4 out of 5

Label: Avex Trax

Produced by: Seiko Oomori

I definitely had to dig to hear this.  Discovered, as with most of my J-Pop, by way of anime, then digging through youtube videos, I had an impression of Seiko Oomori as a kind of unhinged punk-popper, with some forays into unhinged acoustics.  While that description isn’t too far off, her offerings are actually infinitely more varied than that, but they’re almost so over-stuffed with sounds and ideas – and then very much mixed like radio singles, with all edges shorn off and cleaned up – that it’s easy to only hear the standout tracks and let the remainder merge together.  That’s the digging: I’d get stuck on how awesome opener 絶対絶望絶好調 (Absolute Despair) is – zipping a joyous clatter of clatter and guitar riffing, interspersed with Oomori’s sing-songy talk-sing and suddenly cheery choruses – and the get disappointed that follow-up tracks seemed to stick to more of a straight pop template.

After letting the disc play a few times in the background, I noticed a curiosity: themes from various tracks would get stuck in my head, such as the dance beat groove of ロックンロールパラダイス (Rock and Roll Paradise) or the lilting, jazzy playfulness of きすみぃきるみぃ (Kisumi Kirumi).  I figured maybe this was just the Single effect, though, where I’m latching on to tracks that are made to be latched on to, and meanwhile zooming past the rest of what is likely filler.  We’ve all bought albums on those promises before, only to realize that it’s only the singles to which we return.  But when I would sift back through the songs to draw a line between said singles and filler, I was having trouble figuring out which was which; that is: it all started to have recognizable and catchy bits.  All of it started sticking.  The recording opened up to reveal how much was going on on not just the tracks I’d originally leaned toward, but also, like, every other damn track: orchestral flourishes; electronic effects; weird, off-time glitches; insane genre skips and jumps all over the place.  Brainwashing is just loaded with cool sounds, and they sync together ridiculously well.

So why didn’t this come across at first?  Well, the opener does have the benefit of, perhaps, a more dramatic divide between its highs and lows, whereas other tracks may stick to one register or the other, and by the time this trend is bucked – the end of the album is a brilliant run of tracks, particularly 焼肉デート’s (Yakiniku Dating) build in pace and volume – it’s possible to tune out, but I think the more likely cause is the production.  We have a lot of bits and pieces being assembled into songs, and it’s understandably rather programmed sounding – very clean – but stuff that feels like it should land with a punch hits with a gentler tap; the production has made sure to deliver this as pop, despite all of its weirdness and intensity.  The mix thankfully keeps everything at levels where repeat listens allow all the inputs to eventually be heard, but, as mentioned, I had to dig.

The digging was dang worth it, though.