Hello, old friend.

What is up everybody? 😀 And welcome back once again to yet another installment of the J-Music Exchange/Rate! If you already know the ropes you’d know to skip ahead this next paragraph, BUT if this is actually your first time here on the blog and you’re not quite sure what this is exactly ー

The Exchange/Rate is a monthly album review series conducted by yours truly alongside my good friend and fellow Japanese music fan Al (from Omunibasu). Each month we decide on a specific theme with which our reviews would revolve around. We then pick out albums from our respective libraries that we think best coincides with that theme. We will then give the album we chose to the other person and vice versa (exchange), after which we then listen to and subsequently review the album we got (rate). This project has not only allowed us to explore music beyond our libraries, but it provides an opportunity for us to potentially see our favorite albums in a new light. It is our hope that this series is able to do the same for you and that you either find a new artist to try out and/or we offer you a new perspective on one of *your* favorite albums 😀

As I mentioned, Al and I take turns on who gets to pick the theme for the month’s album reviews, and for the month of March the ball is back again in my court. Now, last year we did something fun for the series’ third year anniversary, where we spun a wheel to determine which album we’d be reviewing. We decided afterwards that we would allow ourselves to do more wheel-based prompts in future Exchange/Rate album reviews, so… here’s one from me (XD). Let me introduce you to the Release Years wheel!

It’s pretty straightforward for the most part. Each wedge here represents a year (from 2020 all the way back to 2010). Based on what we land on, we then can only pick out albums that came out that year within our respective libraries. I actually mulligan‘d my own spin as Al and I both agreed it was an awkward year to settle on, so I deferred the re-spin to Al who went and spun for us:

2017! I wasn’t doing the Monthly Recommendation Roundup yet around this time, where the blog’s main focus was me translating Love Live! seiyuus (mostly Aida Rikako’s) magazine interviews with some song translations on the side and even a little bit of ani-blogging still.

In the years since I’ve also gone back and listened to albums that came out this year which I didn’t get a chance to when they came out, one of which being my pick for this month’s Exchange/Rate: BAND-MAID’s full album debut Just Bring it (check out Al’s review over at Omunibasu!). On the other hand, Al’s pick for me ends up being an album by a band that I was *very* much aware of during this year as you can see here:

Time to take a trip down memory lane 😛

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POLKADOT STINGRAY (ポルカドット・スティングレイ) is a four-member Japanese Rock band hailing from Fukuoka, Japan. The band consists of SHIZUKU (Vo., Gt.), Ejima Harushi (Gt.), Uemura Yuki (Ba.), and Mitsuyasu Kazuma (Dr.). Their major label debut EP “Ichidaiji”, under Universal Sigma (a subsidiary of Universal Music Japan), charted for sixteen consecutive weeks upon its release in May of 2018, where it would peak at #4 on the Oricon charts.

＜Ｚｅｎｃｈｉ Ｚｅｎｎｏｕ (全知全能)＞
(＊Spotify link to the full album)

CDJapan Affiliate Link(s):
Zenchi Zenno [Regular Edition] / Polkadot Stingray
Zenchi Zenno [w/ DVD, Limited Edition / Hajimete no Boken Pack] (NOT incl. external bonus) / Polkadot Stingray

＜T ｒａｃｋｌｉｓｔ＞

０１・テレキャスター・ストライプ/telecaster stripe (Zenchi Zennou ver.)
０２・BLUE
０３・人魚/ningyo (Zenchi Zennou ver.)
０４・フレミング/fleming
０５・エレクトリック・パブリック/electric public (Zenchi Zennou ver.)
０６・サレンダー/surrender
０７・夜明けのオレンジ/yoake no orange (Zenchi Zennou ver.)
０８・顔も覚えてない/kao mo obetenai
０９・ジェット・ラグ/jet lag
１０・シンクロニシカ/synchronisica
１１・極楽灯/gokurakutou
１２・ショートショート/short short
１３・レム/rem
１４・ポルカドット・スティングレイ/polkadot stingray (Zenchi Zennou ver.) *CD exclusive

