Album Review: solosolo

Calling solosolo a tale of two albums might be an obvious point if it were no more than Ami and Yumi each get seven tracks as a showcase of their individual talents as vocalists. There is, however, more to this observation than that worn cliche.

Each half of solosolo also represents different styles of recording which carry over to subsequent albums; Think Jet or Nice versus Splurge or Bring it! as examples of production style. Ami uses a number of producers and collaborators and has a more western set of influences. Yumi's half is helmed by a single producer and a smalled group of collaborators. The end result is that Ami's half is the slightly stronger effort. Some of this is because Ami at this stage in Puffy’s history is more developed as an artist, yet lackluster production Yumi's half of solosolo is also notable.

While a double album split into solo halves is an interesting idea, solosolo is also an interesting album for another reason. Ami’s half was recorded before Puffy was formed. As to when… I would hazard that Ami recorded her half sometime in 1995. It was a shelved solo effort and Ami was in something of a fugue state within Sony Music until she met Yumi. Then as they say, the rest is history.

Solosolo is a great snapshot as to where Ami and Yumi were at as singers before Puffy’s breakout album Jet. Considering Ami’s half was recorded well before Puffy’s formation, it is evident that Yumi’s vocals were not nearly as developed as Ami’s. This surprised me, I had always thought they were very close in regards to talent in their early efforts.

It feels odd to split the review of solosolo into two parts; Ami’s and Yumi. However, both halves represent distinct works that happen to share a CD cover. Let's get to the music itself.

Disc One - Ami Onuki
Produced by Tamio Okuda (1), Velvet Crush & John Lupfer (2, 4 & 5), Andy Sturmer (3) ,Frank Simes (6) and Yoshiharu Abe (7)

1. Onnanoko Otokonoko (Okuda & Sturmer)
2. Love Depth (Onuki & Velvet Crush)
3. Honey (Onuki & Sturmer)
4. That's Sweet Smile (Onuki & Duffy)
5. Be Someone Tonight (Velvet Crush)
6. Snacks (Onuki & Simes)
7. Tadaima (Abe & Bevoir)

Onnanoko Otokonoko has a 70’s sound that would not feel out of place on, say, the soundtrack for Rushmore. It is a nice enough song but it is not one that sticks. This track in particular illustrates that Ami can simply do things vocally that Yumi cannot, particularly at this early stage. I will say Yumi over time has become a good singer but as shown on this track, Ami had such a head start via her performance and penning four of the seven tracks.

Love Depth… listening to the drums this sounds like a Mathew Sweet song, but as I discovered Ric Menck is the drummer and one of the artists credited for the music. The end of the song sounds exactly like something Matthew Sweet would have done at about the same time. I am on the fence about Love Depth. Given my own musical tastes there is a lot I should like, but it feels a little dated and defined by the mid 90's power pop scene rather than rising above it.

One of those songs I am not sure about is Honey. It is synth heavy and percussions are exceptionally weak, it may very well be a drum machine. As you will see in later reviews, I am hit or miss with Sturmer. I would say when he becomes too exacting the effort feels synthetic and I think Honey falls into that category. Ami’s vocals sound slightly washed out and Honey would have benefitted from emphasizing them more.

That’s Sweet Smile is a well delivered song wrapped in a slight pop throwback package. Like the previous track, That’s Sweet Smile is a slower paced song. Between the two I think this track is miles better. Again it demonstrates where Ami is at even before Puffy was formed.
Be Someone Tonight is an English song and delivers the power pop sound better than the previous confab with Velvet Crush. Ami’s vocals are mostly spot on though I think she sounded slightly flat in a couple parts. The instruments are well balanced against Ami's vocals and I think this is the best overall song on solosolo in regards to singing, music and production.

I would swear Snacks was a Shonen Knife song. Ami’s singing is strong and steady but not remarkable. The music is well played but the engineering is not good. I dislike the bouncing of sound between speakers in Snacks, it is hard to communicate this, it just annoys me when I listen to it.

