Review Summary: The Pillows kick off a long career with a wobbly but enjoyable first release.
At the end of the guitar solo to Energy, Yoshiaki Manabe plays an unassuming, bluesy riff that seems oddly familiar to fans acquainted with the band’s later work, who are probably listening to this album long after encountering the late-90s golden age of The Pillows’ best work (it’s almost unimaginably bizarre to think of a newcomer listening to The Pillows’ music in chronological order.) Manabe plays that same riff in other Pillows songs from years, even decades, after this inauspicious debut mini-album. It’s very similar to the end of his solo in Crazy Sunshine, and a curious bit of consistency in a debut release that otherwise feels almost completely disconnected from the familiar style the band later develops.
It’s endearing how young and earnest the band sounds on Pantomime. Sawao Yamanaka sings with a level of audacity unjustified considering how awkward and undeveloped his voice sounds on this debut. Shin’Ichiro Sato and Kenji Ueda play the drums and bass with the urgency of the mod and punk styles that characterized their former band Kenzi And The Trips, but the real star of Pantomime is guitarist Yoshiaki Manabe, formerly of new-wave band Persia, whose elaborate lead guitar playing dominates the record. Manabe absolutely owns songs like Dreams Are Like Promises, with its spiraling arpeggios, and the self-unconscious solos of Razorlike Blue and Energy. Some of Manabe’s absolute best playing, from a technical point of view, is found on the early Pillows releases, and even though the alternative rock of Please Mr. Lostman and its successors is what Manabe was destined to play, in some ways it’s not as thoughtful or articulate as his style on the early albums.
There’s not a hint of the influence of artists like The Pixies or Nirvana, who would later play such an important role in shaping The Pillows’ sound (indeed, those artists were only releasing their early records around the same time The Pillows were debuting.) Instead, The Pillows wear the influences of The Smiths, The Jam, and The Cure, and actually wield them to great effect, considering how awkward their debut might have been. The band completely eschews the darker side of some of those influences on Pantomime, as Yamanaka makes himself an immediately likable and authentic frontman, despite that fact that his vocal cords are in desperate need of development.
The title track Pantomime is the only weak song in the bunch, and that’s not because it’s a bad song, but because of how out-of-place and strange it sounds compared to the other tracks, with its acoustic guitars and playful chord progressions. The Pillows aren’t completely unrecognizable from the band they would eventually become, even though Yamanaka’s voice and Manabe’s guitar tone quite different. There’s an underlying melodic sensibility that’s common to all of The Pillows’ music, and even if Pantomime is a long shot from the best music the band will later create, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable opening chapter in The Pillows’ long and interesting career.
