Ahhh...Tohoku Shinkansen's（東北新幹線）"Thru Traffic", the urban contemporary gift from Japan that keeps on giving. Still cool and groovy with City Pop, AOR, Manhattan Transfer-type jazz vocal and even a bit of 50s/60s pop.
Yet another track from "Thru Traffic" representing the City Pop/AOR aspect is "Strange Wine". I would think that ingesting the real thing would be a recipe for an emergency run to the nearest hospital to exquisitely experience a stomach pump, but happily, such will not be the case here.
With lyrics by Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）and music by one-half of Tohoku Shinkansen, guitarist Hiroshi Narumi（鳴海寛）, "Strange Wine" is a pleasantly woozy song performed by Narumi about whimsy and loss. The protagonist is at a seaside hotel, nursing some of that good stuff which strangely triggers past memories of a former love who's now gone due to breakup or death. The sounds of the sunset surf are present as "Strange Wine" launches introspectively and keeps that feeling of hazy remembrances throughout the song. There is that also haunting background chorus in the middle of the song that adds to the fantastical feeling, and reading that the chorus includes the wonderful Junko Yagami（八神純子）, Kayoko Wada（和田夏代子）along with the other half of the Tohoku Shinkansen duo, Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）, I feel that "Strange Wine" is a truly magical experience.
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