Itsuro Shimoda - Love Songs and Lamentations (2012)

The first work released in 1973 "Love Songs and Lamentations" should be a staple in '70s folk. Itsuro Shimoda's voice is akin to a Japanese Neil Young - hauntingly melancholy and saturated by a prolonged wistful lilt.

The first track opens with repeated acoustic guitar chords that convey a hopeful intimacy alongside the thumping rhythm of simplistic but infectious bongos. With peaked interest you are thrust into a powerful wave of built-up noise driven by a perceived passion for the song itself. This marks a significant beginning to an irreplaceable listening experience.

Song two seems somewhat of a bench-warmer in this album; it portrays itself as uncharacteristically playful, somewhat out of place but not necessarily unwelcome. As though a fire's ember, it is only placed accordingly to light up the darkness to come.

A jolting, haunted performance is presented in song three. Bongos and upright bass introduce it in a ‘Journey in Satchidananda'-esque style: the loping bongos maintain your interest and the bass thickly, decadently resonates through the beginning as it builds to a stellar oral performance. The ambient acoustic guitar is paired beautifully with back up vocals, adding an ethereal element that becomes absolutely essential by the third track. Imagining breathing the same life into the album without the lustful echoes would seem almost impossible. 'みんな誰でも' becomes one of the most substantial tracks on the album, significant for it's ability to produce illustrious imagery. It sounds like Ayahuasca in the Nevadan Desert, like smelling the scent of a raging fire whilst fearing the coyotes that howl at the moon.

From the transition to song four from three, you can feel the emptiness left behind by the prior culmination of effortless harmony. The only true significance to song four is the imprint that the former track leaves vibrating in the air. While the following records are enticing and show high levels of instrumental merit and enjoyable artistry, they do not pack the same emotional punch as tracks one and three. Something to play during a daytime hike through a sunny mountainside, surely, but nothing to put on when the lights go out and it is you against the elements, against yourself.

Although somewhat insignificant, four and five provide a positive, high-energy experience that benefits the impact of the first English-spoken track, 'All This Time'. Surely leaning more to the pop side of this 'folk pop' album, it is undeniably infectious in spirit, filled with a sound that evokes an excitable zest for life and leaves you eager for the next.

‘Two Voices’ smothers the energetic and excitable vibe of the prior tracks with a blanket of blackened smoke, working its way up to the climax, wherein a series of voices overlap, twisting and constricting each other as though a mess of bewitched snakes fighting for the last mouse on Earth. It borders on freak-folk, just dancing the line between conventional and experimental. It begins to set the conclusive tone of the coming to an end, felt tenfold in it’s successor, ‘Like a Child’. Stringed instruments carry you through the raging river and into the calming sea, into the clutches of the final song, and before you know it, into the final moments of the album.

It would be ignorant to not call this album a journey. While not every song is an absolute masterpiece (and some could benefit by toning down the '70s pop components) the significant tracks do well to provide an anxious ’lust-for-more’ that is far and few between, causing the amount of emotional energy that is expended during listening to be undeniable. Itsuro Shimoda is a hidden gem that all classic folk loyals should experience. For better or worse, this album should not go ignored.