Make a wish~
Hellooo~ How are you guys doing? I hope all is well I as welcome you guys back here for yet another installment of the J-Music Exchange/Rate!
The Exchange/Rate, to those unaware, is the monthly tandem album review series conducted by yours truly alongside my very good friend and fellow Japanese music fan Al (from Omunibasu.Substack.com). Each month we both decide on a theme that we’ll use as the basis for which album we’ll be choosing from our respective music libraries that the other person will then be listening to and subsequently do a review of (hence, “exchange” and “rate”). This project has not only allowed Al and I to explore music beyond both our personal libraries, but it has also given us opportunities to find new ways to learn to appreciate some of our own favorite albums. It is our hope that this series is able to do the same for you and that you either find a new album to try out and/or we offer you a new take on some of＊your＊favorite albums 
Al and I take turns on who decides the theme for the month, and this time it was Al’s turn. We’re close to the holiday season (or, depending on where you are, it might already be in full swing for you) so Al thought we could get a little festive in imbibing some early Christmas spirit with this month’s Exchange/Rate. With that in mind, and after a bit of brainstorming as to how to make this work, we both thought it’d be fun if to make out own Christmas/Secret Santa Wish List for Japanese albums that we would want to listen to. We each wrote down three (3) unique prompts as our “wish list” of things we want from an album. The other person then has to pick out an album from his respective library that would fulfill all three prompts. Simple, fun, and it almost guarantees we’ll be giving something that the other person wants. Fingers-crossed 😛
Al’s Christmas/Secret Santa Wish List is:
- something you’d listen to on a rainy day
- something released in 2018
- something with a vocal unit
And with these prompts I went ahead and gave him Maison book girl’s yume to review, which you can catch over at Omunibasu.Substack.com.
My wish list (which ended up being a bit similar to Al’s) is:
- something by a group/has more than one singer (can be a a male/female duo, a pair of female singers, a band with twin vocals, a vocal group, etc.)
- something older than 2019
- something with a good variety of instrumentation
To which he gave me Sayonara Ponytail’s Yumemiru Wakusei.
Let’s go open up my present (lol)
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Sayonara Ponytail (さよならポニーテール), affectionately called ‘SayoPony’ by fans, is a (now) 11-member music collective of Doujin origin that activities on 2010. The identities of all the performers involved in the project are kept hidden, and represented only through the artworks of illustrators ‘Chiitan’ and ‘Yuritan’, both of whom are treated as the creators of the project, being referred to as ‘gods’.
＜Ｙｕｍｅｍｉｒｕ Ｗａｋｕｓｅｉ (夢みる惑星)＞
(＊Spotify link to the full album)
CDJapan Affiliate Link(s):
Yumemiru Wakusei / Sayonara Ponytail
＜T ｒａｃｋｌｉｓｔ＞
０１・虹/niji
０２・パジャマの神さま/pajama no kamisama
０３・放課後てれぽ～と/houkago teleport
０４・フローティング・シティ/floating city
０５・さよなら夏の少年/sayonara natsu no shounen
０６・一瞬と永遠と/isshun to eien to
０７・ごめんね、わがまま言って/gomen ne, wagamama itte
０８・恋するAI/koisuru AI
０９・まわるあのコ/mawaru anoko
１０・わ～るど2/ world2
１１・さいごのやさしさ/saigo no yasashisa
１２・円盤ゆ～とぴあ/enban yutopia
Ａ ｌ : While I’ve only known about Sayonara Ponytail for the past few months or so, I think they’re definitely one of the more interesting groups I’ve come across. Not only because of how they present themselves visually (and their emphasis on hiding their real-life identities) but their vocal performances have been super enjoyable to listen to. All of the members within SayoPony have pretty unique and distinct voices from one another, and whether we hear them perform together as a group (“Houkago Teleport”) or a particular member’s vocals being showcased in a solo song (“Gomen ne, Wagamama wo Itte”)… the way that all these different vocal stylings and cadences are mixed together throughout this album felt really nice and even fresh at times.
