Tomoko Soryo -- Futari no Asa（ふたりの朝）

From Drain Unblocking Dublin

 

Good morning! And it is a good morning...finally. Back on Sunday when I wrote about that Xmas song by Sumiko Yamagata（やまがたすみこ）, I was mildly griping about that inconvenient kitchen pipe clog. Well, the situation lasted a few days, necessitating the usage of paper plates and cups to cut down on washing dishes and risking another backup of water through the drain. But a plumber did come to the rescue yesterday, although he had to bring increasingly larger and more powerful drain snakes to finally eliminate the blockage which was most likely half a century in the making. He brought in the ultimate warrior like the one above except that it was slightly bigger and even more armoured; it was basically half-python, half-Iron Man, and it fired like that huge phaser below. The important thing is that it did the job and there is one fewer stress point in my life now.

Other people who are apparently having a good morning? The couple in "Futari no Asa" (Morning for Two), a track on singer-songwriter Tomoko Soryo's（惣領智子）1977 album "City Lights by the Moonlight". It joins "I Say Who" and the title track (there is a link to the former via the article for the latter) on KKP. 

Compared to the Motown of "I Say Who" and the nightclub-friendly "City Lights by the Moonlight", "Futari no Asa" really does sound like a morning City Pop tune of the 1970s. Soryo's melody and her then-husband Yasunori Soryo's（惣領泰則）arrangement create the slightly woozy feeling of waking up and then greeting a glorious morning over breakfast or brunch. Kohei Oikawa（及川恒平）is responsible for the lyrics. It's quite the stress buster, thanks to the soothing combination of Soryo's whispery vocals, the Fender Rhodes, the strings, the flute and everything else. 

There is a bit of an unintentional "trick" in the middle of the song when it seems to feel like "Futari no Asa" is about to end but then picks up again quickly. Maybe it's the melodic representation of the couple opting to get those five extra minutes of shuteye before finally getting out of bed.