Today is January 6th, celebrated by many as the feast of Epiphany, commemorating the time when the Three Kings from the East brought gifts of Gold, Frankenstein and Meh to the God-cub Jesus, asleep in the hay. And today you, dear reader, get to feel two-thirds as special as the Holy Baby, for Two Queens from the East now shower you with two valuable presents.
I’m trying to think of a particular single idol release in the past couple of months that I’ve waited so pointedly and specifically and hopefully for than the new album from Kaishin no Ichigeki. Ever since sort of bringing them back into the fold, I’ve kept them high on my notifications list because I have this feeling that (2020 Best Ofs aside) they’re due for a significant move, or at least play for one, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to miss it.
They’ve been teasing a new album for a while now, with short MV trailers even, and I freely admit that I got myself extremely hype for this one. Did I squee when it dropped this morning? Maybe.
Potential bonus: Titled after a significant foodborne toxin?
It really was sad to hear that WILL-O’ is disbanding in a month’s time. They’re carriers of a hell of an idol legacy reaching back to when the loud stuff was pretty much just a chika thing, and chika idol culture hadn’t (to my knowledge, at least) been nearly as mainstreamed as it would be over the ensuing years. Fittingly they have all the hallmarks of a major group writ just a little bit smaller, with great polish and delivery on the kind of songs that most units wouldn’t have wanted to touch a decade ago. WILL-O’ masters that juxtaposition and makes it work for them.
Anyway, digressions and all, the point is that WILL-O has a month of life left, but on Christmas day dropped a whole album of re-recorded material:
【本日リリース】
WILL-O'
Pack TRACKS現体制メンバーで再録した全17曲を収録
★iTunes、YouTube Music、Spotifyほか主要配信サイトにて順次配信開始！https://t.co/95MLHIOstE#WILL_O pic.twitter.com/XhOFTJByAl
— WILL-O' #WILL_O (@WILLO_info) December 24, 2020
With a couple of new singles thrown in to boot! Continue reading
Cal’s favorite singer, Aina the End of BiSH fame, has always had at least a few toes in other musical waters. Her early solo work, which I do encourage you to check out, shows a young woman who can do just about anything she’d want to. Her more recent material, which I kind of regret only half-mentioning in passing in the Weekender a little while ago (but here you go), is great at showing off her chops; her first full studio album, THE END, is out in February, but she released the first single from it yesterday. Friends, we must do everything we can to protect this gift to humanity.
When everything’s coming up roses … We’ve been waiting with all the patience of a sugar-addled kindergartner for the STRIVE album’s release (just a few more days!), and PassCode first chooses to whet our appetite by announcing that they’re striving for Budokan, which isn’t so much a strive as a done deal but you gotta do the Road To homework I guess, and now after plenty of teasing we finally get to experience the MV for “SPARK IGNITION”:
Don’t watch it here, though; click through so you can take part in the live chat with the members!
Well, folks, I’d been licking my lips at the prospect of new PassCode stuff to show off and get excited about since their latest major album is right around the corner, but we simply must pre-empt our own posting for this off-the-charts awesome announcement. PassCode’s on the road to Budokan!
【お知らせ】
2022年2月12日(土)
日本武道館遂に開催決定！https://t.co/1kJFi7uNgp
12/23発売のメジャー3rd AL「STRIVE」を携え、
「"STRIVE" for BUDOKAN Tour 2021」開催決定！
只今よりLinkageにて先行開始!!https://t.co/gCYmt0LIIO#PassCode_武道館#PassCode_STRIVEForBudokan pic.twitter.com/XANJKVKpNw— PassCodeオフィシャル (@passcodeO) December 18, 2020
I love everything about this moment. PassCode was on such an ascent, hung in through some challenges, and have just kept building prominence among fans across a pretty significant spectrum of musical interests. This album is, I’m sure, going to be quite good, and yeah there’ll be a hyperventil-y post about it in no time, probably. But the album … who cares about the dang album! PassCode’s doing Budokan, man. That’s just so cool. I hope Yuna screams a literal hole in space-time and nothing ever happens again because reality simply ceases to exist (somewhere right in the middle of “TRACE”, preferably).
Sounds like a good time for the end of the universe to me.
At first thought, when I saw this in my list of good Weekender things, I had no more intention of doing anything else with this QUEENS MV than to do exactly that, feel good about my choices, and move on with my life. But then I recalled the last time I had occasion to celebrate QUEENS in such a way, which in retrospect felt like I was giving them short shrift for no good reason, so I opted to listen to the whole thing:
And friend, I am both very super into this song, but it also made me wonder — is QUEENS pretty much the best thing right now, or what? Continue reading
The unyielding mess that is human existence in this the Year of Pour Lui 2020 has given us some nice things, you must admit. People liked “Tiger King,” you know? And I used the personally got a bunch of things in order, started working on some cool projects that will hopefully bear fruit soon, got some new toys. Good stuff. On the idol front, despite everything, 2020 has ably followed the every-even-numbered-year-has-lots-of-great-debuts trend, and without saying what they are I’ll say that a few records have even entered my all-time idol top 10, which is very cool. Good things are indeed afoot.
And speaking of good things and all-time favorites, let’s check in on one of the chika scene’s greats and …
❤️Official Album Trailer公開❤️
２＆ -「 2 」Tracklist:
未来を
ドリーム
リアル
片眼のLiliy
限界圧縮人形
○の理論
兎の奴隷とカシオペア
ポッピングシャワーの雨
間違いダラけ
ちっぽけヒーロー
人間模様
ダサいfalsetto
ネガポジmonster(2020 ver)▼Full verhttps://t.co/9RwqSQuCW1 pic.twitter.com/Wfchmt79Mu
— 千歳さき (２＆) (@DOUBLE_AND) October 28, 2020
I share this with the caveat that Saki has technically not been one of those idol things in quite some time. Does that bother us? Absolutely not! Have I delivered this same spiel before? Probably! Does it matter? No! Let’s listen to the dang thing! Continue reading
It’s been a while since Homicidols Dot Com was like the super-timeliest thing in idol. That’s okay! Frankly, the Content(TM) is usually better nowadays, what with adequate time to digest the source and have more nuanced reactions than “aw gee ain’t idol swell!” But this is new territory, I think, for the release I’m referring to is both officially like a month old but also itself pretty much a year in the making even at that time, and basically only happens/ed that way because of a great personal disappointment in the Idolverse. Continue reading