Ａ　ｌ　: Fun fact: Zenchi Zenno was actually the very first album I ever reviewed during my on-going blogging journey. I was 17-years-old and had no clue on how to properly talk about music, but all that didn’t matter since I just felt the need to share my thoughts on an album that I thoroughly enjoyed (and actually bought, lol), from a band that I fell in love with at the time. Sure, now looking back at that review, it’s pretty rough in quality and lacks a lot of substance but I could tell that I really, really wanted to showcase every single song from that record to anyone who stumbled upon that post, simply because of how good they all were. And fast forward six years later, I honestly think Zenchi Zenno still holds up to this day.

While I don’t want to sound like some sort of old head or hipster, I do believe that this album probably highlights my favorite ‘era’ of Polkadot Stingray’s music. Definitely not implying that their newer stuff have deviated too far from their initial sound from 2017-2018, but whenever I think about this band and their music, the songs from this specific album frequently do come to mind. The re-recordings of past releases/classics like “Telecaster Stripes”, “Ningyo” and “Synchronisica” serve as great reminders of where PDSR started as a band, but the original releases on this album absolutely hold their own, with a handful of them also being some of my all-time favorite tracks from this band. “Fleming” is proof that this band can create more somber and relaxing tracks; “Surrender” gives off a very cool and mysterious vibe that keeps you on your toes; while the differing paces and random yelling in “Kao mo Oboetenai” makes it a really strange-yet-fun track to listen to. All while beautifully showcasing things like Harushi’s incredible skill with the guitar and Shizuku’s memorable vocal performances… I love this album so much, since it means a lot to me as a blogger and as a fan of Japanese music/rock. The amount of bangers it has is still crazy to think about, even to this day, and I’m just glad it’s finally getting the Exchange/Rate treatment.

Think it’s also cool to mention that Zenchi Zenno and PDSR were some of the first things that Leap and I bonded over, which kinda did help start our friendship back in early 2018, so… in a way, this album does hold some added sentiment.

＜Ｓｏｎｇｓ　ｏｆ　Ｉｎｔｅｒｅｓｔ＞

０１・テレキャスター・ストライプ/telecaster stripe (Zenchi Zennou ver.)
In… not so typical Exchange/Rate fashion, I’m gonna have to unfortunately start out this album review with me voicing out a bit of a disappointment I have with Zenchi Zennou. One that I have long carried with me pretty much since the album first came out, and that is, this re-recording of Telecaster Stripe; *the* song that put POLKADOT STINGRAY on everyone’s radar. The album actually does this for all of the band’s previously released A-side tracks, and in hindsight I do wonder if this is where my aversion from album remixes (somewhat of a recurring theme for me) originated from. Granted, I would like to point out that I don’t think all the “Zenchi Zennou ver.” song re-recordings are bad, and if anything most of them are *technically speaking* better versions of their originals in terms of them being more polished-sounding than their original counterparts. That being said, Telecaster Stripe (Zenchi Zennou ver.) has the unique distinction of being a song that “lost” something with its re-recording rather than gain something from it.

If I had to put into words what that “something” is, I would say it’s the song’s charm. It should take you only a couple of listens to notice the difference between the original recording (linked above) and the re-recorded version, with one of the more glaring changes done to it is made in the opening line of the song. This is a change that persists for the entirety of the song (as well as in the other song re-recordings) and it’s the dialing back of SHIZUKU’s raspy singing. Now, of course, I can think of a handful of *good* reasons why she shouldn’t have been doing it as often as she did in the original recording (with the preservation of her vocal health being one of the main reasons), but it gave her singing a TON of character and Telecaster Stripe became that much more memorable because of it. Not so much in the re-recorded version. The band also started using a different guitar effector in the re-recording that trades guitarist Harushi’s gritty-sounding riffs to crunchier and cleaner-sounding ones which… I don’t mind too too much.

