Review Summary: Spare me your sympathy; let me love
Even by her own iconoclastic standards, it’s been a turbulent couple of years for Seiko Oomori. Following 2020’s majestic
Kintsugi, it seemed that Oomori had finally reached some form of contentment with her hyper-articulate pop theses (and barbed cautions!) on the space for women in Japanese society and the redemptive power of music; following the establishment, umpteen scandals and ultimate rebranding of her flagship idol group ZOC (now known as METAMUSE) and concurrent group MAPA, her career emphasis had seemingly shifted away from her solo output and into the roles of producer and serial songwriter. These latter guises have been anything but hitch free: although ZOC initially posited an inspiration for independent women as they forged their own path in a male-produced, overtly-fetishised pocket of showbiz, the past years have cast an increasingly uncomfortable light on Oomori’s own mismanaged power dynamics and overbearing managerial presence. Her impulsivity and ferocious work ethic, once admirable forces within the confines of her solo output, seemed increasingly unsuitable for the kind of intimate collaboration and performative transparency demanded by idol.
The fallout from her behaviour in ZOC demanded more than a simple shift in focus, however: the thought of hearing a post-ZOC Seiko Oomori record that packaged her contradictions, volatilities, insecurities and tensions into the same kind of immaculate pop monoliths that each of her solo albums since
Tokyo Black Hole had reached for is not one that should sit easily to a conscientious listener. Oomori’s platform today feels distinctly less tenable than that of the trenchant firebrand who once satirised Japan’s deeply-ingrained sexism by framing herself in the guises of goddess of love and angel of death, powerful as those narratives still are. Oomori in 2022 has been the image of someone who needed to touch base with their guiding principles and thereby find the trajectory for a little course correction.
It is for the best, then, that her latest album
Cho-tengoku takes a marked step away from the epic-confessional album style she perfected on the run from
Tokyo Black Hole to
Kintsugi, adopting a style more akin to that of
Sennou and
Zettai Shoujo than anything we’ve heard since. There are echoes aplenty here of the mercurial mid-‘10s Oomori who had just reached her eureka moment on how the pop matrix worked but maintained a playful irreverence about how best to harness it.
Cho-tengoku does away with airs and graces almost entirely, clearing the air with one steadfast banger after another. There’s a sense throughout that the record’s rather economical songwriting decisions come from an unlofty place, and their delivery emphasises energy and catharsis above all else. Oomori dishes out her most volatile studio vocal performance in years, spitting, mewling, cussing and sneering over these tracks with a carefree vengeance.
Today is the same useless day as ever, she growls over the crater-like opening of “VAIDOKU” (1), an near-grating hodgepodge of jazz-adjacent dissonance and demure folk-pop refrains: this is very much the sound of a self-assured artist doing things on her own terms without propagating anything close to an immaculate self-portrait. It practically demands from the get-go that the listener either share her abandon or write the whole thing off as insufferable.
For those who can stomach it, there’s a good deal of joy to be found here. I suspect fans oriented towards Oomori’s older output will have the best time of it: “Hiraite” (2) and “Tengoku Ranking” (9) feel like a homecoming to the kind of vocal melodies that peppered
Zettai Shoujo on classics like “Amai” and “hayatochiri”, their lead hooks straining the limits of Oomori’s range into something at once gorgeous and wispish, all the more precious for the sense that her voice might give out at any given moment. However, this record is less concerned with delicacies than with romps. The entire middle run makes for one of the most infectious sets of rambunctious pop thrills in Oomori’s discography; singles “Ultimate < 3 Love Zenbu” (6) and “Maesetsu ADvance” (8) are particular highlights from this stretch, but they are best taken as a headlong run, an album-within-an-album well worth the cost of entry on its own. The seamlessness of this section belies a wealth of experience:
Cho-tengoku is just as much a return to the spontaneity and abandon of Oomori’s earlier outings as it is the sound of a veteran songwriter penning the kind of numbers she can churn out in her sleep at this point. Between the straightforwardness of the tracks in question and the ragged liberties of her delivery, there’s a recurrent sense that she’s punching down within her own comfort zone and deriving all manner of exhilaration therein.
This impression is somewhat complicated and, dare I say, diluted at the points where lesser tracks come off as a showcase of muscle memory and long-established songwriting reflexes. The likes of “TOBUTORI” (4) and “Mahoutsukai wa nido Shinu” (3) do little to distinguish themselves against the long line of similar upbeat jingles Oomori has written in recent years, especially when they share a tracklist with songs as utterly uproarious as “x○x○x○ン” (7) (a.k.a., um, “Melon”), a tearaway ode to the delights of the titular fruit, bullishly shallow, ruthlessly catchy and armed with a weapons-grade sugar warning. At the other end of things, “Tokyo no Sei ni Shite” (10) is merely perfunctory in the scheme of Oomori’s protracted ballads, cluttering the tracklist further still. In the past, Oomori has mostly taken excess in her stride, but
Cho-tengoku feels cramped by it where it should be at its most lithe; it works best as a spirited letting off of steam, but such things fare best with some measure of succinctness. Neither the thematics nor the pacing of this record really demand a runtime anything close to an hour, and any moments of even marginal lag find themselves doubly foregrounded as such.
Cho-tengoku may not claim anything close to Seiko Oomori’s most impressive end-to-end tracklist, and other than the venomously sardonic closer “Saigo no TATTOO” (13)’s perky homage to living your best life as a burnout, and perhaps “Hiraite” (2), few of these songs pack the kind of larger-than-life substance associated with her top shelf. Its peaks are mostly charted through their a collective headrush, full of the thrill of turning a corner, the impetus of starting a fresh page, the contrary delight of doing whatever the fuck you like when the rest of the world expects everything at the worst from you. All these are invigorating as anything in the moment, but they go hand in hand with a scepticism of how long they will likely resonate beyond their time. Is this an unfair criticism for fresh pop songs, as entitled now as they will ever be to full credit for their transitory
rush? Pass, but such reservations are uncommon for Seiko Oomori solo outings. She’s still easily among the most consistent and prolific songwriters of our time, moreso now than ever, and
Cho-tengoku is yet another solid entry to her canon. It can enjoy its station as a highlight of 2022 J-Pop for now, and it is reassuring that Oomori-the-idol-producer has taken a step back from the outwardly-oriented lyrical style of her past records; she dissects herself here far more often than she sets herself up as a mirror for society.
Cho-tengoku is an encouraging step away from a tumultuous era, but my eyebrow remains raised for whatever follows.
