The Singles Jukebox

Spring? Must be time for another syrupy sakura song…

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David Sheffieck: Slowed down by about 20 per cent, this would be a great pop song. As is, it’s the sonic equivalent of an energy drink: absolutely the most brilliant idea, as long as you’re willing to forget about the inevitable crash.
[7]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “Sakura Appareishon” is not the most manic that Dempagumi.inc have sounded so far. This lacks the cocaine boost sonics that made last year’s “WWD II” such a gonzo delight, sticking for the most part to Technicolor synth patterns. Where “WWD II” barrelled through ideas with air-punch determination, “Sakura” feels comparatively level-headed, rooted in the everyday. This works for the song’s graduation theme — it’s hard to be bittersweet about the future when you’re zigzagging and frantic.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: The last Dempagumi.inc song the Jukebox covered went for overload and ended up something interesting: loud, fast and surprising throughout. In reining that in slightly, “Sakura Apparition” just seems to go on a bit. The twists are no way near as exhilarating, nor unexpected. In something less in-your-face, they actually have something more tiring.
[5]

Tara Hillegeist: DPG barely hide their desperate need to be liked and showered with attention behind their aggressive vocal-emoticon barrage, their deluge of fumbly grammar and the blatant falsity of their cutesy elements. The trick is how this slimy, often unnerving, fake nakedness more accurately displays the experience of living with acute social anxiety — delivered, as the biographical pitch will tell you, by former shut-ins united in their dreams of popcult domination — than any other to its intended audience. They expect to be dissected from the microscopic level upwards, and position themselves facing the world with an obviously performed naiveté towards self-display. It would be wrong to assume sincerity comes from the places it normally comes from, with a mind towards art that functions like that. A more insecure, they-like-us-they-really-like-us?? take on “Young Alien Types“? I’d say it runs closer to “Genocidal.” This is fake as hell; if cuteness could linger like a hungry ghost, it would be maybe half as inescapable.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: “Sakura Apparition” is a clever bit of two-way marketing. As Dempagumi.inc have attracted just enough attention outside Japan to make money signs flash in management’s eyes, it serves as an international introduction — they spell out who they are (literally), shout out homebase Akihabara and cover a lot of spiritual bases by singing “God, Buddha and Mr. Rabbit.” Domestically, it’s a seasonally appropriate “sakura song,” typically a song released to coincide with kids graduating from school and people changing jobs. Those cash-ins, though, are usually drippy and depressing ballads. Dempagumi have no time for that — whether its because they all allegedly come from typically nerdy backgrounds (one member saying she was a hikikomori) or just because being needlessly sad stinks, they zip all over the place here. Whereas other J-pop acts practically scream I AM SERIOUS, they are playful — imitating grocery store clerks, shouting out “justice!”, or taking a break midway through to pretend it’s summer festival season. “A nonsensical documentary/that’s the fantasy we grasp at,” captures it well, though not quite as solidly as the constant invocation to “dance.” And here, they spin away from the idea that the best times have already passed, instead throwing caution to the wind and embracing ambition (this is the first Japanese song since “Invader Invader” to be so determined in itself). What Dempagumi sells here for everyone is the idea tomorrow can bring personal happiness: “I’ll brighten up your future, it’s a cinch!” Don’t mind if I do.
[9]

Iain Mew: The translated lyric reads amusing, affirming, and heartbreaking, but for all of its million musical ideas the song bogs down the feeling more often than it makes it soar. I’m not used to this kind of multi-movement song sounding both so comparatively slow and so restrained at the same time. It’s ear-catchingly unusual, but it’s a peculiar approach that leaves the group’s voices all too exposed.
[4]

Anthony Easton: I wonder if Dempa does wellish among the North American geek circuit because it’s self-conscious, heavily mechanized oddness is the kind of orientalist weird-for-weird-sake that people who think they like Japanese culture claim for their own. Sort of like this SNL skit. It does force the question, what is J-Pop now?
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: The way Dempagumi.inc’s voices interact — overlapping, interrupting DANCE DANCE DANCE Is the onslaught of national and regional motifs — “Japan,” “Nippon,” interjecting, reinforcing — reminds me of early hip-hop, Run-D.M.C. perhaps, or Beastie Boys, where OH MY GOSH, time for a key change! “Yamato,” “Akihabara” — an example of enthusiastic patriotism or mere branding? the vocal components combined to create a unified whole that was precision-crafted to sound effortless, and, PANTSU PANTSU PANTSU in this case, completely chaotic. time for another key change? Except this really is chaotic, barely hanging together, yet that’s why it can break into a video game interlude because why the hell KEY CHANGE! not? And fizzing from the freneticism is this marvellous sense of hope and joy bye bye! like we really might — Dempa, and me, too — be ready for whatever the future SAYONARA! will bring. HAI! HAI! boardthisship, don’teverforgetus.
[9]

Brad Shoup: It’s in the air, I guess, but the word that comes to mind is “athletic.” Hearing the churning percussion and bear-down disco beat, the singers’ Chris Pauline navigation of a complex, bunched melody line, and the sideways tonality of the bridge, I can only imagine the drills in practice. And yes, it holds together as a pop tune, pushing forward with nary a wasted step.
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