I only discovered the duo sucola a few months ago. They apparently started in 2021 in Nagoya during the height of the COVID pandemic, and according to their website, vocalist-songwriter KiBi and producer yopeco opted to create a sound and words that they describe as "traveling J-Pop" which would make listeners want to take a look out the window and go off on a journey. Considering all of the lockdowns, KiBi and yopeco probably attracted a lot of sympathetic attention.
The YouTube video for their single "Sentimental Journey" came out in February earlier this year. sucola has said that their sound transcends the usual genre labels...something that at least some of the commenters agree upon. Listening to this one, I get Neo-City Pop groove and indies pop (without a lot of jangly guitar). A song about a couple slowly finding each other and realizing the need for each other in a crowded and troubled world, there is a feeling of dreaminess, helped along by KiBi's soft, caressing vocals, that can resemble the sensation of traveling on a train for hours on end while staring out the window at the speeding landscape.
What I find especially interesting about your observations is the association you make between the song and the sensation of looking out of a train window on a long journey.
ReplyDeleteYou characterize the musical sound as a mixture of neo-city pop and indie pop, while emphasizing the dreamlike quality of KiBi's voice. And, I think that, that seems a particularly apt way to understand sucola's broader musical philosophy: they want their songs to give listeners the emotional sensation of traveling somewhere, even when the subject of a song isn't travel itself although the title clear is.
Hello, Brian. Yeah, their ambitions for traveling J-Pop in an urban contemporary way couldn't have been the easiest thing to achieve but "Sentimental Journey" was pretty nice in that way. I'll have to listen to some more of their material in the coming days and weeks.
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