And on top of that, many of the songs on Yumemiru Wakusei are fairly different from each other, with the added benefit of a wide range of instruments being heard throughout. From the fun, electro-pop vibe in “Floating City” to “World 2” and its more traditional rock sound to the gorgeous acoustic-based performance in “Saigo no Yasashisa”; while one may find these clashing genres and paces to be a bit much, I do think that Sayonara Ponytail maintains a pretty somber and modest tone within the majority of the songs on this album, which definitely makes it feel a lot more coherent and one that ends up being a pleasant record to put on.
＜Ｓｏｎｇｓ ｏｆ Ｉｎｔｅｒｅｓｔ＞
０３・放課後てれぽ～と/houkago teleport
To mix it up a little compared to how I usually start out my album reviews, I figured I wouldn’t talk about the first track of the album as I normally do, and we’ll instead hop on over to the third track here Houkago Teleport. The reason being that we find ourselves in a bit of a unique situation here in that this is actually a song that I featured on the Roundup all the way back in 2019 (you can actually see Al in the comments talking about how SayoPony might be a group he’d start to get into, and there we are now with Al recommending to me an album by them so we’ve definitely come full circle, lol). As such, I thought it’d be fun to revisit my thoughts from that time.
I mainly took note of two key things; the peculiar nature of the group being ‘faceless’ and their brand of ‘low blood pressure J-Pop’. With regard to the former; it’s interesting to think how nearly a decade ago that sort of disconnect that fans would feel from not being able to see the singer/s behind the song just isn’t a thing anymore following the rise of artists with a similar mysterious air about them in recent years. The latter statement that I made in particular however, I felt was an odd one for me to have made, especially after now having listened to the entirety of Yumemiru Wakusei, and I decided I’ll go ahead and expound further as to why over the course of this review.
０８・恋するAI/koisuru AI
The main thing that I wanted to address was how I inadvertently pigeonholed Sayonara Ponytail as having just one sound to them when in reality (and as would quickly be evident as you play through the album) that is far from the truth. Speaking at least within the songs found in Yumemiru Wakusei you are treated to a wider variety of styles than what you would’ve expected just from hearing Houkago Teleport alone. Something to note is that the album was worked on by five different composers, with each handling two of the twelve tracks that comprise the album, with the exception of Fukkun who works on three and Kuroneko who’s only credited for their work on the song World2.
Going back to styles real quick, what’s fascinating about Koisuru AI specifically, and why I chose to single it out here is that it’s performed in a style that wouldn’t be terribly out of place by today’s standards. This, along with the song being about AI and the concept of ‘machine learning’ (which is something that’s becoming increasingly relevant now more than ever), as well as the earlier notion too of being a ‘faceless’ music group before it was cool basically, made me think about whether or not SayoPony may have been just a liiiiittle ahead of their time with what they’re doing. I’m speaking as if 2017 was that long ago, but in Internet time that may as well be an eternity.
１１・さいごのやさしさ/saigo no yasashisa
In as much as Koisuru AI stood out like a sore thumb for me in terms of it feeling like a track that could’ve come out last week for all I know, I feel like Saigo no Yasahisa does something similar to it in being a song that’s just completely different from every other song on the album. I am of course referring to the fact that this is the only song on Yumemiru Wakusei that’s solely played with the acoustic guitar. I mean, yeah, you do have Gomen ne, Wagamama Itte a couple of tracks before this that’s also acoustic in nature, but that one came with other accompanying instruments whereas this track is just 100% all acoustic guitar from beginning to end.
While I do love me some acoustic guitar, that’s only part of the reason why this song (/spoiler) is actually my favorite from the album. The rest would be at around the 4:15~ mark where you just get this long, heart-rending instrumental break. I remember hearing it for the first time and I immediately felt like staring outside the window of the bus that I was riding on at the time and just… having a moment of reflection for myself (lol). In all seriousness though, I was and still continue to be moved by Saigo no Yasashisa as a direct consequence every time I hear it. Credit of course to SayoPony’s Miina as well for the equally heartful vocal performance.
