Plastic Tree
cell.

All artists always go through careers with highs & lows that ride on Gaussian curves like roller coaster carts. In the case of Plastic Tree, this phenomenon is particularly visible, albeit not in terms of economic success, but in terms of musical quality. For reasons I still cannot explain, among the albums of this Japanese band, productions of excellent quality (such as Träumerei and Utsusemi) alternate with more lackluster ones where only a few songs shine here and there (like Shiro Chronicle). Paradoxically, though, this phenomenon does not reflect in sales, which instead seem to be quite rewarding, if not even the inverse of quality.

The fact is that in 2003 Plastic Tree released what is probably the weakest album of their career (yet one of the best-selling), Shiro Chronicle: among the 11 tracks it comprises, interesting episodes are not lacking, but I think it suffices to say that two out of the three singles released were covers to understand that it might not have been the band's most inspired moment. At this point, I would have expected an excellent album to recover from a moment of failure . Instead, in 2004, cell. arrived, an album with a strange cover and an even stranger title: punctuated, incomplete, and even denied a capital letter. cell. is not the album of Plastic Tree's great comeback, it is rather the album that inaugurates a new phase for the band. We could say, using the graph example, its y value sits between that of Shiro Chronicle and the subsequent stunning Chandelier: it's a long, but fruitful ascent, instead of the usual steep ups and downs. The album marks the end, we could say, of the Oasis-like Plastic Tree and the beginning of the Blur-like Plastic Tree: greater experimentation, detached arrangements, attention to the international alternative scene, and for the first time, heavy use of electronics (handled by guitarist Akira Nakayama); the love for grunge, dark, and a certain post-punk that enjoyed pressing guitar pedal keys in a different way than should have been done remains, and indeed all this is emphasized and, especially in Akira's compositions, reaches a decidedly convincing level. Another interesting aspect is that the band's four members seem to have swapped instruments: the songs composed by bassist Tadashi Hasegawa are rich in guitar solos, those of singer Ryutaro Arimura seem dedicated to highlighting drummer Hiroshi Sasabuchi, and those of guitarist Akira are based on precise bass lines. It's also curious to note that the cover does not show the band, and in the booklet there are very few photos of the four musicians, just the bare minimum: it's a peculiarity not to be underestimated, because visual kei without photos is like drum & bass without bass (or almost); perhaps Plastic Tree hides their faces under dull clothes and dark lights because they are in a twilight zone where they cannot even recognize themselves. Maybe they want to distance themselves from their old selves and seek a new path... but where to? The great variety of genres thus becomes, in this aspect, a very important element, and indeed in just an hour of the album, one witnesses the industrial moments of cell and the ephemeral ones of Yuki Hotaru, the Brit-pop jolt of Kaibutsu-kun, and the indie and fun electronics of Uwa No Sora; above all, though, dominates the maximum contrast between eros and thanatos with the band's most romantic song ever, that Harusaki Sentimental which is pure genius on the piano keyboard, and the ghost track which I think would envy even a doom band. All very heterogeneous and, above all, without the will to originate from a single generative idea, but rather giving the impression of wanting to try more paths feeling the need to close a door to open a bigger one.

After this post-modern experiment, Plastic Tree would continue to climb on the Gaussian curve until they excellently merged pop, rock, and grunge (an apparently impossible challenge) and reached Chandelier (which made them really famous), but at that moment there was still the interest for an attempt that, who knows, could have led them in a completely different direction.