The 12 tracks here, recorded at Chicago’s Friends Of Friends studio with a few close collaborators, skip between funky, bright jazz-pop (‘Bad State’), intricate guitar-based tracks with a Radiohead feel (“What You Say”) and orchestral wonderlands “Forsythia (レンギョウの旋律)". Highlight “Pressure On The Pulse,” meanwhile, is a devastatingly intimate, quiet song that then explodes into an exuberant, animated whirlwind of sax and drums. A chameleonic figure at the album’s core, he can rip out a sax solo, dive deep into intimate singer-songwriter territory and lead massive, roaring alt-pop songs with equal aplomb.
Morimoto describes his musical reference points for the album as “equal parts Funkadelic and Dinosaur Jr.,” and while these touchpoints can be heard all over the record, it doesn’t feel beholden to them, instead using their inspiration before moving beyond it.
TRACK LISTING
1. If The Answer Isn't Love
2. Bad State
3. St. Peter Blind
4. Diagnosis
5. Pressure On The Pulse
6. Naive
7. Feel Change
8. What You Say
9. Surrender
10. Deeper
11. Pain
12. Forsythia (レンギョウの旋律)
13. Reality