Team Syachihoko – Ii Kurashi

From Joshua S., Momoiro Clover Z’s sister group strikes its own poses…

[Video][Website]
[7.12]Joshua Smith: Landing the runner-up slot on Oricon’s weekly single schart is becoming an ever more irrelevant achievement in Japan’s music industry, especially when total sales numbers are often an order ofmagnitude below whatever occupies first place. It’s still encouraging to see, then, that the feat can be accomplished by a six-and-a-halfminute D-Mob sampling acid house idol pop monster like this. As their “big sister” agency-mates Momoiro Clover Z have flirted with actual mainstream success and calmed down a bit, Team Syachihoko’s crazy antics have only ramped up. Fortunately they’ve been rewarded with their biggest chart success to date, and more importantly, a really interesting song.
[8]

Iain Mew: They’re a sister group of Momoiro Clover Z, and bring the same kind of attitude of omnivorous fun to a slightly different set of sounds. I don’t know how the comparitive decrease in more-is-more is a reflection of the dance music they’re drawing from, but it makes six minutes a long time to stretch its initial rush of glee over.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: As an outsider, this is fascinating: what does “ACIEEED!” represent in the context of 2014 Japanese chart pop? Short of an answer, “ACIEEED!” will itself suffice, along with all the other ground this covers seamlessly. The vocal patterns change innumerably amid rave piano, crowd noise, twinkles and “WOO!”s, tunnelling through headfirst for what could comfortably have been about half an hour.
[8]

Brad Shoup: After the first verse there’s a pause for all the elements — the guy imitating a train coming into the station, the squelchy acid bassline, the no-nonsense synth riff — to hit, as if getting all the bonafides out in the first quarter. Still, this is the type of idol song where there’s a rap break (great; called and responded), and the youthful intensity of the team push this into freestyle territory. So: no complaints.
[7]

Sonia Yang: The intro synths and pumping beat had me anticipating something Charisma.com-esque, but unfortunately the rest plays it too safe and barely goes anywhere despite having six and a half minutes(!). The rap section is a nice touch and just barely saves this from a [4]. The video’s aesthetic reminds me of Hinoi Team’s corny “Night of Fire“, though thankfully there’s no middle-aged wrestler baring his spandex-covered crotch here.
[5]

Madeleine Lee: So well-balanced that the over six-minute run time isn’t just bearable, but feels necessary for each melodic variation to unfurl and develop properly. I can even put up with whatever that yodel is instead of the usual air horn.
[9]

Mark Sinker: Colour-coded harem pants and Quangle-Wangle hats for the climax here — even though (as the titles imply) ‘Capital Relocation Plan‘ and ‘Shampoo Hat‘ deliver more, in terms of sound, silly perky energy and tongue-twisting wide-eyed oddness, the three-alarm relentlessness will have pushed the song somewhere, over 7+ minutes yet. Also there’s something great about the fake Brechtean reveal in many of the videos, where they break performance focus to just be joyous schoolkids, Putting the Show on Right Here.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: The past year saw such a glut of idol-pop groups in Japan that any idea, sonic or thematic, was gobbled up by the labels in an effort to make their fledgling outfits stand out. Momoiro Clover Z sister-ish outfit Team Syachihoko have, for their existence, primarily been known as “the idol group that reps for Nagoya,” a classic idol trope, but they got a bit more interesting with “Ii Kurashi,” a seven-minute acid-squelched pop song produced by Tetsuto Yoshida, best known in Japan’s dance music community. It’s idea burns out around the five-minute mark, but that initial rush of club life (which none of the members can really experience because they are all still teenagers) is pretty solid and one of the better sonic ideas brought to idol music this year.
[7]