Review Summary: After an impressive run, the sun begins to set on The Pillows' creativity.
Is it best to go out while you’re on top? This phenomenon might be one reason why artists like Jimi Hendrix or Bill Watterson are so highly regarded: an early death and deliberate retirement, in their respective cases, precluded a descent into mediocrity, so that their works are remembered at their best, rather than through a slow, sad decline of the sort that so often follows artists who remain active for decades.
Likewise, I wonder, sometimes, if Thank You, My Twilight might have been a good point for The Pillows to retire. Their next album Penalty Life is widely considered to be the low point of their career up until that time, while Thank You, My Twilight is a well-loved album. But wholly aside from the fact that The Pillows have released plenty of good songs in the twelve years following Thank You, My Twilight, this idea rests on a central premise: that Thank You, My Twilight is a high point for the band.
Perhaps this won’t win me many supporters, but I’d argue otherwise. Following its stellar predecessor Smile, Thank You, My Twilight often feels uneven, and is symptomatic of many of the problems that afflict the band’s later music: good ideas interspersed with bad or uninteresting ones.
Thank You, My Twilight gets off to a solid start. Rain Brain and especially Biscuit Hammer are energetic tracks with some great hooks, but reveal cracks in the band’s foundation. Most noticeable is the production: compared to the warmth of Smile, these songs have a harsh, brittle sound, and would have benefited from smoother production. There’s also a sense that the band has finally lost its innocence, once and for all, and is going through the motions to create the kind of music that will be immediately accessible rather than endearing.
Verses Of Babylon Angel is the album’s first single and symptomatic of the bigger problems present with The Pillows. Manabe’s guitar tone is thin and brittle; it’s not an exaggeration to suggest that his guitar tone never sounds worse than on this album. The rhythm of the verse is jerky and unpleasant, representative of Sawao Yamanaka’s obsession with writing “fun” songs in the vein of the much-better Ride On Shooting Star or I Think I Can. But what’s really frustrating is that the song has some genuinely good moments, as well: the chorus is quite enjoyable, and the subtle instrumental break and bridge are actually the best parts of the song.
This same inconsistency plagues the following songs, too. My Beautiful Sun (Irene) aspires toward slick pop music, but comes across as bad disco, not helped by the awful, out-of-place guitar distortion. Even though the song is cheesy and sounds magnitudes less authentic than Yamanaka’s best love songs, the verse melody is actually quite good, and everything comes together nicely toward the end. Come On, Ghost is better than the two preceding tracks, with a good verse and a fantastic pre-chorus that’s actually the album’s best moment up until this point. But the chorus and lead guitar don’t deliver, and it’s bogged down, again, by the harsh production.
Thank You, My Twilight is much like The Pillows’ later albums in that it gets off to a comparatively lousy start before getting to the better songs in its middle and latter sections. Robotman is a callback to the melancholic moments that the group has done better elsewhere, but it’s a good song, excepting the bad guitar tones that detract from an otherwise excellent solo. Ritalin 202 is an unsatisfying attempt at punk that comes across as the band ripping themselves off – Winning Come Back! From Smile was a much better version of the same song. On the other hand, the guitar solo is fantastic – completely out-of-place in an otherwise mediocre song – and for once, Manabe’s tone sounds good.
The emotional core of the album is White Summer and Green Bicycle, Red Hair and Black Guitar. It’s by far the best song on the album, thanks to its subtle build-up that begins with the rare occurrence of Yamanaka playing lead guitar. It’s the most melancholic track on the album and the only point at which the album is better than a song on its predecessor (Monster C.C. from Smile seems comparatively under-developed.) Manabe’s simple guitar lead is beautiful, and the song is well-written throughout, and is evocative in the vein of Please Mr. Lostman or Little Busters’ best songs. It’s one of bassist Jun Suzuki’s only memorable moments on the album, the subtle rhythmic shifts in the verse constituting the best moment for Sato’s drumming, as well. The only disappointment is Manabe’s guitar solo, which once again suffers from the awful, tinny-sounding distortion that dominates the record.
Winona is a dime-a-dozen Pillows love song, of the sort that feels less and less authentic every time they do it, but Thank You My Twilight’s title track is satisfying and feels like ending on a high note. This is Yamanaka’s best moment on the record, and the song’s climax exposes some genuine catharsis around his singing and Manabe’s guitar solo. If it all ended here, then The Pillows would be going out on a high note, if not a high album. Unfortunately, the silly Rookie Jet has the final word, which is the album’s equivalent of a clown crashing a funeral reception.
But it’s not actually the end for The Pillows. True to his words on Happy Bivouac’s similarly pointless album-closer Advice, Yamanaka still has a great deal more to tell us; some of it is actually quite good. But what’s frustrating is that it’s so often interspersed with lazy, uninteresting filler that detracts from the genuinely good songs in the mix. Thank You, My Twilight has some good moments, but it’s The Pillows’ weakest album in a decade (since their endearingly goofy debut Moon Gold) and feels disappointing in light of all the terrific releases that preceded it. The problems that affect Thank You, My Twilight are present on the following King Records releases: the good news, though, is that there’s enough good material to make the following albums worthwhile for dedicated fans, even if they aren’t the best point of entry for new listeners.
