Ballsack’s J-Pop Midlife Crisis, pt. 5: 羊文学

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.

Hitsujibungaku (羊文学) is a rock trio formed in 2011. They play dreamy indie rock type stuff. Their name, oddly, means ‘Sheep literature’, which, no doubt, led to Aardman collaborating with them on a cover of “Life’s a Treat” from Shaun the Sheep.

I first became aware of them through the live album they released last year, 『羊文学 Tour 2023 “if i were an angel,” 2023.10.03』. All of their studio albums are good, but, honestly that live album is still my favorite. It just feels a lot more alive than any of their studio recordings. Still, I do need to give special mention to the 2022 album 『our hope』, which features one of my favorite covers.

Just very evocative and appropriate to the sort of hazy music contained within. Anyway, I’m going to go ahead and give you the live album, because it’s really quite good.