Tadaima starts off sounding like the Gin Blossoms… I intensely dislike the Gin Blossoms, but then the song combines with an early 80’s ELO sound that makes me forget the part I disliked. Ami’s voice is so very clear and I think displays good range and energy. It is a good enough song that it would make a better Puffy song.

solosolo: Ami Grades
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Music: B+
Production: B
Performance: A-


Disc Two - Yumi Yoshimura
Produced by Tetsutaro Sakurai

1. Tennon no Bi (Sakei & Sakurai)
2. Tsuyoki no Hutari (Sakei & Sakurai)
3. Hanabi (Sakei & Sakurai)
4. V•A•C•A•T•I•O•N (Konishi)
5. Sorenarie (Suzuki)
6. Ai no Aura (Kuramochi)
7. Watashi no Nozomi (Suzuki)

Tennen no Beauty is a song that seems well timed musically, it has a grunge sound that compliments Yumi’s vocal delivery. There is nothing noteworthy about the instruments, which could have been a bit stronger, yet the slightly muted delivery does make room for Yumi, who especially in Puffy’s early days was overshadowed by Ami’s more developed sense of presence.
Tsuyoki na Furari the intro sounds like Yes merged with DEVO, but once Yumi starts in with her vocals another layer is added. It is a great song but the instruments again seem slightly muted and very, very recursive. Not that a looped sound is necessarily bad, but one of the things I have always admired in Puffy’s material is that the musicians have been given room to do their thing. In Tsuyoki na Furari it feels like a slightly phoned in effort.

Hanabi is poppy sort of song. The drums are nice, but it the synthesizers are a little think. Yumi’s vocal delivery is smooth right until she needs to go a little too high which really do not showcase Yumi very well. Hanabi is not really a song I care for, it is a style I am not inclined towards and Yumi’s range is tested and the result is mixed.

Next up V•A•C•A•T•I•O•N which is a fun song… and very much a beach blanket bingo throwback. I also like it because in the Fever*Fever concert footage it is perfectly used as a comic foil. Pizzicato five’s main man Yasuharu Konishi wrote the lyrics and music on the track, which gives it a wildly different sound than the other thirteen tracks on solosolo. I like V•A•C•A•T•I•O•N quite a bit, but I also have to be in the right mood for to fully appreciate it.

I think Yumi’s vocals are strong on V•A•C•A•T•I•O•N , but again when she needs to go high there are some issues but less so than Tsuyoki na Furari. I only note this because I am guessing Yumi received vocal training before Jet went into production, because from that point on she has no problem hitting notes and becomes the powerful vocalist between the duo.

Another fun but unremarkable song, Sorenarini . I thing the synthesizer part of the song does it no favors and is overbearing. Yumi is not displaying much range but her delivery is fine.

Ai no Auro has a 70’s sound at the start and drifts into a more pop sound. Yumi sounds like she is singing in a padded cave. The instruments are muted and the singing is a touch flat. Not a song a particularly care for in regards to styling or sound.

Watashi no Nozomi has a 70’s pop sound and unlike Ai no Auro I like this one by Yumi. Her vocals have more range and a softer touch to them. Some of this may be because she is harmonizing with herself, but it works.

solosolo: Yumi Grades
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Music: B
Production: C
Performance: B

Quick Update

Sorry for being quiet, several other writing projects decided to land on my desk and compiled with some real world things... It does not help that Puffy seems to be in a between albums fugue state.

Anyways I am working on my next couple of reviews and some of those conclusions might surprise you more than they surprised me. Or not... Who knows...

To keep you busy here is a TV appearance of a medley of their songs. Sung live which is a nice change. Nothing notable about the selection, more that I had not stumbled across this particular clip.

A Different Take On Puffy

Sorry I have been a little less than a blogging machine, other projects and events sidelined fun writing about Puffy. But fret not I have been jotting down notes for the next album reviews and once I start stitching them together I will post them up.

Anyways, today we have a guest blogger of sorts... my oldest daughter Ying who truly adores Puffy. So far as role models go, I could not pick out two better women in entertainment to look up to. They are humble, accomplished, funny and genuine.

I sat down with her this week and asked Ying what her favorite Puffy songs are right now. Usually she listens to whatever happens to be playing and but there are some she is more enthusiastic about than others. Today we agree on songs, tomorrow maybe not.

The first is Mother, which has consistently been her favorite to listen to since she was a really wee lass. Maybe it is the stop motion animation of the video or Ami and Yumi. This has always been on eof my favorites too.



The surprise selection was Jet Police, which she started liking after I started going through the Shibyua-AX concert footage. Normally she leans towards Yumi in all things Puffy, but this particular rendition of Jet Police she flips for Ami.



Lastly is Tokyo I'm On My Way... which she has been crazy about... Particularly the Tour 10 Final concert verison, or as she puts it Tokyo I'm On My Way with the pink and blue dress. She is particularly impressed with Yumi's attire.



An unexpected joy from listening to Puffy is that their music and videos are something my daughter and I can enjoy together. When I hear her make a request for a specific song or get irked I hit next to bypass a song she likes, it makes me smile.

