Spitz covers, once in a lifetime
The best kind of albums are the ones you rediscover. You know, the one that catches your eye months after you buy the damn thing on a whim, play it, think “not bad,” and then pull it from heavy rotation because you just bought Go!Go!7188’s “Gyotaku” and it’s demanding your attention right now, like a noisy toddler with a talent for electric guitar. I mean, not that this happened to me. I’m just saying.
Returning to the matter at hand, we will be discussing such a rediscovery today. The album is a compilation of Spitz covers, titled “Sweets for my Spitz—Ichigoichie.” “Ichi Go Ichi E” is one of those damnable four-character kanji compounds. It means, “A meeting that comes once in a lifetime.”
Perhaps this implies that this is the only time such a compilation will be produced, and that, readers, is a crying shame.
I bought it because of the impressive list of artists. Tamio Okuda. Mayumi Kojima. Yumi Matsutoya. Ringo Shena, for god’s sake. Essentially, we have a bunch of musicians with cred and talent to spare covering songs by arguably the finest pop tunesmith in Japan.
It’s like a CD-shaped grenade, and when it goes off, it splatters the room with melody.
Track 1 sees Her Majesty Ringo covering “Spica” with her typical noisy art-rock aplomb. That same Ringoesque noise that can be offputting works to great effect with thrown at Spitz, because their melodies are so succulent that throwing a little bit of electric production salt on them only improves the overall experience. Plus, I mean, Ringo Shena. She also uses a lead bass guitar in the arrangement, which makes me hot.
“Kaede” is one of my all-time favorite Spitz songs, and Yuming performs an effortless jazz-groove version of it. Some of the wistfulness of the original is lost with the understated funk of Matsutoya’s version, but her particular vocal quality makes up for it. The drum and bass work on this track is also excellent.
A group or artist that I’ve never heard of called “Gendouki” performs a version of “Aoi Kuruma” that I like far better than the original. That’s all I have to say about that. Similarly, Tamio Okuda’s rendition of “Umeboshi” makes the song so much his that I almost can’t believe it’s originally Spitz’s. And you can’t argue with those lyrics: “I want to eat a pickled plum, and I’m very lonely, and I want to see you right now.”
The song that summarizes this album perfectly is POLYSICS’ cover of “Cherry,” which I initially hated. The original is a fine Spitz tune, bouncy and nostalgic all at once. So imagine, if you will, that The Postal Service joined forces with the Utena Rock Opera to cover this song. And say, just for argument’s sake, that they got The Bad Plus to arrange it for them. That’s kind of what you get in this 6-minute sonic freight train of fuzzy guitars, arpeggiators run amuck, and general madness. The brilliant, epic kind of madness.
In summation, I have learned two things from this album. First, I need to find more POLYSICS—50cc’s, intravenously, stat. Secondly, based on Ringo Shena’s work on this album and Kusano Masamune’s work on her cover of “Haiiro no Hitomi” on the “Utaite Myori” cover album, the two need to put out an album together. They have a responsibility. World peace in our time.