My 2024 Q2 Roundup

When I make these wrapup lists, usually I list out my most memorable artists and albums that I want to include first, then pick songs from those to piece together a list. This kindda reflects how I listen to music: even though I'm listening to music on streaming, I don't really like to shuffle through a 100+ song playlist, I prefer to choose a few albums and listen to them in full. Is this weird in 2024?

I also like to make these wrapup lists to have some sort of flow to them, instead of just ordering them from least- to most-favourite. And as part of that flow, it would be nice to have an intro song and an outro song if I can find one.

That is all just to say, I feel kindda bad only including this song by Yukiguni in my list, for the "intro". The rest of their album is also very good, check it out:

Continuing with more warm, mellow indie rock that's similar to laura day romance (see my previous list), I've been listening to a lot of Homecomings recently.

I only started listening to Homecomings after their 2023 album New Neighbours ranked #4 on Patrick's 100 Favorite Japanese Albums Of 2023 . You probably know them from the ending song of Liz and the Blue Bird , which I just watched recently, and was surprised when I recognize the band when the credits roll. It's a great movie, highly recommend.

I've been really loving The Otals since last year, check out their album U MUST BELIEVE IN GIRLFRIEND if you still haven't:

I didn't like their most recent EP Destroy My Memory at first, it steps away from the fuzzy dream pop that I knew them for, and leans a lot more into cutesy pop, with vocoded vocals, listen here. (This is called twee? idk genres)

I think in general terms, I just don't like vocals that tries to sound cutesy. For example, most people I know really like Yuka Nagase and Local Visions's collab album OACL, but on multiple tracks (2,4,9), yuka's vocals just breaks the album for me, don't like it.

But it's not like I hate cute stuff in general, I do like most of Yuka's stuff, and after repeated listens, I now really like Destroy My Memory. Part of the reason I'm making these lists and writing about them, is to try to force myself to learn more vocabularies, so I can better describe the music that I like / don't like. But uhh I'm not sure this is working ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, I love The Otals so much I'm putting two of their songs in my list.

The way I feel about inuha is very similar to kinoue64, they have roughly similar styles, they somehow just keeps pumping out sooo many songs, and even though some of their songs are a miss, I think most of their stuff are great. And when I find the songs of theirs that I like, they're really good. I've been listening to inuha's ひだまりチャット a lot.

I wanted to include newer songs from inuha, maybe 10代のジレンマ , but a lot of new stuff aren't on spotify yet, oh well. Enjoy this equally great track instead.

Oh also, inuha is seems to be also a fan of The Otals! ❤️