Review Summary: An art-pop gem that sees a growing talent stepping into her strength
Working in a scene and style renowned for its sugary hooks and smouldering nostalgia, Minakekke is something of a dark horse. It isn’t as though Japan has any shortage of independently minded women sticking it out in the art- or indie-pop fields, but you’ll struggle to find anyone quite like her amidst various incarnations of twee (Ayano Kaneko), whimsy (Etsuko Yakushimaru) and pastiche (Kayoko Yoshizawa). Her style is starchier, more focused and less extravagant than many of her peers, and while she is by no means the weaker for it, her talent lies more in the ballpark of hazy atmospheres and creeping tension than in the instant gratification of saccharine melodies and exuberant performance. In fact, on the face of it, her 2017 debut Tingles is as close as you’ll get to a J-Pop transposition of Edgar Allan Poe gloom, a fact that should be taken in full ambivalence given how its haunting fusion of pop, folk and alternative sacrificed much of its ambitious scope to a tendency to get bogged down in repetitious, atmospherically-inclined ideas. Minakekke is a disciplined and economical songwriter, but that album all too often gave the impression that she was set on extracting more from each track than the sum of its parts could viably sustain. For all highlights like
Kids and
Girl Like Ghost were beautifully developed and mesmerisingly paced, tracks like
Marian,
Underground Merry-Go-Round and
Bitter Sweet Memories recycled themselves too extensively for their fragile moods to land as confidently as they might have, and the album didn’t showcase quite enough versatility or development of tone or style to nail down its fifty-minute runtime. All in all, Tingles showed clear potential but clutched onto a somewhat myopic vision far more (and for far longer) than was of benefit to it.
On this basis, the Oblivion EP is a highly encouraging release that sees Minakekke stepping into a more fat-free, dynamic style. From the opening beat and vocalise of
Luminous, there’s a spring in her step that sheds much of the single-mindedness and stagnancy of Tingles, affording a wider creative scope and pluckier sense of performance to her art-pop mission. There’s a dark sense of groove here that holds up though the track’s ebb and flow, but it comes alongside an accessible, palatable quality that sparkles off the edge of bright-toned keyboard punctuations and a riveting bridge that lets the track’s momentum cruise vertiginously over the edge of a clifftop, letting its structure and rhythm fall away as its ongoing sense of suspense is preserved. These qualities are restored before long and the song ends up as an intriguing window of introduction both to the EP and to Minakekke’s broader appeal. Follow-up
Acid is less inviting, dipping its toes into the darkest territory explored on
Tingles but without overstaying its welcome; its fleeting runtime makes it feel more like a warm-up for the more urgent
Young & Shame. This track is a real triumph and shows an excellent development of her craft, dialling up the intensity with fuzzy guitars and a driving march. Minakekke’s vocals have a syrupy, time-stopping quality that can seem languorous and indulgent at worst, but is excellent here in juxtaposition to the relatively gritty tone and tempo that supports the track; there’s something painful and breathtaking about the way she croons over its chorus, and the song as a whole comes off as a thrilling, urgent moment passing in spellbinding slow motion.
On the other hand,
Golden Blue pulls in the opposite direction and lets her voice hang in suspension, framed beautifully by sparse keyboards until the song slowly draws itself together and climaxes in a peal of gracefully distorted guitar leads. It’s an excellent counterpoint to
Young & Shame’s edge-of-your-seat tension and showcases Minakekke’s dual knacks for fragile atmospheres and self-disciplined pacing at their finest. What is perhaps most notable is that neither of these tracks shy away from the dour side of her sound, instead playing with pacing and tempo in their respective ways to bring fresh vitality and suspense into the mix. This approach does the EP a world of wonders; running at under half an hour, each phase of its developing mood feels focused and inspired and, as such, the stakes raised by Minakekke’s measured sense of drama feel both real and pressing.
This razor-sharp sense of engagement is dealt with sagely by the closing title track, the album’s most protracted slow burn. This one initially orbits around one of her trademark ominous vocalises before shifting into a slow instrumental jam that draws one tense motif into a brief, tightly restrained climax before yielding its tension and allowing the EP to fall away. It’s the kind of thing you’d hear from an indie band with a penchant for pace, patience and moroseness (think School Food Punishment, Yo La Tengo or Polyenso), and as much as it strikes an appropriate tone for a closer, the song gives off a strong sense of heralding a further, more expansive presence than its 23 concise minutes alone could amount to. That is to say, it plays out as something of a tease and leaves the lingering sense that Minakekke is far from done with the evolution of her sound exhibited here. This is something of a welcome impression: the Oblivion EP is a succinct and rewarding experience that holds its audience on a knife edge and merits many repeat listens, but I’m not fully convinced that she has yet developed her brand of tension and release to its full potential. The all-consuming focus of her writing and performance lean strongly towards the former, but I suspect there’s more to be extracted from the sublime, exhalation-inducing moments on tracks like
Luminous and
Golden Blue than we have yet been fully exposed to. All to be revealed in time, perhaps; Minakekke has little to prove when it comes to the patience and discipline that underpin her craft, but this EP sees her emerge from the pool of latently talented artists into the category of those actively worth watching.
