Akira Terao -- Ame no Fukei（雨の風景）

 

Nope, this time, this Akira Terao（寺尾聰）song doesn't come from his magnum opus album "Reflections", but from his 1983 "Atmosphere".

We did get a lot of rain today; in fact, we received a month's worth of precipitation overnight last night. That is good news for some of us since we've had a very dry number of weeks but we more than made up for that within 6 hours. Anyways, getting back to the song at hand, I am talking about "Ame no Fukei" (Rainscape), and as mentioned above, although this song didn't come from "Reflections", of course, Terao and his City Pop/AOR comrade at arms, lyricist Masako Arikawa（有川正沙子）, did come over from that legendary release to provide this appropriately atmospheric number.

"Ame no Fukei" begins with the sound of rain before launching into a pleasant yet dreamy AOR melody with a touch of melancholy mood. Terao is at his usual crooning best as he describes his opinion that it's always raining when the inevitable end of a short-lived romance (one-night stand, brief torrid fling) comes to fruition.

The overall arrangement feels as if "Ame no Fukei" could have ended up on "Reflections", so all the merrier for it to be on "Atmosphere". I'm especially drawn to the delivery of the refrain of "Wakare wa itsumo ame no fukei"（別れはいつも雨の風景...It's always a rainscape when parting） since there's a seemingly wiser-but-sadder C'est la vie message in there from the romance expert who is Terao apparently.