Bread & Butter -- Monday Morning (album), Part 2

 

It was just a week ago that I provided Part 1 of the article on Bread & Butter's（ブレッド＆バッター）"Monday Morning" album from 1980. So, allow me to finish the remaining four songs from Side B recorded by brothers Satsuya and Fuyumi Iwasawa（岩沢幸矢・岩沢二弓）.

"Marie"（マリエ）is actually a cover of Bread & Butter's 2nd single from April 1970 with the Iwasawa brothers taking care of words and music. It's a bittersweet ballad of longing for the title lady but there has been no response since the fellow has simply been longing and not doing anything about it. Masaki Matsubara（松原正樹）was the arranger for the dreamy AOR here, but for the original single, Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）was in charge of the arrangement so I'm curious about how it played, presumably more as a folk tune.

I gotta say that it's not all that often that I hear a song with the word "paradoxical" in its title. However, that's what we have with "Paradoxical Love" with the added Japanese translation of "Gyakusetsuteki Ai"（逆説的愛）as a subtitle, a strutting City Pop tune that was written by Fumiko Okada（岡田富美子）and composed by Fuyumi. The story behind this one addresses how men often scratch their heads at the oddness of women from time to time (or most times). I do love the brass here but kaz-shin at "Music Avenue" has admitted to being a fan of the guitar cutting of those times, and apparently arranger Matsubara himself was behind that in "Paradoxical Love".

I kinda snarkily wondered whether "Wakusei 1999"（惑星1999...Planet 1999）had anything to do with the old British sci-fi series "Space 1999" but there's nothing of the sort here. It's a slightly rock pop song written by Michio Yamagami（山上路夫）and composed by Satsuya with Kazuo Shiina's（椎名和夫）understandably melancholy arrangement. Starting with a baby's gurgle, Bread & Butter make a plea against war with the brothers directly asking that the button not be pressed.

To finish "Monday Morning" off, here is the ballad "Let Us Love" which was written again by Okada with Fuyumi and Matsubara helping out on music and arrangement. There is a lovely piano solo in this final track which has the brothers returning to their folk roots as they sing about focusing on what is important today and not worry too much about yesterday or tomorrow. In fact, at the beginning, I felt like I was listening to a Simon and Garfunkel tune. As such, I thought that Bread & Butter kinda broke their own rule of the song by heading back to the style of their yesteryear, but I figure that fans including myself haven't minded.

"Monday Morning" is indeed an enjoyable journey by Bread & Butter with a little bit of everything. If you need a bit of decompressing in your day, this is the album to play.