The Places Puffy Led Me To

Puffy by themselves… soak up more time than I care to admit. When I sit down to listen to music it is good odds I will be listening to them. But Puffy is certainly not the only band I listen to regularly, but Puffy has afforded me the chance to discover more about a genre of music that I have come to greatly appreciate.... to the point of blogging about them and promoting them as serious artists.

Yet this article is not really about music I enjoy. Rather this is how I detoured into foolishness trying to find music inspired by my enjoyment of Puffy.

Not long after I discovered Puffy, I was combing YouTube and stumbled across a video for the song Harada Kinenbi, a multi-artist promotional effort for Sony’s Hit-n-Run label.
Speaking in generalities, I tend to hate group efforts, because they simply never seem to work. Harada Kinembi had been done the year before by Sony’s stable of stars and it was a complete train wreck of hack and pomposity… like We Are The World. The superb Lionel Ritchie could not have saved this one either.

What surprised me and tossed my musical sensibilities on their ear was that the 99 version of Harada Kinembi was dynamite! It is very well arranged and had a more humorous and playful undertone. It had a feeling that Sony’s talent was not shunted into a room and forced to kick out a song or be starved to death.




At this time my musical leanings were only beginning to shift to the east and while I was familiar with some of the artists in Harada Kinenbi, but there were many I knew nothing about that upon this first impression I knew I might like. I had to learn more about them.. One was the band The Wonder Soul Style, which is another blog... The other was a woman with dyed red hair and a stellar voice that merged beautifully with Ami and Yumi’s for a chorus. Google did not offer any pointers and I needed help.

As luck would have it, one thing I am not short of in life is associates who are fluent Japanese speakers. One e-mail to Dr. Doug and my question was answered. The singer in question was Izumi Tachibana. I had a name and I put Google went to work.

This is where I started to become grossly stupid.

Google tripped up Izumi Tachibana’s old website which redirected me to her new website. She had since married and changed her name. The site had a modest amount of information in English, but not enough to be useful. So I went to the Google well again…

One small problem however. I misread her new surname as Sakai and not Sakaki.

This one tiny mistake snowballed. There was a very well known Japanese singer named Izumi Sakai. Her back catalog had a number of albums that after mangled translations had very similar titles. As it turns out many Japanese artists have greatest hits albums with the moniker “Golden Best.” Izumi Sakai also had a very complete Wikipedia entry, which let me to what I thought was an unfortunite end.

Izumi Sakai passed away in 2007. While taking an early morning walk as a respite from chemotherapy treatments, Sakai suffered a head trauma after falling from an ambulance platform. Sakai had previously fought uterine cancer, but that had spread to her lungs. While Sakai’s doctors were encouraged with her treatments, due to this illness she had been on a hiatus. This chronologically corresponded with the hiatus that the singer who was really Izumi Sakaki. I closed the book on this line of investigation.

Fast forward a few months.

Something was not right. I intuitively knew I was wrong about all of this and it simmered in the back of my mind. One morning these thoughts boiled over and I went back and started looking into Izumi Tachibana again. It hit me that while there were parallels in these two performers… I had misinterpreted something.

An hour later, I put my hands were on my head. I had been wrong and I knew why: I had been intellectually lazy. I only looked at the things that were similar between these Izumis, not what was different.

What unraveled my patchwork research was that Izumi Sakai was the best selling female artist is Japan during the 1990’s and to this day Sakai remains one of the top five best selling female artist in Japan. Sakai was also eponymous with the Japanese band Zard, whom she was the only permanent member. Izumi Sakai only appeared on TV seven times. She was painfully shy, yet by all accounts kind and down to earth. Despite being wildly popular, she never received a single award for her work.

It is one thing to discover an artist and learn about them posthumously. It is another to discover them and grow with them. Together moving forward with their songs and forming a soundtrack for our life. I very much feel this about Puffy.

Yet this revelation is not completely sad. Izumi Sakaki (formerly Tachibana) is alive and well. Like The Wonder Soul Style she is no longer with Sony. While Izumi Sakaki went down a different path than the more famous artists who sang Harada Kinenbi she continues as working artist and has a good sized back catalog of her own.

The end result of all this is neither Izumi Sakai nor Izumi Sakaki appeal to my Japanese rock sensibilities. This was a lot of hard work for something that did not work out. That happens. Likewise I have found incredible artists like Puffy via effortless accident.

Without Puffy I also would not have found many artists that I also enjoy.

P.S. The Wonder Soul Style… they are my J-Rock Waterloo. I have liked everything I have heard from them. Which is precious little beyond Midbooster and Harada Kinembi… so if you know any more about them. Please get a hold of me.

