Pizzicato Five -- Tokyo, mon amour（トウキョウ・モナムール）

 

I remember one New Year's Day when I was living in my humble Ichikawa 2K apartment. A couple of friends had stayed over at my place for a couple of days and things were feeling pretty lazy. However, we had made a prior promise to meet up with a few more friends in Roppongi that day for dinner where apparently at least a few restaurants were operating. So, we trudged off to Minami-Gyotoku Station on the Tozai Line. It was about 5 pm when we got onto the aboveground platform and the sun was beginning to set so we had these orange rays filtering into the station.

There were some wistful feelings that accompanied those slanting rays. Perhaps it was starting my first New Year's Day without the family around me or that January 1st felt more like December 31st after a busy year. Well, whatever the case may be, similar feelings can be had through Pizzicato Five's "Tokyo, mon amour", which was a track on their 12th album "Romantique '96" from September 1995. I'd actually written about that album all the way back in May 2013 so that's definitely an antique posting. I'm just glad that I hadn't written about this particular track until today.

Of course, there were much harder feelings in "Tokyo, mon amour" which deals with the end of romance. However, it's no surprise that even in the midst of such heart stopping heartbreak, the voice of the Divine Ms. Maki Nomiya（野宮真貴）and the songwriting of Yasuharu Konishi（小西康陽）can make even that emotional explosion feel like the tenderest side of beef or the sweetest sip of wine. It sounds as if it could have been included in the soundtrack of a 1960s Alain Delon romance with those strings feeling so romantic and Parisian. Also, I have to give shoutouts to that bass and the saxophone showing off life in the big city. The sax by the way was played by Naruyoshi Kikuchi（菊地成孔）of the band SPANK HAPPY.