Kanako Wada -- Le Vent Doux

 

Listening to Kanako Wada's（和田加奈子）December 1989 album "dear" once more on stereo again had me thinking about which tracks that I had yet to cover since for my article on her 6th album, I only took care of three of them. There were also "See You" and "If" which I covered individually since then and I'd been hoping that the rest of her songs were available on YouTube so that I could do a follow-up on "dear".

Alas, such wouldn't be the case since I could only find one more track that has an existence on the video platform. That would be the second-last track, "Le Vent Doux" (The Gentle Wind). Written by Wada, composed by Tsukasa and arranged by Yuji Toriyama（鳥山雄司）, it's reminiscent of that wave of gentle pop songs by female singer-songwriters that were coming out at the end of the late 1980s and the beginning of the early 1990s. But not only that, "Le Vent Doux" is also representative of why I've cherished "dear" as my reacquaintance with Wada when I was living in Gunma Prefecture.

I was reminded right from the start that "Le Vent Doux", despite its French title, is more of a peaceful bossa nova number. I do like all of the instruments in play here especially the guitar and the piano, and of course, it was a wonderful discovery of Wada's velvety voice. To remind folks, "dear" was the first album that I'd bought of Wada since I purchased her debut album "Tenderness" back in my university days, and I hadn't been all that impressed with her vocals back then.