Ballsack’s J-Pop Midlife Crisis, pt. 4: カネコアヤノ/kanekoayano
Starting sometime last year, I started really getting into Japanese music. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, because I had always thought I hated singing in Japanese. Turns out I don’t! In the night threads for the following week, I’ll write a little about each of my favorite artists that I’ve discovered, and share a streaming album for you to dutifully ignore.
Alright. Here’s something for you indie rockers. Kaneko Ayano (カネコアヤ) is a musician who has been active for a few years now. A good portion of her stuff is, perhaps, best described as folk, but she seems to be moving more towards the direction of rock. Somewhat recently she announced that she will be continuing solo activities as カネコアヤノ(Kaneko Ayano), but will also be in her band called kanekoayano. Confusing. That’s probably a good distinction to make, though. Indeed, all of her albums up to this point have been released with a full band, and then quickly followed by a stripped down acoustic version. The band is excellent. A (very expensive) triple LP was released early last year of a full band show, including their sort signature closer 「わたしたちへ」(“Watashitashi”). I am hoping that comes to digital at some point, because it’s quite good, but the prices on it are through the roof. At the very least it would be nice to get an official live recording of it「わたしたちへ」. Instead, for the time being, here’s a poorly recorded version of 「さびしくない」(“Sabishikunai”) from a non-album single from last year, leading into 「わたしたちへ」 (starts about 6 minutes in or so), as well as a beautiful, officially released video of the full band playing it from her YouTube.
Two Videos
I should probably mention that kanekoayano will be touring the UK soon. I know they’ve already done a few shows there, but this is a longer tour. I suspect that she, and her band, are on the verge of hitting big in the West, fairly soon. At least I hope so, they richly deserve it.
Anyway, here’s her latest full length, 『タオルケットは穏やかな』(Taoruketto wa odayakana), which features 「わたしたちへ」, which I clearly cannot shut up about.