PHILOSOPHY NO DANCE - Excelsior

For a decade now, the Japanese idol-system has been going through a period of reflection and recalibration. Not so much at the top, where formulas that never grow obsolete continue to deliver dizzying results, but at the midstream/underground levels, which allow more room for maneuver and freer creative impulses. The saccharine imagery commonly associated with the scene has been subject to strong pushes toward deconstruction and reinvention, revealing a maturity and a self-irony that are utterly unusual.

Not that Philosophy No Dance (known abroad as The Dance For Philosophy) are a girl group with avant-garde ambitions. Their recipe is, if anything, as pop as pop gets. Yet compared with the mainstream caravans, they exude class and awareness from every pore, deservedly earning a place among the "post-idol" projects. Retro aesthetics, lyrics that bridge the ordinary and the grand, a musical sensibility that draws as much from the golden age of city-pop as from contemporary and late-millennium funk and acid-jazz, and vocal coordination and characterization of great lucidity: the quartet lacks nothing to be the protagonist of a cheeky, catchy style, which on "Excelsior" shows its best side.

Even at the cost of some concessions to the sentimental ballad (the cloying romanticism of "Heuristic City," the well-worn chord sequence animating "Shall We Start"), the album proves compact and consistent, full of fluid arrangements, quality performances and assured interpretations, in the solo moments as much as in the group passages. It is a production that makes the record flow as refreshingly as a soft drink, and through which the four women demonstrate their synergy, built on strong timbral contrasts (from sweetness tinged with kawaii to a deep contralto, close to the gravelly performances of UA) and an excellent expressive range, well beyond the monochromatic tendencies of many similar projects. In this regard, the versatile sound palette also heightens the singers' excellent escape routes, giving them precise support for any eventuality.

From the reworking of the 1980s city-pop of "Logic Jump" (the segmentation of bass and synths is excellent) to the sprint into the new acid-jazz context (it is hard not to hear echoes of Suchmos or Sakanaction in the funktronic textures of "Free Your Festa"), the instrumental lineup is captivating at every turn. It knows how to marry the project's vintage attitude with the most pressing sonic contemporaneity, in a play of cross-references that testifies to its personality.

Understanding the lyrics would also reveal the particularity of their approach from a lyrical standpoint (though titles like "Parrhesia" or "Supervenience" leave little room for imagination). Even without a textual counterpart, "Excelsior" has no trouble revealing its good craftsmanship, the elegance of a girl group occupying its expressive niche with full commitment. Idols? Yes, but very much sui generis.

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03/10/2019