yonawo -- Milk Choco（ミルクチョコ）

 

The above photo is of a Double Chocolate cake that I purchased for the family at a nearby bakery. Indeed, it did live up to its name. Perhaps it was just a tad too rich for some of my clan because since then, I've been getting the just-as-popular Carrot Cake there. However, I will always have a sweet tooth for chocolate.

Speaking of chocolate, I did find this song "Milk Choco" (Milk Chocolate) by the pop-rock band yonawo. In fact, this was the November 2019 debut single for the group which hails from Fukuoka Prefecture. There is that initial indies rock buzz in vocalist/songwriter Shota Aratani's（荒谷翔大）delivery but the song takes on a most congenial and spacy jazzy feel to accompany the lyrics of a modern-day Alice falling into a Wonderland after nibbling a bit on that titular milk chocolate. In a way, there is a similar feeling to some of Ego-Wrappin's more esoteric creations although the band has been put alongside groups such as Suchmos and Yogee New Waves.

yonawo consists of Aratani, guitarist Yuya Saito（斉藤雄哉）, bassist Satoshi Tanaka（田中慧）and drummer Takafumi Nomoto（野元喬文）. Aratani and Saito both were in their junior high school soccer club and one day, Saito popped over to Aratani's house and ended up getting into his world of music with Saito learning how to play the guitar from his buddy. Aratani's parents were both musicians and Aratani himself could also handle the piano and has been a Beatles fan since elementary school. Although the two of them ended up in different high schools, Saito became friends with Tanaka and Nomoto and later introduced them to Aratani. 

Soon after graduating high school in 2016, Aratani headed off to Vancouver on a working-holiday visa but still remain connected through SNS communications, and soon after he had come back to Japan, the four decided to start up yonawo in 2017. As for the band's name, a mutual friend for all of them, Yonao（ヨナオ）, told them about legendary band Happy End's "Kaze wo Atsumete"（風をあつめて）. Aratani, who had been writing lyrics in English up until then, listened to the song and concluded that Japanese lyrics weren't bad either. I would gather that in tribute to their good buddy, the band adopted his name.