Asobi Seksu
Hush

Speaking of New York bands with a Japanese singer, one immediately thinks of Blonde Redhead, but there are other realities as well, such as Asobi Seksu, a band that was part of the almost never-mentioned underground scene for several years. With the album "Citrus," they started to get noticed, but with "Hush," they achieve the crucial leap in quality and fame.

An album that takes shoegaze and dream-pop as its base formula, but be warned, don't expect the usual classic walls of noise, because there's not much of it; the guitars, in fact, become clearer and more pop compared to their beginnings. Shoegaze is traceable, but it is very velvety, mild, sweet, melodic. To understand, "Hush" is an album rich in pop melodies, sprinkled with reverbs and psychedelic dilations and, clearly, with the beautiful and gentle voice of singer Yuki Chikudate.

Sweet pop and melancholy commence with "Layers," immediately noticeable are sounds of a perfect "spring" day, but it is with "Familiar Light" that the album takes off, immense charm with a shoegaze end; the simply beautiful "Gliss" with an intro of synths and echoes that greatly resemble Mercury Rev; there's also room for 44 seconds of electro-ambient with "Risky and Pretty"; with "In The Sky" we notice '80s synths, a track initially calm that eventually becomes infatuated with an increasingly fast-paced instrumental progression. "Glacially" and "I Can't See" are, the first very pop; the second more heavy and dreamy with the two voices merging in a calm and ethereal section, ultimately culminating in a vertical wall of guitars. We then reach the central piece, "Me & Mary," a very rock structure with vaguely noise touches. The roundup ends with the "silent" pop song "Blind Little Rain."

"Hush" is a fairy-tale album, with which Asobi Seksu turns towards other paths, choosing the more pop ones; the only ones that, immersed in the dream, give us moments of ecstatic and dreamy happiness.