Review Summary: Much like the conjuction, this album is the end of the first thought, the first incarnation, and the beginning of a new one.
Tricot’s a band that’s really near and dear to my heart. I found them when I was really deep in my depression around the end of 2013 and their music has helped me feel better about things simply through it’s very emotional, cathartic sound. Their debut album "THE" is a very important album to me for this reason. It’s truly special and for my money, it’s right at the height of the indie rock scene in Japan.
Tricot’s always been a band that values their independence. At the forefront, it’s the main 3 girls; Ikkyu (guitar, vox), Motifour (guitar), and Hiromi (bass), and they’re a trio in the purest sense of the word. They work flawlessly together and it’s a huge reason why the band’s sound is so goddamn tight and composed. While Ikkyu is definitely the lead vocalist, all three of them contribute on the vocal side of things and their guitar and bass instrumentation is impeccable. Earlier last year, they even got rid of their drummer, Komaki, to better suit the trio’s dynamics. For drums on AND, they have multiple drummers working, and for live shows, they have a studio drummer playing for them.
The drum performances on this album (one such being BOBO from Miyavi on
E) are really great and they’re particularly standout on tracks like
E and
Kobe Number, but they tend to actually be outshined by the stellar songwriting, guitar work, and vocal performances laid all over the 12 tracks “AND” presents to you, and that’s what should really be emphasized here.
"THE" was a very technical album and it’s blistering speed at times was so, so endearing for first-time listeners. It’s one of the most accessible math rock albums, and probably one of the most accessible non-english albums I can think of. It’s so easy to love that album. "AND" is a completely different, more personal beast. I don’t know what the lyrics on this album say exactly, but just listen to the goddamn tracks. There’s a ton of emotion here. The pained vocal performances on tracks like
Shoko-taku, the sensual tones in
Kobe Number and
Hashire, and the palpable tension on
Kieru say everything you need to know about this album. The girls in Tricot pour everything into these 50 minutes and it doesn't drag for a second.
The songwriting here is also incredibly standout, even when compared to their debut. The influences from bands like
ART-SCHOOL,
Mass of the Fermenting Dregs, and
Number Girl are all over this thing. They’re way more apparent here, but in a way that divides Tricot from a lot of bands. They really craft their own kind of sound and tone here and it makes for an incredibly interesting and stimulating listen. The effect-laden bass part on
E, the outro of
Kieru and the eponymous section on
Kobe Number, really stand out here as particularly great sections that transform songs from "good" to "great". It really seems like that the trio has perfected the art of quickly turning a song on it's head and making the experience of listening always exciting, even when songs could push 5 to 7 minutes.
Tricot also experiments with some other instruments on this thing, making for a very interesting version of
Pai~n, a song that showed up on the
E pre-release single, that incorporates the piano as a main instrument, and the absolutely seamless transition into samba at the end of the unashamed, boisterous
Niwa. The samba part in
Niwa actually works way better than you’d ever expect it to, but the piano in the album version of
Pai~n leaves a little to be desired, especially when the excellent guitar parts tend to drown out the piano that sets this apart from the single version.
The phrase “sophomore slump” obviously doesn’t exist in Tricot’s vocabulary. This is a band that’s really taken an effort to find themselves and find what exactly they want to do with their sound. This is a band that’s taking some risks taking a decidedly darker tone than with their debut, but it works splendidly here. Tricot said they wrote the first single,
Break, as a kind of curtain call for their old selves, making way for a matured, better Tricot. It’s an excellent way to play off the album after all of the growth they’ve shown in the earlier 11 tracks. Tricot has come really far from where they first started in those first couple EP’s and it's obvious here that they’re only just getting started.
