The New Shiina Ringo Album

I was going to start this post off with a link back to my big post about Shiina Ringo, who is basically awesome and whom I have become a "Superfan" of since coming to Japan. Only to find, y'know, that the big post about Shiina Ringo doesn't exist, because I kept thinking I'd written it and never actually wrote it.

So that gives me something to write about when I've got a spare couple of hours (here's looking at you August!).

Anyway as I said it would earlier this month Ringo-chan's new album Sanmon Gossip came out this week, and to be a "Superfan" I got up early, trotted over to the record store about three minutes from my appartment and bought it the day it was released:


It's very pink and very good. Opening all the packaging up is like taking off someone's skin and finding more skin underneath, if that isn't too creepy. It is, isn't it? Sorry.


After the last few years with her band Tokyo Jihen this is very much a solo record like her earlier stuff. It's a real blend of genres too, but not in the way that her earlier stuff is - everything chucked together into a big indie-electro-swing mulcher. This one has indie-ish songs, up-beat swing stompers, torchy ballads, orchestral melodramas, electronicky hip-hop tracks and a woeful 80s soul version of one of her most popular singles as a bonus track. It's really very good. It doesn't even feature either of the tracks off her single last month (which is very cool). Sadly, the first promo-vid from this album though is for one of the ballads (I don't approve of ballads as the lead off single for an album - hit 'em with something snappy for godsssake!):

Still a great video though. Now, to work on that Shiina Ringo mega-post...