beta music mode

After being largely disappointed by Kato Izumi’s covers album favorite, I was somewhat hesitant to plough my money into yet another one. I decided to take my chances on Dew anyhow - the female duo of vocalist Shimizu Yu & pianist Onishi Kana have impressed me with their original works, which tread the familiar piano-ballad territory walked by the likes of Onitsuka Chihiro.

Having released a mini-album of songs with flower-related titles called Hanazukan in July, the pair decided to record a whole album of covers of classic Jpop tunes with a similar concept, which is why it’s called Hanazukan Bessatsu (’bessatsu’ meaning supplement).

Luckily, Japanese artists seem to be rather enamoured with flowers so there were lots of possibilites for Dew to explore. Off the top of my head, the songs that they didn’t pick - Takeuchi Mariya’s Morning Glory, Yamaguchi Momoe’s Cosmos, Ozaki Yutaka’s LONELY ROSE, Mr. Children’s Hana -memento mori- or the many other songs with Sakura in the title (Fukuyama Masaharu’s Sakurazaka, Moriyama Naotaro’s Sakura etc). That said, there were a lot of ’safe’ choices and more popular songs included here, I’m sure they would’ve wanted to ensure at least a few people bought the album by song choice alone.

The most unconventional choice? Quruli’s quirky Bara no Hana. On paper, this had no right to work. But work it does, and I must say I’m completely blown away. Unlike some of the other songs on Hanazukan Bessatsu that borrow heavily from the originals, Dew’s reworking of Bara no Hana retains only the basic melody line and throws in a complete tempo change and whole new arrangement. It’s hard to believe how a song with weird, dinky background sounds could be turned into a string-laden ballad so successfully.

The other choices of material on the album are more obvious - Matsuda Seiko’s Akai Sweet Pea has been reworked several times in the past and Dew’s offering retains much of the song’s original charm while adding a touch of melancholy. Hitoto Yo’s Hanamizuki is a cover to the tee, I can’t say I prefer their version over the original - Hitoto’s quaint vocal style is what makes her songs memorable and without it here, the song is just another dull ballad.

On the other hand, Utada Hikaru’s Sakura DROPS, a song that was rendered unpalatable for me by the whiny vocal sees a major improvement here just from Shimizu’s understated vocal. Dew also manage to inject some life into Yuming’s Harujion Erigeron, something I didn’t imagine possible - the original was such a tepid song I skipped it everytime it came up on the playlist.

Polomerria was never high on my list of favourite Cocco songs, possibly because it was overshadowed by Jyukai no Ito on Rapunzel, but I’ve been inspired to revisit the song from Dew’s cover and I’m surprised that I didn’t like its folksy charms the first time around. 8 years late, but better than never eh?

There’s not much I can say about the rest of the tracks beyond the fact that they’re good. Shimizu’s English is not perfect (the duo met in a Canadian school so they do speak the language), but they do make a decent hash of the two-and-a-half English language songs here - Bette Midler’s The Rose, Edelweiss (half of it is in Japanese) and BONNIE PINK’s Daisy.

It has been a while since I found a Jpop album so refreshing and so breathtakingly beautiful, it is worth every single yen I paid for it (and more). Dew manage to achieve what few artists doing cover albums are successful at - paying homage to the original artists and yet still make the songs sound like their own. As it goes, they have yet to disappoint with any of their releases and I hope for their sake that success may come soon, it would be a shame to see such talent remain under the radar for too long.