Chisato Moritaka -- Pepperland (Part 2)

 

Last week, I provided Part 1 to Chisato Moritaka's（森高千里）November 1992 7th original album, "Pepperland"（ペパーランド）. As I mentioned there, this had been an album that stayed up on my shelves for the longest time after first listening to it and just finding it a little too outré for my impressions of Moritaka back then. However, after many years, I've decided to give it another go and I'm more open to it now. Let's go with Part 2, then, shall we?

Track 6, and perhaps this could have been the beginning song to Side B if an LP version of "Pepperland" had been released, is "Ame no Asa"（雨の朝...Rainy Morning）. Composed by Yasuaki Maejima（前嶋康明）of the band Spick & Span, he's also accompanying Moritaka's drumming with his Fender Rhodes and synthesizer according to the liner notes. It's a familiar track to me so I've probably put it into one of my old mixtapes and it's the funkiest and grooviest track on the album, although the lyrical content is such that you want to give the lass in the story a great big hug. She is not having a good morning as she has to get ready for another day of the corporate grind while watching a downpour outside her apartment.

That lass probably wishes she were in the story of Track 7, "Tokonatsu no Paradise"（常夏のパラダイス）, (and maybe she is), as Chisato sings about being as happy as one can be after a not-so-great previous year. Written by Moritaka (as she did for all of the tracks) and composed by Toshiaki Matsumoto（松本俊明）, I think the original version on "Pepperland" had that Beatles-y sound but the remake above also has incorporated some Okinawan feelings. One of the other things that I like about this one is Chisato's "Ha~i!" in the chorus.

"U-Turn ~ Wagaya"（Uターン (我が家)...My Home） has a distinctly Japanese summer theme as someone is returning by train to the old hometown for a long-awaited visit. That someone can look forward to seeing mountains and rivers and having Mom's home cooking once again. Chisato's piano pretty much lays it out: this is one swaying nostalgic and welcome trip home. Yuichi Takahashi（高橋諭一）, who has also provided the melodies for some of the earlier tracks, is back here on music.

The next track on the album is "Gokigen na Asa"（ごきげんな朝）which I actually posted almost a decade ago as this jangly tribute to the band Shocking Blue. So have a look at it there through the link and then we go to "Rock Alarm Clock" which, like "Ame no Asa", is another work-related tune. This time though, the young lady is making a very energetic effort to get to work on time after her alarm clock lets her down, and in all likelihood, not for the first time. The vocalist and leader of the rock band Carnation, Masataro Naoe（直枝政太郎）, was responsible for the melody.

The final track is the sad and perhaps reflective-of-the-times song "Aoi Umi"（青い海）. Composed by Hiroyoshi Matsuo（松尾弘良）in a deceptively cheerful way, it's the story of a widowed man in his mid-sixties owning a bookstore in his seaside town. His daughter has moved away due to marriage to probably the big city. He goes and visits her but doesn't seem to enjoy the big city life and finds the travel arduous to the point that he may not make a second visit. By the end of the song, the bookstore has been torn down to become a parking lot. Meanwhile, the sea remains blue. 😭 I think I saw this scene play out in yesterday's episode of NHK's current morning serial drama "Omusubi"（おむすび）.

Once again, as was the case with Akina Nakamori's（中森明菜）"Crimson", I've found redemption in Moritaka's "Pepperland" as an album where the singer-songwriter-musician has decided to make a pivot in her style from the synth dance pop where she first made her name to a more grounded form of arrangement. And wiser people than me discovered this far earlier since the album hit the charts at No. 5.