０６・サレンダー/surrender
Now that we’ve ripped the Band-Aid of regarding the album re-recordings (though I will circle back to this later in my closing thoughts), we can now proceed to talk about some of the other songs featured on the Zenchi Zennou, starting with Surrender here. This song is… interestingly placed in the album in my opinion, specifically with regard to both the songs that come before it as well as after. What do I mean by that? Well, as an experiment I want you guys to go back and look at the track list real quick; take out all the (Zenchi Zennou ver.) songs and focus on the album originals before listening to the album again from the first track to the last. Should you have done so, you’ll very quickly notice that there’s actually a very distinct shift in both tone and mood that happens midway through the album once you get through Surrender and the next song that I’ll be talking about, Kao mo Obetenai.

Before I get to that though, I wanna first go over POLKADOT STINGRAY’s sound, particularly when they first started out compared to the songs you’ll hear on the latter half of Zenchi Zennou. See, I was lucky enough to catch wind of the band right as they started to peak in popularity (I actually featured the band in one of the first write ups I ever made about Japanese music here on blog back in 2016 when Telecaster Stripe only had something like 10K views on it; hence why I dubbed them as “underheard”… boy are those days gone), and reading back on stuff that I wrote about the band, I notably describe their earlier offerings as weird and rambunctious (lol). To put it more succinctly, what I was trying to express was that POLKADOT STINGRAY used to really just used to tow the line of edgy Alt Pop/Rock hard, both with their image and in their music (hence too the comparisons fans had between them and Tokyo Jihen, specifically SHIZUKU and the great Sheen Ringo). The key words here though are “used to”.

０８・顔も覚えてない/kao mo obetenai
Despite it being the most memorable part of the album (at least for me personally) I don’t treat Kao mo Obetenai as a proper song as I consider it more of an interstitial track that bridges the first half of the Zenchi Zennou to its second half. However, I do think this purpose that it serves for the album does warrant to be talked about, especially too considering what we’ve been going over so far with regard to the change in POLKADOT STINGRAY’s sound. I did also mention that this track alongside Surrender marks a shift in both tone and mood in the album from here on out. That is to say (and now that you have some sort of idea what to expect), this is the last time in the album where you get to hear them be weird, rambunctious, or really have any semblance at all to how they were before.

The “official” English translation for Kao mo Oboetenai (at least going by how YouTube and Apple Music lists it as) is “I Don’t Remember At All”, but a more literal translation of it is “/even the *face* [I/you] don’t/can’t remember/”. If I were to refine that with some nuance based on what the song is about (links to Zuihitsu for a translation of the lyrics), it would more or less instead be something like “I don’t/can’t even *recognize* you”. I thought this was an interesting line given the context of what we’ve discussed so far, where at the extreme you can say it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts; with the POLKADOT STINGRAY of the first half of the album (representing their “old” sound) becoming “unrecognizable” from the POLADOT STINGRAY that can be found in the second half of the album (representing their “new” sound going forward).

１３・レム/rem
But what *is* this supposed “new” sound of POLKADOT STINGRAY? Well, it’s not too dissimilar to the thing that eventually happens to most bands and artists who do break into the mainstream, and that’s develop what I and a lot of others have taken to calling a “radio-friendly” Pop-leaning sound. I mean, for the most part it does make sense to go down this route. Going against the grain can be quite the gamble, where it’s much safer to just *not* tow the line of weird and rambunctious as much anymore, and for POLKADOT STINGRAY specifically that meant no more raspy singing from SHIZUKU and an overall cleaner instrumentation from the band.

I thought it fitting to pick out Rem here out of all the other songs featured on the second of Zenchi Zennou, with it pretty much being *the* flagship song of the album (with the whole hair dryer thing and all that which you also see on the album cover). I also think it’s a good representation of the band’s move towards being more Pop and less edgy Alt. Rock, where you can hear really the things that I was talking about earlier too with how everything just sounds much more polished and refined, SHIZUKU leaning towards being more melodic with her singing as opposed to going for crowd-pleaser moments like when she does her rasp (I mean, Exhibit A right her-), and on the whole it just looks and feels much more catered to the general public as opposed to something like Ningyo for example. I mean, c’mon the PV for Rem is one big advertisement for Suntory Water. Granted, it’s not as if Japan doesn’t opt for the weird ad every now and again, but I digress.

