Kirinji -- Ieji（家路）

 

Hope you folks are having a good weekend out there wherever you are. Here in Toronto today, it's been messy with a lot of wet and heavy snow hitting the ground. Growing up in this city, commutes home on snow days can have the arduousness of climbs up Mount Everest. I remember one night making my way home from university in which a bunch of us had to wait 40 minutes standing in a bus bay in -25-degree Celsius weather. I figured that if I can survive that...

That meteorologically-based opening is there to segue somewhat into this song by Kirinji（キリンジ）titled "Ieji" (The Road Home). Nope, it's not a cover of Hiromi Iwasaki's（岩崎宏美）classic 1983 tune, but it is a pretty peppy number. Put out as Kirinji's 9th digital download single, it was also the last part of a gimmick in which the guys were releasing a single every month on the 25th during the second half of 2007 (every 25th being known as "Kirin-day"), so "Ieji" was the final and Christmas Day release. All of those affected singles ended up on the duo's March 2008 album "7~seven".

Initially, I thought that the first several seconds of "Ieji" sounded like the fanfare for a contemporary cop show but I realized that the blasting synth-horns have a certain Burt Bacharach-influenced pattern (maybe even a bit of Chicago). However, I wouldn't place the song as a Shibuya-kei song at all. Apparently, the Kirin-day singles were also used as themes for a "Kirinji TV" series. There is a Kirinji TV YouTube channel but it has nothing to do with the band.