The original review I wrote for Shugo Tokumaru's 2004 debut, that spritely guitar-pop mini-album called Night Piece, got shot back to me. A Tokyo twentysomething whisking through his own soundscapes, losing himself in the cinema, shooting guns at wild west bad guys, battle rapping-- apparently it wasn't criticism. Fair enough, but as I work through this follow-up jam L.S.T., what jumps out most is how un-evocative it is by comparison. Shugo's really pulled back. In just a half-hour, Night Piece covered impossible ground stylistically, flirted with genre pastiche but still came unassuming. It was clever, making something cohesive of all that j-pop video game and film scoring and straight-up, unequivocal pop stuff-- maybe not as lovable immediately, but certainly more memorable. L.S.T. has one-speed-- Raffi Plays the Shins-- and while Shugo's clearly settling into being "one of those guys who just writes good songs, man," he's also not come up with anything special here, or memorable, or anything more than pleasant.
Still, as far as inoffensive acoustic guitar pop goes, this ain't bad. Give Shugo a chance to snap "Mist" out its woozy lullablahs; his sudden, close-mic'd guitar strums grit forcefully like the opening moments of Microphones' It Was Hot. The whistling on "Mushina" beats Andrew Bird's for most dulcimer, and "Vista" has something of a less-collective Broken Social Scene sound to it, with heavy reverb, disembodied vocals, and big dumb horn melodies. The first 100 seconds or so of "Yukinohaka" promise to sour L.S.T.'s unfazable grin, something along the lines of Ben Chasny's rolling drone figures, but then Shugo starts singing. And oh that voice-- it's as if nothing could possibly go wrong when that unintelligible full-bodied whisper of his courses these headphones. This time Shugo's pushed it into the instrument mix further, sometimes even pitting it against the intermittent noisemaking that normally stays beneath the guitar lines.
But then I hear something like "Karte". It's by far the least pleasant song here-- super-cartoonish silent movie chase music, no vocal melody to rally behind, occasionally showy guitar-playing, some weird squeaky wheel sound I can imagine is torture for some. To be honest I hated it at first, because the short, nimble track has more energy than the rest of the album combined, more smarts too-- the only track Shugo didn't dumb himself down for. It doesn't go down easy, and some spots do prick at first, but that's pittance for smart and lovable-- maybe we could stand to meet him halfway.
