SUGAR PLANT - One Dream, One Star

No longer ride crowded trains
I’m seated in solitude
My friends are birds and flowers near
A future woven online

A little more than thirty years have passed since Japan's Sugar Plant released some of the most underrated dream-pop records of the era, fortunately treasured by a small clique of admirers, enraptured by the duo's dreamlike songs. Tracks with which the duo spawned a sugary variant, indeed, somewhere between Mazzy Star, Hugo Largo and the many kindred names that sprang up like magic mushrooms in that now-distant era. "After After Hours", for instance, still remains a small treasure chest of gentle beats, cradling synths, guitars that seem to have come out of a lost music box, all of it heightened by the singing of an enchanting angel.

"One Dream, One Star" celebrates, in some ways, that bewitched historical moment, both because it arrives on the heels of a series of carefully curated releases — including a newly remastered edition of the duo's aforementioned third LP and a special single ("Rise / Happy") reinterpreted by Tokyo dub band Inokasira Rangers — and because it holds onto the band's original stylistic hallmarks, while clearly aiming to reach an audience quite different from that of the Nineties, given the surprising recent growth in monthly listeners across various streaming platforms, including the ever-prestigious Spotify.
The eight tracks on "One Dream, One Star" also partly echo the subtle evolutions shown on records like "Dryfruit", released in 2000, as well as the more recent "Headlights" and "Another Headlights", released in 2018 and 2019 respectively. 

The duo, made up of guitarist and keyboardist Shin'ichi Ogawa and singer/bassist Chinatsu Shoyama, string together eight sweet ballads for hearts yearning for peace and a desire to live without the anxieties of the present, far from today's pointless restlessness. A dream caressed through melancholy, swaying chords, as shown by tracks like "Sunlit Rain" and "Anything". Supporting this pure flight through the clouds of a slumbering Japan are drummer Yuji Sashizawa and keyboardists Harunobu Aoki and Hiroshi Fujiqui, brought in by the Tokyo pair to enrich the recipe without ever overdoing it, naturally. There are also lullabies in the vein of Elvis, sung of course by Shoyama with a heavenly touch, like the splendid "Only To Know You", one of those songs that, if handed over to Cigarettes After Sex — among the many contemporary acts that owe more than a little to Sugar Plant — would certainly come out less soporific and more lovingly suspended somewhere between the recording studio and the sky.

The same goes for closer "Travelling", which brings this short but dreamy journey to an even softer landing, further proof of a charisma and talent that have thankfully remained intact. If one wants to nitpick, what's perhaps missing is that one pop gem capable of raising the bar even further and finally steering Sugar Plant toward less hidden shores. There's also a certain "sameness" that can surface in the melodic writing. Minor, easily forgivable compromises.

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09/07/2026