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スネオヘアー (Suneo Hair)

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Fancy stuff optional

On his major label debut Sunestyle, Suneo Hair set out to reaffirm the breadth of his indie singer-songwriter roots.

He jumped from style to style — lo-fi, 70s SoCal, big guitars — but in the end, Sunestyle didn’t really possess anything that stayed with a listener long after it ended.

Suneo Hair’s second album, a watercolor, is less ambitious than its predecessor, and it works a lot better.

Instead of messing around with studio effects or switching styles on each track, Suneo Hair sticks to the basics — a rock quartet and a song.

The psychedelic synthesizer effects at the start of “Nobita Tape” are about as weird as the album gets — the rest of the album is straight-forward.

The six-note guitar hook that weaves its way throughout “Pinto” couldn’t get any simpler. The funky drummer beat, chiming guitars and string arrangement on “Aoi Sora” fit well together.

“New Town e Tsutzuku Michi” doesn’t attempt to hide its affinity to the Beatles, while the arrangement on “Uchiagehanabi” could best be described as pointillistic.

Perhaps the most fitting testament to Suneo Hair’s songwriting ability is in “Owari ne”, a stripped-down, slowed-down reprise of the album’s second single, “Uguisu”.

“Uguisu” is a no nonsense rocker — verse-chorus-verse, with which a pretty memorable chorus. But without the trappings of a fast tempo and a backing band, “Owari ne” reveals the song to have a versatile melody.

It sounds as fitting in one setting as it does in another.

Sunestyle may have established Suneo Hair’s credentials as far as ability is concerned, but a watercolor demonstrates his talent.

He’s a fine songwriter, and he doesn’t need much fancy work to prove it.

Suneo Hair, Quruli guest on Sugar Fields album

Source: Bounce.com

Sugar Fields’ forthcoming album rainbow sports guest appearances by Suneo Hair and Quruli. The album will be released on Nov. 23 by Café Au Label. Suneo Hair worked with Sugar Fields’ previously on the band’s July 2002 album, Lemon Water. The indie folk-rock songwriter played organ and guitar on the album.

Indie folk rock, ‘Sunestyle’

A funny thing happened on my way to review this album — I couldn’t name another Japanese male singer-songwriter other than Suneo Hair.

It’s easy to name check women singer-songwriters (Yaida Hitomi, Shiratori Maika) or bands with singer-songwriter leanings (Soulsberry, Spitz).

But it takes effort to name solo male singer-songwriters in Japan. Nakamura Kazuyoshi? Saito Kazuyoshi? Suga Shikao? If Suneo Hair lived in the West, name dropping Jason Falkner, David Mead or Badly Drawn Boy would be much easier.

Suneo Hair, ne Watanabe Kenji, plays a similar kind of literate, indie folk rock as his contemporaries this side of the Pacific, but on his major label debut, Sunestyle, he’s not afraid to take out the big guns either.

One of those guns is ambient noise troupe mono, 3/4 of whom contribute their distinct wall of sound to “Pilot Lamp”.

On “Teppen ~Kawaiso Mix~”, Suneo does his best lo-fi Guided by Voices impression by filtering everything through distortion. “Ivory”, meanwhile, flirts with — but never crosses over to — emo territory.

But the one track that epitomizes Sunestyle is “Wake mo Shiranaide”, a bouncy, 60s-meets-90s pop song infectous from verse to chorus to middle eight. Most of the album follows suite.

“Genzai Ichi ~You Are Here~” borrows guitar effects from Joshua Tree-era Edge to produce a slow burner. “Asa no Sukima kara” and “Over the River” call to mind ’70s SoCal folk-rock without tripping into sentinmentality. The heavy reverb on “Slow Boat” gives that song a psychedelic feel as antiquated as it is modern.

The problem with the singer-songwriter genre, however, is its entire reliance on the hook. Suneo could have done his own version of Shiina Ringo’s Karuki Zaamen Kurinohana — a beautiful album devoid of anything that really screams “single” — but it wouldn’t have added much to his rep as a “singer-songwriter”.

Thankfully, Suneo can craft hooks with the best of them.

Sunestyle hangs together incredibly well as an album, even though each song stands on its individual merits.

Vocally, Suneo could be described as “nasal” — like most of his contemporaries in Japan — but unlike, say, Asai Kenichi, he’s far from sounding like a strangled ferret. In other words, his voice doesn’t get in the way of his hooks.

On “Jet”, the closest thing to a power ballad on the album, Suneo delivers a suitably emotional performance, not too wrought to undercut its effect, and nowhere near deadpan to make him too cool.

Sunestyle is an impressively strong debut from a skilled songwriter. Here’s hoping to name check him in the future.