Album Review: amiyumi

Good things can come in small packages… amiyumi is a great introduction to Ami and Yumi but it is either a long EP or a short album. I think an argument could be made for either. I consider it an album and I wish that I could have listened to in upon its release in 1996 rather than a number of years removed. Ami and Yumi’s voices are fresh and while they certainly have become better singers, there is something special that only happens once in a career, the beginning.

Technically this is Ami’s second album, her half of solosolo was (I believe) recorded before amiyumi… but combining with Yumi for Puffy marks the start of something special. Tamio Okuda produced amiyumi and this is another harbinger of things to come, the special musical relationship between him, Ami and Yumi. This is often stated by Puffy fans, but it is not hyperbole either. Without him, arguably Puffy would have become (...if anything at all) a footnote in j-pop.

In hindsight, amiyumi is a middle of the pack album in Puffy's catalog. That is no mean feat, many artists' first efforts are something they might be embarrassed by or prefer remain buried. Amiyumi is a good album and everything that is great about Puffy starts here and True Asia and Profitable Body remain high points for Puffy to this day.

For reference here is the track list for amiyumi, within the context of the review I will use the English title translations. I do not have any issue with using Japanese song titles and my reviews will shift back and forth. Part of my goal is to talk about Ami and Yumi and I think translated song titles might help reach a wider group of people.

1. Tokusuru Karada / Profitable Body (Lyrics & Music: Tamio Okuda)
2. Usagi Channel / Rabbit Channel (Lyrics: Ami Onuki & Tamio Okuda, Music: Tamio Okuda)
3. Sakura Saku / Cherry Blossom Blooms (Lyrics & Music: Tamio Okuda)
4. Simple (Lyrics: Puffy and Shinichi Yakuma & Music: Shinichi Yakuma)
5. Nagaiki Shite ne / I Want You to Live a Long Time (Lyrics: Yumi Yoshimura & Tamio Okuda, Music: Tamio Okuda)
6. Asia no Junshin /True Asia (Lyrics: Yosui Inoue, Music: Tamio Okuda)
7. Puffy no Hey! Mountain (Lyrics: Tamio Okuda & Puffy, Music: Tamio Okuda)

amiyumi opens with Profitable Body and it is a track in some ways I appreciate slightly more than True Asia. That may sound like heresy given True Asia is Puffy's signature song. I enjoy the guitar work and the recursive manner in which it is played, which is a consistent theme in the Puffy songs I like. The harmonizing that Ami and Yumi display in Profitable Body is wider ranging and showcases the "Puffy sound" better than any other track on amiyumi and puts the Puffy stamp on the album from the start.

Rabbit Channel, is the first of two solo tracks, Yumi’s follows later in the album and both have a throwback pop / lounge sound. It is a slower paced song and when translating lyrics it is also surprisingly silly. Of the two solo tracks Rabbit Channel is the better, if only because the engineering and instruments are better implemented. It feels like Okuda wanted to give Ami and Yumi similar songs as to not differentiate either too much and thus both sound similar in regards to style and pacing. Where Ami’s Rabbit Channel is a middling effort, the solo by Yumi misses the mark.

I Want You to Live a Long Time is a solo track by Yumi and is not a song a care for. I understand the throwback sound that she and Okuda were trying to replicate but it sounds awkward. The instruments do emulate a vague throwback which was interesting in theory, in practice the music is bland and the production over engineered to the point of sterility.

True Asia is inarguably the best song on amiyumi and arguably one of their best songs spanning 13 years of work to date. Guitars, drums, keyboards and vocals all tightly integrated in one declarative package wrapped with stellar sound engineering. I would say one subtle delight in True Asia is that drums, bass and keyboards are lead instruments and yet they are not overpowering. They are given a lot of range to roam but still give a solid foundation for Puffy’s singing. Every time I listen to True Asia I am mesmerized by it on so many levels.

Three tracks that fall just behind True Asia and Profitable Body are Puffy no Hey! Mountain Simple and Cherry Blossoms Bloom. The former is a slower paced interlaced with soul and funk, it is pleasant but not a distinctive track. Simple is a rocking alternative sounding track that is my third favorite track on amiyumi. It has nice energy and showcases a wide vocal range from Ami and Yumi. Cherry Blossoms Bloom is a nice song with with a vague western vibe to it. I find it listenable but it is not a track I gravitate towards either.

Amiyumi is an album that is a harbinger for things to come. Unlike many early efforts by a band, amiyumi is a good album in its own right. Ami and Yumi deliver a sound that can only be experienced and I wish I would have started with this album and been able to experience two of my favorite albums that follow closely on the heels of amiyumi. Talking about those are a subject for later review.

Final Grades
Music: A
Production: B+
Performance: B