Ikue Sakakibara -- Ikue Jishin（郁恵自身）

 

A few years ago, I never would have thought that I would have a single Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）album but in the past few years, I have been able to come into possession of a number of them now, some thanks to Michael who needed to unload a few LPs. One of those records happens to be the former 70s/early 80s aidoru's 5th album "Ikue Jishin" which can be directly translated into "Ikue Herself" but I'd like to go with "Ikue In Her Own Words" because after a couple of listens, it's fairly evident that this is an album that was produced to get up close and personal with the lass raised in Atsugi City, Kanagawa Prefecture.

On the obi for "Ikue Jishin", which by the way was released in August 1979, it notes that Sakakibara herself transcribed the lyrics into the liner notes (continues with that personal touch) and that the record itself is transparent and green (and I'm doing this article just before St. Patrick's Day, too). It's been quite a long time since I've come across a record that was other than the usual basic black.

Side A begins with "My Seventeen"（マイ・セブンティーン）which is a mid-tempo but still pretty bouncy number with the just-as-bouncy vocals of Ikue happily flowing out of the headphones. Written by Konosuke Fuji（藤公之介）and composed by Yuki Mizuno（水野ゆき）, the feeling is of a happy-go-lucky teen in the big city thanks to that bright and optimistic City Pop arrangement through the horns and guitars.

Track 3, "My Hometown Atsugi"（マイ・ホーム・タウン厚木）is what it says on the label...a love song devoted to her hometown Atsugi, and she says it plainly enough through Jun Hashimoto's（橋本淳）lyrics. In a way, she may also be talking about how much busier she became after entering show business; she'd love to come back to Atsugi but simply can't. Ben Sasaki（佐々木勉）provides the still-cheerful aidoru melody further mellowed out by that trumpet or fluegelhorn under Reijiro Koroku's（小六禮次郎）arrangement.

"Sugao no Mama de"（素顔のままで...Just The Way You Are） is the penultimate track on Side B, and though Hashimoto is once again behind the lyrics, this time singer-songwriter Tatsushi Umegaki（梅垣達志）is handling composition and arrangement duties. Yep, I can hear that this is still aidoru but I can't help but feel that the producers and Ikue-chan may have wanted to go for something a little more mature and sophisticated along urban contemporary levels for "Ikue Jishin" overall. Especially with "Sugao no Mama de", although it's about a young teenage girl waxing romantically about that future guy on her arm, there is something rather Margaritaville and even Bread & Butter（ブレッド＆バッター）of that time associated here.

YouTube channel The Sound of Vinyl - LP Analog has actually put up Side A and Side B of "Ikue Jishin" so you can take a listen to all of the tracks there, but I wanted to give listeners a little sampler of what to expect on this album. To be honest, when I first went through the album, I didn't particularly think that "Ikue Jishin" was going to be a heavy rotation record because I thought that all of the tracks rather adhered to a certain "bandwidth" of melody and arrangement, and I think they still do to a certain extent. However, with a few more listens, I think that I'm getting to hear some of the more subtle features within each song so that most of the tracks are starting to stick onto me. Still, give the album a go and see what you think.