The Groove Music Life

MORNING MUSUME
Naichau Kamo
(Zetima)
Available on CD and from JapanFiles.com and iTunes Japan
Rating:

I like it when Morning Musume does R&B. Not that I don’t like it when the band explores other styles, but R&B – specifically the type of quality urban pop that’s been missing in American  music for the past several years – seems to be something that Hello! Project in general seems to nail to a T. (Immediate examples:  Aa!’s “First Kiss”, MiniMoni’s “Crazy About You”, ROMANS’ “SEXY NIGHT ~Wasurerarenai Kare~”, and MoMusu’s “Indigo Blue Love”.) At a time period in American music when what currently passes for R&B is simply a single repetitive strain of music with a half-assed hook sung in a voice oversaturated with ProTools “vocoder” effects, both sides of MoMusu’s new single hark back to the days of TLC, Mary J. Blige, and En Vogue.

“Naichau Kamo” is a solid A-side featuring a dead-serious Morning Musume. Like last year’s opening single salvo “Resonant Blue”, Ai Takahashi and Reina Tanaka are the dominant vocalists. Unlike last year, although the song is uptempo, things are not as peppy and bright sounding as “Resonant Blue” and 2007’s opening barnburner “Egao YES Nude” – the song is about as minor key as you can get. Granted, “Resonant Blue”’s lyrics refered to a rocky relationship as well, but this time around, the lyrics of “Naichau Kamo” appear to be a continuation of “Resonant”’s storyline – things  have gone from bad to worse for the couple depicted in the storyline and may be coming to a head one way or another. The song’s PV (an alternate edit of the PV is enclosed on the Limited A version of the single), with the shots of the girls shedding (real-looking) tears, further emphasizes this. 

The single’s coupling track, “Yowamushi”, could have been a Mary J Blige song from one of her early albums – a comparison I attribute to the song’s arrangement and its particular use of slap bass, wah-pedal guitar, piano, and a few different minimal synth sounds. The only difference here is the more airy, fragile-sounding vocal tone of the various Morning Musume members rising above the instrumental arrangement, rather than the bolder and streetwise sound of Blige’s singing voice.

It’s not the normal first-of-the-year single I have come to expect for Morning Musume – coming out with such a sad-sounding A-side (tempo be damned) is a rather bold move artistically (but not saleswise – the single has already come close to 50,000 copies sold in its first week). But, with a new album forthcoming and the fact that the songs and the genre they are emulating are of a writing and performing standard that most Western R&B acts aren’t even bothering to try reaching for, it still makes this single a winner.

5 out of 5