i had a conversation with one of the guitarists from anamanaguchi the first time i saw them, at the saw gallery in ottawa, some time in 2011 or 2012. the opening act that night, fwiw, was supposed to be moon king, but they couldn't make it up the 401 and 416 due to the blizzard. so, it was during the winter of 2011-2012....

they weren't selling alcohol at club saw at the time, so i had to run across to avant-garde to take some shots during the extreme animals set.

i actually wasn't excited about moon king anyways - as a spiral beach fan, i found the material to be a move backwards and in the wrong direction. to take things full circle, i saw spiral beach open for the white stripes at the bluesfest in 2007 (and also at zaphod's....i think, twice). i was more impressed by airick's stuff with doldrums. i digress.

we had a brief talk about guitar tone, and i pointed out that i'd really like to hear the band take it to the next level regarding the psych guitars - for them to jump from doubling the 8-bit parts to actually harmonizing with them. i was expecting him to agree with me, but he shot me down rather harshly. he was actually more interested in taking the band in a more quintessentially japanese direction, and suggested i should expect them to do less chiptune and more j-pop.

"like ymo?", i suggested. meekly.

"no. poppier than that..."

so, i found myself disappointed in the second record, but not surprised by it. they were broadcasting the point. i saw them in a larger bar in ottawa in early 2013, but left them behind at that point due to artistic differences. i didn't have a lot of interest in the direction they were going in.

the new record is more mature than their last one, there's no question about that. this is certainly a giant leap forwards. i bet they even used a 64-bit recording module. think about that - it's anamanaguchi^2. in all seriousness, it's not a fair comparison, but i'm not sure their audience is going to follow them down this path. and, i'm certainly not going to have the same kind of fun dancing to this that i did dancing to my skateboard will go on, while fucked up on vodka in the dank basement of an art gallery in the middle of the winter.

rather, this would be more of interest to fans of generalized millennial faux indie rock, like imagine dragons. it's only a tad more punk than that, and a tad more trance than it, too. there's bits of, like, 65dos in the ambiance. but, the only traces of 8-bit that remain are gimmicks.

that said, if you like that style, you might consider this top notch because it kind of actually is, relatively speaking. in a relative sense, it blows imagine dragon out of the water....but it still kind of just blows, in an absolute sense.

have fun, kids. i'm going to check something else out...

https://anamanaguchi.bandcamp.com/album/usa