It was a family weekend here at Maniac Mansion, and you know what that means: Finding creative ways to avoid spending so much time with people to whom you are only tenuously related by law! Despite outdoor temperatures being in the triple digits, I took it upon myself to heroically do yard work and some maintenance tasks, and in so doing flipped on the ol’ Soundcloud app, and in so doing saw that PIIIIIIIN had recently uploaded a couple of songs that managed to escape notice, and of course they were listened to with great interest:
This one sounds a ton like what petit pas! just released en masse on their Refrain album. If it’s the general direction of idol rock, I’m very okay with that — all the energy of a great punk song without having to actually be a punk song or flirt too much with tropes of -core and/or metal sounds. I don’t think it’s the same as the song here, though they’re similar, no?
Just to let the cat out of the bag, you may have noticed a rather familiar style to these compositions and not just because of what I said about “You & I,” and there’s good (somewhat intriguing!) reason for that: Those songs were composed by Matsukuma Kenta of SCRAMBLES/BiS/BiSH/etc. fame, with lyrics by WACK (BiS/BiSH/GANG PARADE/etc.) manager Watanabe Junnosuke. In this case, you have the Matsukuma piano ballad that may as well be the dude’s signature, this song reminding me heavily of the latest from Billie Idle.
The shop may have made its name with BiS and associated acts, but plenty of idol groups work with SCRAMBLES nowadays, so it’s not like PIIIIIIIN is going over to the dark side — JxSxK is too into adult themes to want to explicitly mess with high school talent — but I like the idea of a bigger footprint for this kind of post-idol style of songwriting.
Oh, I never expected to see PiiiiiiiN on here. Good thing though!
Although I follow the group strongly I still personally prefer their earlier output. The newer songs sound too weak, or rather average.
That’s been a little bit of a trend it seems. PassCode toned it down for their last album, for instance. Management sees yen signs and figures there’s good crossover appeal, so they seek to please an ever-wider audience. Kind of universal, unfortunately.
Well, the kawaii factor still is in high regard, it seems. PASSPO is a good example.
Though there are worse options than kawaii girls 😉
That second song really does sound like it came out of the same session as the (superior) Billie Idle session
song*. Billie Idle song. It’s 1 o’clock in the morning.
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