Review Summary: "I’ll continue doing the kinds of plays to the audience I like."
There are certain labels that I utterly hate applying to music, or media in general. Labels are not inherently a bad thing, of course, but I find that certain words or phrases immediately turn people off or leave a bad impression. It’s much more important to let the music speak for itself, regardless of what buzzwords we might tack on to easily sum up the artist.
Why do I bring this up? Well, in the case of Pinocchio-P, I can find no other word to describe him aside from one of my oft-hated labels: Pinocchio-P makes
quirky music. The longtime Vocaloid producer has managed to stand alone as one of the quirkiest artists in a niche field that has already been assigned the death-knell descriptor of “quirky” many times over, which, naturally, can make him something of a hard sell, even for people who do enjoy J-Pop.
And the damnedest part of it all is that, if you manage to dig past that big bright label of “quirky”, and give
Zero-Go a listen, you’re going to find one of the more charming and addicting J-Pop albums out there.
I suppose, if I had to assign any label beyond “quirky” to
Zero-Go, the operative phrase would be “indie electropop”. Pinocchio-P weaves delicate, low-key soundscapes that are upbeat, but ultimately very soft. The use of Hatsune Miku here underscores this, with her voicebank being tuned to be bubbly and bright, but less powerful than some of Pino’s contemporaries (contrast this 2019 Vocaloid release with the hard rock of Deco*27’s
Android Girl, released that same year). You can do a lot with that simple formula too. Just within the first few tracks, you have a more rock-styled track (“Nobody Makes Sense”), a dance pop number (“Ghosts Play to the Audience”), and a beautiful slower paced song (“Yozurina”). There’s variety, but also consistency, as Pino has a very solid grasp of writing hooks that are shockingly addictive. “Nobody Makes Sense” and “Ghosts Play to the Audience” are prime examples of this, with the former’s chorus having one of the album’s strongest refrains, and the latter making excellent use of epiphora in the pre-chorus lyrics.
In fact, lyrics are arguably the standout element of
Zero-Go, and if there was ever a moment that Pinocchio-P earned his label of “quirky”, it would be here. “Nobody Makes Sense” takes frequent detours to comment on the names of cats, dogs, and sons before crashing into the chorus, “(Rotten) Apple Dot Com” opens with a declaration that apples are better when eaten in prison, and “Mei Mei” is an observation of human behavior through what appears to be some sort of alien. It’s odd at first glance, and a little hard to quantify, but digging deeper reveals the true magic of Pinocchio-P’s lyrics: the relatively low-key examinations of real life in all of its dark and messy beauty.
No, seriously, Pinocchio-P is a master of this, dissecting the monotony of everyday life and boring routines (“Is everyone working hard doing nothing but the things you don’t really want to do”), and spotlighting the small loves that propel us through (“I won’t care if I’m hated, if you’ll just smile for me”). Album closer “Thanks for Being Lifeless” is perhaps the exemplification of this, the seemingly morbid title giving way to a genuinely touching tribute to Miku herself. The album lyrically bounces back and forth between depressing and uplifting on a dime, but it does so with an obscene amount of charm.
Of course, it’s not entirely perfect. “(Rotten) Apple Dot Com” is a pointless remix of “Apple Dot Com”, that does nothing except make the song faster, and that really doesn’t do much of anything aside from genuinely making the song more annoying to listen to, “Mei Mei” is not a bad song, but it does push Miku’s voice into its highest possible register, and god knows that won’t resonate with everyone, and “Sick Sick Sick” features a rather irritating rolling beat that thankfully doesn’t progress through the whole song, but sticks out like a sore thumb when it does show up.
Despite its faults,
Zero-Go is possibly the most charming and oddly touching Vocaloid album released. It’s a unique beast, not belonging solely to one genre or school of thought, but managing to remain consistent all the same. It’s easy to slap the “quirky” label on this album as a whole and walk away, but, like I said, it can be so reductive to use words like that. In reality,
Zero-Go is so much more than “quirky”. I only hope that I convinced you to see so for yourself.
