FUJI MARIKO – Romantic Game
(1) Plink! Plink!! Restrained use of horns for once. Cute vox I believe, and I’m going with ‘modest’ for now. Strings in the break and one of those krrrrr…. percussion things. MV 1/5 HNT 4/13 K 9/10. (2) Even quieter and more modest. But quite lovely MV 1/5 HNT 3/13 K/9/10. Candidate for the __smallest__ C.P. album so far…..(3) Shows signs of being the Slow One, and it’s practically Stina Nordenstam levels of smallness. It would be even nicer if it was actually romantic or playful. Y’know. Chorus is quite nice, though. (4) Lovely Rhodes intro, more tiny vocals. Nice key change mid-verse. Bouncy. Good for shopping for Cute Things (5) First sighting of an interesting rhythm. Nice sound effects. A seduction song for very, very, very modest young ladies. Actually, the middle-eight has some nice electronics in it, MV 0/5 HNT 4/13 K 6/10. Hmmm…..not so much a kissaten as an Ice-Cream parlour (6) Is this an ill-advised Harmonica? Maybe, but it actually gets more lively after that. Mention of ‘bento’ and ‘lunch’ in the same sentence. But not dinner. And eating cake. This is what we’ll call Small City Pop, more for Shizuoka or Okayama. (7) The saxophone doesn’t stick around for long but the strings are quite John Barry. (8) Full-on nostalgia chanson (An atmospheric heart intro – spoken word vocals. Another slow one…(?)…Long. Is this Modae No Heya audioporn…? What an absolute shock.