１２・円盤ゆ～とぴあ/enban utopia
This is something that I’ve slowly come to realize about myself and my personal preferences the more albums I listen to over the years and the more reviews I do as part of the J-Music Exchange/Rate, and it’s that I find that I’m harder to please with a closing track than I am with an album opener. At the very least, I think there are much fewer times that I thought an album closer nailed it than the times where I felt it was a bit lacking. I mean, I guess before I talk about why I think Enban Utopia fits the bill well enough, I should first go over with you guys what I look for in a closer in the first place. In saying that though, I think this is actually where the ‘problem’ for me lies.
Like, I feel like the tail end of an album is a bit of a trap more often than not. A lot of this is just in the decision-making that goes into the arrangement of the tracks, where it’s almost always one of two things; either the album ‘dies down’ and you get a track with significantly less energy to send you off (which can totally work don’t get me wrong), or you get an Enban Utopia where the album just pops off one last time with a high energy banger. I’m personally more in the latter camp myself, and I like it a lot when the album saves its best song for last where it just sums up the last half hour or so you spent listening music. And hey, it even has its own nifty instrumental break!
＜Ｗｈａｔ Ｉ ｔｈｉｎｋ ｏｆ Ｙｕｍｅｍｉｒｕ Ｗａｋｕｓｅｉ＞
One thing that I noticed, the more I got to play through Yumemiru Wakusei over the course of writing this review is that the deeper into the album you go, the overall tone of the songs start to sound less less playful and dream-like to something a bit more serious and grounded in reality. It was then that I was also reminded of something that I had read about Sayonara Ponytail many years ago with regard to the unit’s name. Specifically, the passage talked about what ‘saying good bye’ (sayonara) to your ponytail actually meant, and that it might be a symbolic representation of a departure from adolescence. Thus, this album reflecting that in a way, I thought was pretty neat.
I wanted to bring focus to the progression of the album above all else, that is, going from the first track up to the last in sequence, as it dovetails with my main takeaway here. In particular I found that as the songs started to become less playful as I mentioned, the ‘better’ (in my opinion) or at the very least more enjoyable they got as well for me personally. Of course that’s not to say that the first half of the album isn’t already enjoyable to begin with; as aside from Houkago Teleport which I chose to feature (arguably the most popular song on Yumemiru Wakusei going by the numbers) I’m also fond of the album opener Niji for instance with its take on Electronic Rock.
I do attribute a lot of that to this auditory tonal shift that the album undergoes midway through, with songs like Sayonara Natsu no Shounen and Gomen ne, Wagamama Itte snapping you back to reality with its more grounded instrumentation and with the singing just a touch less played up than how it was just a little while ago at the start where, for a split second you’re kinda left wondering if you’re still in the same album or if you somehow got kicked out into a different one by a different group. But it’s still them, and for the rest of the time that you’re listening you’re now caught between this reverie of dream-like sounds and reality. Truly fascinating.
＜Ｍｙ Ｒａｔｉｎｇ＞
４.7５ ｏｕｔ ｏｆ ５
＆
９.５ ｏｕｔ ｏｆ １０
While I was a little bit surprised to find out after the fact that this release is largely treated by fans of SayoPony as one that got immensely overshadowed by the albums that come both before (the staggering three disc Enban Utopia) and after it (the better-received Kimi wa Boku no Uchuu), I would say that I think I see where they’re coming from. In as much as I enjoyed listening through Yumemiru Wakusei, I did have times where I had wished that more individual songs from it to be more memorable than they are, where I do admittedly find some of the tracks on here to be otherwise fairly forgettable, and is really the only thing that kept me from giving it a perfect score.
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What are your guys’ thoughts on Sayonara Ponytail’s Yumemiru Wakusei? Let us know down in the comments section below! 🙂
What’s funny is that this month just so happens to also be my birthday month so it does feel like I was given a gift here by getting an album that I ‘wanted’ in a sense 😀 I thought that was pretty neat, and in wanting to pay it forward, feel free to comment your guys’ Christmas/Secret Santa Japanese Music Wish List just like the one Al and I did down there too maybe we can try to fulfill it 😉
Before you guys go, don’t forget to check out Al’s review of Maison book girl’s yume if you haven’t yet done so.
Happy Listening!