Early in 2024, I heard a Japanese indie pop song that I loved. I may have lost it forever, but while trying to find it again, I stumbled upon the Japanese indie-pop genre “neo-acoustic”. The torch-bearer of neo-acoustic appears to be Advantage Lucy. They have two albums on streaming, and much more if you dig a little.
This song “Citrus” kicks off with guitar that invokes Beat Happening, and turns into it’s own song. Their album Fanfare is full of songs that touch on twee and dream-pop. If you know the music I listen to, you know I was instantly hooked. A lot of their output was in the late 1990’s, and considered the tail end of Shibuya-kei.
Shibuya-kei is Shibuya style, or, artists from and distributing in Shibuya, a ward in Tokyo. There were, and style are, a lot of music shops, so they had room to distribute local music. One of the first Shibuya-kei groups was Flipper Guitar, who mixed some lounge, orchestra, and French hints with rock to make flashy, fun, tunes in the early 90’s. Their album Camera Talk has been in heavy rotation.
Flipper’s Guitar was mainly two guys; Keigo Oyamada would go on to make records as Cornelius, including the brilliant Fantasma. It hits on the computer music of Kraftwerk, with some hip hop and spoken word samples, and some straight up rock songs. 1997’s Fantasma evolved from Flipper’s Guitar and that original Shibuya-kei sounds, but it’s considered an achievement of the genre. Cornelius is still working, performing a Tiny Desk Concert a few years ago.
There are plenty of other big Shibuya-kei groups, like the Pizzicato Five, and the influence spread outside of Japan, but I think these three are a fun place to start!
I started writing this post right after my long season post last year, but just finished now. If you have any other related faves let me know!