Ballsack’s J-Pop Midlife Crisis, pt. 24: 玉手初美

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.

Tamate Hatsumi is a musician that’s been around for a few years. She’s released a few albums, some solo under her own name early on. Songs from those albums were somewhat reconfigured for her punk band 玉手初美 Ⅱ MEN (because the band has two men accompanying her, presumably). You may find this live video of this band instructional as to the particular energy:

She also has a more rock oriented group named after20時. All of these projects seem still active, more or less. Her newest solo work tends to be much more mellow than her earlier stuff. She has somewhat calmed down her Jun Togawa and Mariko Gotō chaotic yelping, unfortunately (or, maybe fortunately for her health), but she still maintains a certain rawness to her approach.

Still, my favorite output of her is her earliest albums, particularly 2014’s 『遺書』. This was a record that, when I first listened to it didn’t really land, and I moved on at the beginning of the first song. But when I returned to it I got to the guitar feedback starting around a minute, and was like, oh, okay this is pretty raw. Then I got to the second song, which starts out with a blast of raw noise, and I was like, oh, I see what’s going on here. This is probably the rawest, most lo-fi record that I’ve posted, just a squall of energy. I really dig it.