evening cinema -- Blue Shadow

 

With some of these contemporary acts such as Atarashii Gakko no Leaders（新しい学校のリーダーズ）and Official Hige Dandism（Official髭男dism）getting onto the Kohaku Utagassen, and obviously there's nothing wrong with that in my eyes and to my ears, wouldn't it be nice for some more of these fresh musicians to show up (hey, I can do with a little more enka, too!)? Yes, past editions have seen King Gnu and Suchmos also appear on the New Year's Eve special, but I would also love to see bands such as evening cinema accept the invitation onto the Shibuya stage.

It's been a while since I've posted an article featuring a duet between evening cinema and cinnamons, each of them with their brand of mellow pop and/or neo-AOR (December 2021, to be specific). And so today, I wanted to provide something from evening cinema at least. If I'm not mistaken, this was their November 2022 streaming single "Blue Shadow". A title like that would have me initially thinking something jazzy and atmospheric but instead, this is a very upbeat and spring-like tune. Written and composed by evening cinema leader Natsuki Harada（原田夏樹）, although I've noticed that some of their past songs have gone the AOR or neo-City Pop route, I'm more than happy to place this as a straight pop number of fun despite the little twitters of disco on the keyboards.