• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

Apr 06, 2021 Web Exclusive By Michael Watkins

As the latest in Light in the Attic’s extraordinary Japanese Archival Series, Somewhere Between has some big reputations on its shoulder. The bespoke Even a Tree Can Shed Tears was a fair enough start, but after 2019’s double whammy of Kankyō Ongaku and Pacific Breeze matched Grammy-winning notoriety with their discoveries of some genuinely hidden gems of the Japanese music canon, the series has quickly become somewhat the jewel in Light in the Attic’s crown.

A less-focused and successful follow-up on last year’s Pacific Breeze 2 felt like the Tusk to its predecessor’s Rumours, but Somewhere Between sees the series get back on track. A wonderfully layered, complex, moody, and atmospheric set of songs that focuses on this era’s rejection of packaged pop and AOR in the pursuit of something all the more ethereal and off-the-beaten-track, Somewhere Between continues in the tradition of Pacific Breeze and Kankyō Ongaku by becoming the instantly-definitive take on an era and a sound of Japan’s musical history. There are, perhaps, less essential tracks here than on either of those two releases, but when it is at its best, as it is on Noriko Miyamoto’s “Arrows & Eyes,” Dip in the Pool’s “Hasu No Enishi,” and Mishio Ogawa’s “Hikari No Ito Kin No Ito,” it surely ranks some of the best work that has so far been highlighted by this wonderful series of retrospectives. (www.lightintheattic.net)

Author rating: 8.5/10