H2O -- Chandelier

Gonna have to say thank you to YouTube channel Kimi no Station: The Home of City Pop tonight because it's put up folk/AOR duo H2O's 2nd album "Wait a second" from February 1982. Specifically, there is one track on that release that I'd been wanting to talk about for the longest time: "Chandelier". There have been a number of H2O songs on YouTube but "Chandelier" hadn't been one of them until now.

(31:30)

With its first few measures consisting of a funky and strutting beat, I had first assumed that this was going to be quite uptempo but instead, "Chandelier" goes for the mid-tempo and mellow path. I first heard it on H2O's 2nd BEST compilation "Biography" from 1995 and was immediately drawn to it since for the first time, I heard a really cool urban contemporary foundation underlying everything for this H2O song.

There's an ever-present deliberate and steady keyboard rhythm which for some reason had me thinking of Steve Winwood's 1980s AOR stuff combined with some footloose and fancy-free city-walking verses. Of course, there's also gotta be some cool sax, too, but the piece de resistance comes at around the last minute when these Steely Dan horns make a subtle but noticeable cameo. Come to think of it, there's something about all of it that seems to foreshadow some of the stuff that band Nona Reeves would ply many years later.

All this lovely City Pop for a fancy bunch of lights! I can thank H2O partner Masaki Akashio（赤塩正樹）for words and music and Katsu Hoshi（星勝）for arranging everything. Incidentally, "Wait a second" also has "Passing Rain" and "HELLO VIBRATION". I did mention in the article for that latter song that it had been a part of H2O's "Pool" (and the duo's 4th single) which was actually the first BEST album; "HELLO VIBRATION" had its album debut on "Wait a second".