I was surprised last week to find out that Swinging Popsicle has a new album out, called Loud Cut. It appears to be not so much a proper album as a hodge-podge of random cuts: video game themes, a cover or two, a few tracks off previous albums. Perhaps as a result of this, it doesn’t hold together as well as it could, but there’s still some good stuff here.
Bassist Hironobu Hirata was in charge of the background music to the video game Sumaga, and a lot of the material here originates from that project. Album openers “Perfect Loop” and “(a) SLOW STAR” were both theme songs to the game, and three other songs (“Meet U”, “UN-K.O. ~Our Day Will Come~”, and “Good Time”) are vocal versions of background music tracks from the game. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the other stuff here is also from Sumaga (I don’t have the game or its soundtracks); certainly, the creepy instrumental “Tragedy In Your Brain” sounds like a video game background track.
Beyond the soundtrack stuff, there’s also an Auroranote cover (“Seijyaku to Ryuusei”), two tracks apiece from the last two Popsicle albums (Transit and Go On), and two of the bands’ early b-sides, apparently re-recorded (I’ve never heard the original versions, but Georide marks both セルフカバー, “self-cover”). If you’re keeping track, that accounts for thirteen of the albums’ fourteen tracks — the fourteenth, “Kururi Sakura Hirari”, is listed as “Swinging Popsicle Ver.”, so maybe it’s a cover too?
There’s nothing wrong with odds-and-ends compilations, of course. The four Transit and Go On tracks at the end of the album seem like bizarre padding, but if you disregard them, you still have a 10-song mini-album, and a not bad one at that. Certainly, I’ve raved about “(a) SLOW STAR” before, and “Perfect Loop” is quite good too, continuing the band’s recent experiments adding subtle electronic elements to their music. “UN-K.O.” is also quite good, a big guitar song that comes up a bit short in the chorus department, but still rocks. Those are the main highlights, but the pleasant samba cut “Good Time”, the mid-tempo “Kururi Sakura Hirari”, and the Auroranote cover are all pretty good too. The low points are the rather pointless “Tragedy In Your Brain” and the overly dramatic piano ballad “Let Me Fly”.
At any rate, this album hardly supplants Go On as my go-to Swinging Popsicle album (despite the inclusion of that album’s brilliant title track), but it’s not a bad record to have around, particularly for the first six tracks. I’d say it’s not worth the import price for the physical CD, but for $10 off JapanFiles for the MP3, it’s well worth it.
). Released in 2001, the band had already been around for a few years and had refined their songwriting somewhat, but still possessed a rawer, live sound that is a bit surprising compared to the more polished studio work they do today.
