The Pillows -- Ano Hi to Onaji Sora no Shita de（あの日と同じ空の下で）

Some more browsings through YouTube helped me find this band by happenstance some time ago.

The Pillows have been categorized in the rock, alternative rock, indies rock and power pop genres in J-Wiki, but on listening to their "Ano Hi to Onaji Sora no Shita de" (Under the Same Sky That Day), I couldn't help but wonder if Shibuya-kei wouldn't be the genre describing this particular song, at least. Somehow, I keep getting reminded of Shibuya-kei band Flipper's Guitar and with "Ano Hi", thoughts of The Style Council also start coalescing in my mind. The most important thing, though, is that the song is fun and fresh.

Wikipedia has an article on The Pillows, and apparently the group was formed in 1989 from the departure of bassist Kenji Ueda（上田ケンジ）and drummer Shinichiro Sato（佐藤シンイチロウ）of the punk band Kenzi & The Trips who then got together with Coin Locker Babies vocalist Sawao Yamanaka（山中さわお）. Yoshiaki Manabe（真鍋吉明）of the hair metal band Persia joined them to help prop up The Pillows (sorry about that joke) since at the time, Yamanaka wasn't too fluent on guitar.

22 studio albums, over 40 singles and a number of releases have come from since their debut, and from the Wikipedia article, the band has undergone a number of stages in terms of their personnel and music choices. Ueda left fairly early on around 1992 due to creative differences and The Pillows were on hiatus for about a year before coming out with "The Pillows Presents Special CD", an exceedingly rare EP since it had only been released for promotional purposes and not for regular sale. "Ano Hi" is on this particular release as the first track.

In their J-Wiki article, it's said that in the early days, The Pillows didn't particularly follow any musical genre, so it would be interesting to go deeper into their overall discography to see what other types of songs they generated over the years. The Wikipedia article also describes how the name of the band originated.