Review Summary: A crossroads between identities forms a wonderful album
I’m sure plenty of anime or J-Pop fans have run into the name Kenshi Yonezu at one point or another. Did you hear him when he did the second intro for
My Hero Academia? Ooh, or maybe the
Chainsaw Man opening? That one slaps pretty hard! And where were you when his song Lemon absolutely dominated the J-Pop side of the internet? Needless to say, Yonezu’s pretty damn popular in the J-Pop world. Like, perform in Fortnite levels of popular. But for those of us who are familiar with his history, you may know Yonezu by a different name: Hachi.
See, long before Kenshi Yonezu’s meteoric rise to J-Pop fame, he was producing Vocaloid songs, releasing them independently, and dazzling all fans of synthetic vocals with off-kilter (in a good way) sounding rock tracks like “Matryoshka”, “Panda Hero”, and “Close and Open, Demons and the Dead”, all of which had the benefit of being amazing rock songs with just the right bit of quirkiness to set them apart from the pack. It’s a persona that, aside from 2 return singles in 2015 and 2017, Yonezu has largely abandoned. So, why bring it up in the first place?
I bring it up, dear reader, because Yonezu’s first album under his own name,
Diorama, is a Hachi album in all except artist name and vocals. Seriously, replace all the vocals with that of Hatsune Miku or GUMI, and you’ve got a work that’s pretty damn similar to Hachi’s output. All the building blocks are there. You’ve got a solid rock foundation, with just enough strangeness in the compositions to leave a listener scratching their head, confused and maybe a little unsettled.
The album tells a loosely organized story about a town resting on the back of a giant catfish, and the lives of the various people that inhabit it. In reality, it’s a window into Yonezu’s mind at the time, in all of its dirty, dark glory. Perhaps that’s why some of the guitar riffs feel so grungy (see the opening of “Caribou”), and why some of the background effects and compositions feel so chaotic. It’s an album unlike anything that Yonezu would go on to produce under his real name, and, really, the last project of his to ever sound the way it does. Yes, that does include the 2 singles he released after this under the Hachi name.
But enough about grand sweeping statements, let’s talk about the album highlights. Opening track “Machi” is just gorgeous, Yonezu’s vocals soaring over warbling chords in a song that, at least to me, evokes The Beatles in its sound. This is quickly followed by lead single “Go Go Yuureisen”, which surges forward with guitars and keyboards working in perfect harmony to form the song’s melodic line. “Vivi” is the album’s softest and most tender moment, if not its saddest. The album’s chaos and slightly creepy vibe hit their respective apexes on “Black Sheep”, with its babbling chorus. Yonezu’s final repetitions of the song’s title over and over feel like the representation of someone descending right down into insanity.
Post “Black Sheep”, the album begins to trail off a bit. It’s definitely a few tracks too long for its own good, and the last 4 tracks definitely show this. Aside from “Kubinashi Kankodori”, none of the songs by this point made much of an impression on me. Not that I cared so much, tracks 1 through 10 are amazing enough to carry the album easily, and the last 4 tracks aren’t bad at all. They’re just sorta there by comparison.
Even despite a slow final stretch,
Diorama is a strong first statement from Yonezu as a non-Vocaloid artist. It’s the last shining moment of Hachi’s spirit, which is certainly bittersweet, as while his future works are incredibly good Japanese pop rock, I can’t help but wish that more music in the vein of
Diorama was released. Though maybe the fact that this album is one of a kind is more of a good thing, a signpost to indicate the transition from virtual to real, from Hachi to Yonezu. Or maybe I’m getting overly philosophical. In any case, this album is a wonderful one, and one that deserves a listen if you enjoy Yonezu’s output, Hachi’s output, or really just J-Pop in general.
