Hiroshi Narumi -- Ame Agari（雨あがり）

 

Singer-songwriter and musician Hiroshi Narumi（鳴海寛）, one-half of the City Pop/old-timey pop duo Tohoku Shinkansen（東北新幹線）, passed away almost a decade ago, but it's been wonderful that his music as part of that pairing with songwriter Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）and as a soloist has been rediscovered over the years. A couple of years ago, I mentioned that there had been a 2022 album put out in tribute to Narumi titled "Around the Thru Traffic" as a compilation of other songs from his other albums. 

One of the tracks there that I didn't cover the first time around is "Ame Agari" (After the Rain). Composed by Narumi and written by Takashi Narematsu, it supposedly first emerged to fans' ears as far back as his 2017 album "Boku wa Uta Tsukuri (Early Works 1975-1978)"（僕は詩つくり...I am a Writer of Songs）, although I couldn't track down the year that it had been first recorded. 

It's been a pretty rainy day here in Toronto and since it is a Hump Day, I thought it would be nice to have something like "Ame Agari" start off the Wednesday edition of KKP. "Ame Agari" isn't a City Pop or AOR tune at all; instead it's a light and pleasant bossa nova song with Narumi's vocals fitting the melody perfectly.