Kaoru Sudo -- Hello Again (Side B)

 

Last Tuesday, I wrote up an article about Side A of Kaoru Sudo's（須藤薫）February 1987 6th album "Hello Again", and so I'd like to follow up with my feelings on Side B.

The side begins with a pretty frenetic pop and rock-n'-roll "Sayonara wa Go-gatsu no Fubuki"（サヨナラは5月の吹雪...May Blizzard Goodbye）. Written by Norie Kanzawa（神沢礼江）, composed by Yoichi Shimada（嶋田陽一）and arranged by Seiichi Kyoda（京田誠一）, there's even a slightly toy store march like feeling to this song which seems to be about getting along just fine following a breakup. May blizzards aren't totally unknown in my neck of the woods although they are happily quite rare.

There's initially more of the 80s version of the 50s with "Daddy Long Legs" with Hiroko Hosoda（細田博子）on lyrics and Satoshi Kimura（木村聡）on melody with Kimio Mizutani（水谷公生）arranging everything. But the melody then subtly evolves into something more relaxing and languid with Sudo's vocals to match. I'm pretty sure that there are no spiders involved with the titular figure probably being a very tall man that a woman is hugging like all get out.

Mizutani is once again the arranger for "Mugon no Message"（無言のメッセージ...Wordless Message） which is a straddling between Sudo's pop stylings and City Pop as she sings about a woman who's falling apart while trying to call someone she has feelings for. Remember that there were no smartphones in the 1980s so she's probably trying to make contact from an old-fashioned glassed-in phone booth somewhere near a park. Shun Taguchi（田口俊）was the lyricist while Nobuyuki Yamazawa（山澤宣幸）was on composing duty.

The same guys behind the above "Sayonara wa Go-gatsu no Fubuki" are also behind "Sweet Little Heartache", a fleeting contemporary pop number although there is some of that 50s and 60s flavour in Kyoda's arrangement. Kanzawa's lyrics seem to be about a couple at some fairly swanky place but the lady is a bit out of sorts for some reason. There's something about the song that reminds me of some of EPO's tunes, too.

The final track on the original album is "Utsukushii Koyomi"（美しい暦...Beautiful Calendar） which was actually composed by Sudo, written by the aforementioned Hosoda and arranged by Kyoda. With the strings in there, it feels like a classy 70s pop ballad by someone like Boz Scaggs. Sudo's soft and purring voice supplemented with the echo effect does give "Utsukushii Koyomi" that heft as a gallant final track. It feels like the sun is setting with this song which makes it appropriate as the last number.

The 2008 re-release of "Hello Again" on CD has three bonus tracks which happen to be live versions of the title track, "Sakamichi wa Pearl Iro"（坂道はパール色...The Pearly Slope） and "Onai Doshi no Koi"（同い年の恋...Love at the Same Age） all of which were covered in Side A. This particular album was Sudo's highest-scoring release, peaking at No. 41 on Oricon.