＜Ｗｈａｔ　Ｉ　ｔｈｉｎｋ　ｏｆ　Ｚｅｎｃｈｉ Ｚｅｎｎｏｕ＞

Those of you who have been following my musings on Japanese music (whether on the monthly Roundups or even much earlier when I first started talking about J-music here on the blog) would know that POLKADOT STINGRAY is an example that I give whenever I talk about bands and/or artists changing their sound once they’ve signed with a major record label. They are a band that readily come to mind for that just because of how clearly you can tell that a change did in fact occur from when they were still in the indie scene compared to when they started to break into the mainstream. That being said however, part of me also does feel that maybe the “shift” in the band’s sound ended up just being emphasized a bit more for me, and I imagine for a lot of people too who were fans of their earlier work and had waited in anticipation for their debut album… mainly because of the re-recordings of their older songs found in it.

I know, I know, I keep harping on them (I do wonder too if this is where my aversion to remixes in albums actually originated, lol) and I do know this isn’t entirely uncommon thing to do, but I think in this specific instance, this is where the Zenchi Zennou sort of underdelivers in a way. Now that do I mean by that. Well, for starters, I would like to reiterate that I don’t think that the Zenchi Zennou versions are inherently bad. Like, barring Telecaster Stripe, I actually think they’re generally pretty good: Ningyo (Zenchi Zennou ver.) brings the bass a bit more forward compared to its original version, giving it a darker and deeper sound which suits it tremendously well; Yoake no Orange (Zenchi Zennou ver.) has a much cleaner recording without all the noisy fuzz that it had when it first came out; and although a CD only exclusive, Polkadot Stingray (Zenchi Zennou ver.) is a full on acoustic rendition of the song which is an audible treat for the ears. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with them individually from purely a music perspective.

What I’m saying though is… we could have also just waited to do all this. Granted, Yoake no Orange and Polkadot Stingray are understandable because they’re literally from the band’s first ever release and thus really appreciated a better studio recording, but did we really have to re-record Electric Public when it came out not that long before Zenchi Zennou dropped? I already shared my thoughts on Telecaster Stripe which is still a song I reckon they shouldn’t have even touched anyway, same with Synchronisica albeit to a lesser extent. The point I’m trying to make is Zenchi Zennou would have been a perfectly fine release and arguably even a more endearing one (especially looking back) if it retained those original versions. Re-working these songs, and having them coincide with the band’s departure from their more indie Alt/Rock style to a more Pop/Rock approach really just gives you this feeling that the intended purpose of this album is to reintroduce POLKADOT STINGRAY to a much broader audience complete with a new sound and image, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, I do think there wasn’t any real need to reimagine these songs to go along with it.

＜Ｍｙ　Ｒａｔｉｎｇ＞

３.７５ ｏｕｔ ｏｆ ５

＆

７.５ ｏｕｔ ｏｆ １０

Like I always say in cases similar to this, if you have a preferred version of a song by a band or artist, you’re free to always just listen to that (outside of any weird restrictions like the song only being available on the physical release of the album), though it’s always a shame to have to do so if you’re like me and you always just listen to whole albums at a time as opposed to listening to tracks piecemeal. Because of that I do have to dock some points from Zenchi Zennou, as the decision to re-record basically all their A-sides for this album has and always will be weird one for me personally *only because* said versions didn’t click with me as much. Despite everything I said, the album is solid and well-produced. For what it’s worth I do admittedly very much prefer the earlier half of it over the latter, with Electric Public in particular being an eternal favorite of mine.

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What are your guys’ thoughts on POLKADOT STINGRAY’s Zenchi Zennou? Lemme know down in the comments section down below! Likewise, let us know *your* favorite albums from 2017! Al actually wrote his own review for Zenchi Zennou back right around when it came out, so if you wanted to know what he thought of it at the time, go ahead and check it out here!

Before I let you go; don’t forget to check out Al’s review of BAND-MAID’s Just Bring It over at Omunibasu! It’s a banger and a half 😉

Happy Listening!