against melancholy feel just a little warmer. “Nervous at Heart” may very well be a song about anxiety. But it is delivered with the friendly embrace that only an old friend could. Hold on to the song as a keepsake, and know it’ll answer the call whenever it’s most needed.
