Re: The Ultimate Album Ranking Thread
[quote="Ashinow"]
[b]Scarecrow[/b] is an emotional rollercoaster. ‘More than God, I believe in you’. I had teenage angst, an existential crisis. My demeanour was gloomy. The pillows, and in particularly Sawao’s singing was so powerful, emotionally, it transcends language. His singing was the language of emotion. This song alone, stands for a memory of my college (bachelor) years. I was lonely? Maybe. I felt disconnected? Hell yes. One time I was walking in the university building thinking ‘Why am I still alive’, shouldn’t I have died already? I was not REALLY depressed, or so I had myself believed, no, I could not connect to other people on a deeper level. I was always walking around with my headphones around my neck.. and in those days at least 80% of it was the pillows. How many times have I listened to this song, ‘Scarecrow’? It is like an soundtrack of those days. You can hear Sawao basically wailing, pouring his heart out, this is how I felt, I think… but I never let it out.. just kept it inside me… just like the music. Pirouzu.net/forum was a ‘God-given’. I could connect with people on such a deep level… sometimes I felt more at ease communicating/reading the board than talking with friends. Scarecrow even inspired me to a poem
Fastforward to Tokyo 2014: the pillows 25th anniversary concert. First song they played: Bloody Fucking Scarecrow. Can you believe it? I almost cried, man…. Even as I am writing this, it’s all coming back… I couldn’t look to the stage… see Sawao singing.. if I did, I would have burst out in tears…. I had a lump in my throat during the whole song… Scarecrow..
You know.. if this song would be on Happy Bivouac.. then that would raise the album some places higher.. but it happened to be on Wake Up!x3.
And if you look up the lyrics… it was exactly how I felt.. even without really knowing the literally translation, I felt it.
You know… if Scarecrow is kinda gloomy.. the rest of the album really has a happy-go-lucky attitude to it. It has quite a light attitude. And though, I painted quite a black picture just above, in reality I am quite a laid-back person…. [b]Boat House[/b] is such a song. Images of me biking to and fro school in the summer wind, humming, whistling, or singing aloud to this song come to mind. I wouldn’t listen to the pillows if they had only sad, serious songs, no. Indeed, the songs are day-to-day songs that function as lift-boosters to me. And then, if I compare Happy Bivouac to WUx3, I think HB generally sounds harsher to me… I could do with less distortion, less exuberance… but the guitar tone on WUx3 just clicks… and the guitar solos are just as great/effective.
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Thanks for posting this man. It was a really good read and I can see how important that album is to you. Scarecrow is a favorite song of mine too; it's one if the few singles I physically own and one of the very few songs that I've basically memorized the lyrics to. Your post was kind of what I was hoping to get out of this thread; personal stories relating why the albums we love so much are our favorites. And I totally agree with you here:
[quote]So I think, that the first introduction to the pillows is what got you into the music, and the associations you make with these songs are so powerful, this alone counts for a great deal the personal preferences of our Busters.[/quote]
For me, it was taken a step further. I think I mentioned this when we made that video message to the band, but the pillows basically shaped my musical tastes. I never really LIKED music until I heard that distinctive style on HB and RH, and I've always tried to find bands that share those same qualities. Of course, there's stuff I heard later that I like better than some of the FLCL stuff (i.e., Strange Chameleon is a top 10 track no doubt, and I didn't hear that song until about a year or two after I got into the pillows). But I think your point still stands. Thanks again for sharing all that.
As for Moon Gold...
[quote]I by no means dislike Moon Gold, but I do find that tonally it's the least up my alley - both because of the vocals and because of the guitar/drum sounds. I throw it on once in a while, and thoroughly enjoy it every time, but [b]I am much more drawn towards pounding rhythms and wailing/crunchy/distorted guitars. More Century Creepers and less Yume no you na yakusoku[/b][/quote]
Yes! This, exactly this, especially the bolded. Century Creepers is a song I love and is very indicative of the pounding rhythms and crunchy guitar sound that the pillows have mastered. That's why i'd still even rank albums like Pied Piper and Trial over Moon Gold; I dig that style more.
If I'm in a lighter mood, like after listening to a lot of Beatles stuff for instance, I'll throw on Moon Gold. I do love Kiss Me Baby and Kimi ga Iru. But I find the album itself to plod around a bit too much. That's why i was really grateful for the 1st Movement show DVD. That version of Sayonara Third Planet was absolutely beautiful, and Razorlike Blue was totally badass. The band brings that tone that they have now mastered, and make the songs from the 1st Movement sound way better, to my ears at least. If the pillows were to do another cover album for their 30th anniversary, I would hope that it'd be from mainly the 1st Movement. I for one would love to hear an updated version of Kiss Me Baby and If You Sing in the Rain. But for now, my go to versions of of Moon Gold songs are either on Turn Back or on the 1st Movement Show DVD.
...OK, but the original Kiss Me Baby does totally rock, I'll admit that.
