Plastic Tree
Nega to Posi

In the March issue of 1999, during a fervor of end-of-millennium rankings as many were released at the time, the magazine Rockstar published the list of the top ten bands of the '90s: the fortunate ones were (in strict alphabetical order) Depeche Mode, Litfiba, Oasis, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, R.E.M, The Cranberries, The Prodigy, The Smashing Pumpkins, and U2. By starting with a premise that maybe Oasis has greater communication merits, but Blur has greater artistic merits, by noting that one could argue about the presence of Depeche Mode and U2 who had creatively established themselves in the previous decade, by stating that it seems unfair to leave Nirvana out, and by accepting that any such ranking has heavy and obvious limitations... with all that said, it probably wouldn't be bad to include Plastic Tree in a similar ranking for the 2000s.

Throughout the '90s, Ryuutarou Arimura, Akira Nakayama, and Tadashi Hasegawa played what, if it weren't for the language, would undoubtedly have been called alt rock. Then, in the early 2000s, they recruited a new member, Hiroshi Sasabuchi, a drummer whose creative world did not match at all with that of the three musicians, and precisely because of this, it was like a new beginning: Hiroshi never wrote a single song for the group, but his contribution as an arranger, his great technical proficiency, and his strong sound boosted the band's music, leading it to results perfectly distinguishable from the previous production, and if there is a record where you can appreciate the talent of this drummer, it is Nega to Posi.

The album, released in 2007, is an album of memories. Plastic Tree was celebrating the tenth anniversary of their recording debut, and with Nega to Posi ("Photographic Negative and Positive"), they compiled snapshots of lost time, like in a high school diary full of polaroids, leaves, song lyrics, candy wrappers, book quotes, classmate drawings, wet pages, memories. In this inverted sentimental education, there is room for photos from the past: the splendid opening track Nemureru mori ("The Sleeping Forest") uses the bass line of A Forest by the Cure, Fujunbutsu ("Impurity") begins with the same chords as Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, Sabbath has the same sound as Zero by the Smashing Pumpkins, Makka na ito ("The Red Thread") has the introduction of Wonderwall by Oasis... and so on, until you manage, almost effortlessly as if in a game, to identify in each song an echo from the past, a beloved theme, a text clip, a musical phrase. But they are only fragments, because then life takes another direction, and so do the songs. The layering of memory becomes even more evident in the album's artwork, curated by photographer Emi Anrakuji, whose overexposed, grainy, blurred photos surface from the black of the booklet's pages like overlapping memories of distant scenes.

The songs of Nega to Posi seem to be born in the twilight of night, like hypnagogic illusions, strumming famous tracks on the guitar and, making a few wrong notes here and there, creating new ones. Yet, despite their apparent simplicity, they highlight the significant difference between "plagiarism" and "recovery": the ability to innovate from already established bases by adding their own original poetic. The disc is guided by the magnitude 1.04 of one of the sweetest songs ever made, Spica, which with its astrological parallelism precisely clarifies that emotion is the precise goal aimed at by Plastic Tree. Aiming at the listener's heart using rock. There is no anger, no anguish, no desperation even in the most pessimistic songs. There is an equal relationship with one's past, no compromise. That's why it wouldn't be bad to include Plastic Tree in a hypothetical ranking of the best bands of the 2000s: they have pursued the discourse of alt rock with rare consistency, adding a powerful dose of romantic melancholy without distorting the original meaning of the genre, but rather enhancing it. Returning to origins and knowing how to renew. Returning to the darkroom and developing photos differently. Returning to that shop and buying more flowers.