Passepied -- Kinyoubi no Tenshi（金曜日の天使）

 

This is unusually my sixth article for today but I just had to squeeze this in because it is Friday after all, and that's what this song is: "Kinyoubi no Tenshi" (Friday Angels). Also, this is a cover of a 1981 New Wave tune by the band Haruo Chikada & Vibratones（近田春夫&ビブラトーンズ）that I covered back in January 2020.

Discovering Chikada through the blog, I've learned that he has come up with some eclectic and fascinating material, so on hearing that a contemporary group, Passepied（パスピエ）, covered "Kinyoubi no Tenshi", which was written by Chikada and composed by Yutaka Fukuoka（福岡ユタカ）, I had to also give this new version a try. Passepied's "Kinyoubi no Tenshi" was a track on their 6th single "Yoakemae"（ヨアケマエ...Before the Sun Rises） released in April 2016. I'd never heard of this group before and according to their J-Wiki file, the founder of the band, Tokyo University graduate keyboardist Haneda Narita（成田ハネダ）, got Passepied started in 2009 as a pop/rock unit that melded New Wave and technopop and also brought in some of his background in Impressionism, musically speaking.

"Kinyoubi no Tenshi" has got that New Wave thing going here too, but it differs somewhat from Vibratones' original in that I also hear some guitar work reminiscent of The Police. Plus the arrangement seems airier in a more dream pop way, thanks to Natsuki Ohgoda's（大胡田なつき）vocals, although the electric guitar solo takes things into a conventional rock riff followed by some keyboard spaciness.

Although Passepied has released eight CD singles up to 2016, they have put out seventeen digital download singles up to April of this year, and seven albums have also been released. The band lineup has changed over the years but when "Yoakemae" was out, along with Narita and Ohgoda, there were guitarist Masahiro Misawa（三澤勝洸）, bassist Yoshikuni Tsuyuzaki（露崎義邦）and drummer Takuya Yao（やおたくや）.