Top down, shades on, it’s time to take Nico’s Valerie out for a spin. Featuring the sterling work of twin brothers Mamoru and Shigeru Shimada, Japan’s answer to America’s Alessi Brothers, so too does Valerie inhabit that same wander zone of genre-defying AOR. Not quite City Pop, not strictly Pop either, it shows all the kaleidoscopic influences the duo accumulated throughout their young career. Topping all that off is simply sparkling songs with Akira Inoue’s wonderfully “tropical” arrangements.
Now known as “Garden”, there was a time before Nico’s lawyers — yes, that other one — got to them that the Shimada twins had cultivated an intriguing style of AOR music that had its own unique branch out points. Growing up in ‘60s Tokyo on a diet of Beatles rock and American soul music left a lasting impression on both of them. From a young age they were inspired to write their own music. Unwilling to play up the “twin” angle, the brothers christened themselves Nico and the group itself became their homestead to just try out anything their hearts desired, importantly: with little outside pressure.
Mamoru, as he would on all future releases, would entrust himself to compose music. Shigeru would be the lyrical one, writing all the lyrics on those early releases. Both were gifted multi-instrumentalists who could trade off vocals, playing guitar and keys. At the age of 24 they were signed on ambitious jazz and pop label NEWS to record their first full length album, To You.
To You, appears to have been inspired by the lighter, funkier sounds of “breezy” Japan, finding roots in the marina funk of America. There Nico enlisted the help of ex-Happy End and now rising J-AOR session guitarist Shigeru Suzuki to flesh out their music. Although it sold well and made them gain a degree of notoriety, the Shimada twins were growing restless. In To You they felt their sound had separated from the more urbane, urban, cosmopolitan idea that Tokyo city life was.
Enlisting the help of the amazingly prolific Akira Inoue, someone with both feet in the pop world and avant garde, in the spring of 1983 they explored trying to integrate influences in latin and reggae styles in their work. The session members asked to back them up here would be from notable groups like Aragon, Mariah, and Parachute. Rather than just traffic in a breezy mood, Valeria presented the many swings the brothers felt living in a rapidly changing Japan.
“燐の踊り子” opens the album with a song unifying the hazy reggae of the Caribbean with the melancholic strains of sunsetting California beach pop. Here, Valeria aimed for seafaring music that went beyond mere mimicry. Inoue’s grand synthetic background placed the leftfield bounce in some place a bit more foreign than other City Pop bands. A brief respite in the A-side for a gentle ballad like “True Love – 青の絵” seems like their last send off for those earlier fans who loved their softer rock.
Valeria reengages its assertive, inventive method beginning on “Tiny Concept”. Once again, tapping into light dub melodicism, the Shimada brothers create a smoldering modal pop thing which takes their soft rock tendencies through some gorgeous moonlit territory. Furthering down there, the whole A-side picks on the fusion-minded exploration of Akira Inoue to flesh out and stretch out their compositional chops treating us to intriguing mini moody suites like “Through The Night” finding their showstopping brotherly harmonies reach for something else that’s new, bringing (at least to yours truly) some brethren to Makoto Matsushita’s Quiet Skies. “Paradise” caps off that A-side brilliantly with a meditative, quasi-ambient tropical soul ballad with quiet Double Fantasy-esque sentimentality sweeping you off somewhere by the shore.
“T.Y.O.”, the opener on side B, then becomes that shore drawing you in. Featuring even more weirdly complex but utterly enthralling electronic tropical sonics, “T.Y.O.” is as far distant from any AOR roots that I can see. Here, once again, jazz, fusion, and a deep (or as deep as the 3 minute pop song allows) smearing of ambient atmosphere creates something genuinely more along the lines of what a Sakamoto or other “experimental” artists would create.
The title track continues building on the askew pop smarts Nico weren’t afraid to display. For the totality of its long, five minute length, little shifty background things treat the mellow mood of City Pop as its own minimalist playground. By the end something far more sophisticated is in the works, all cooked up and ready for show. “Misunderstand” follows seemingly acting as a mirror image to the A-side’s “True Love – 青の絵” a mid tempo rocker until it explodes to a brilliant New Wave banger perfectly capturing the fast-paced Japanese lifestyle of the day.
Winding down this review we get to their final two songs. Of the two, “港ファンタジア” (Harbor Fantasia) gives us one last taste of that spirited mashup of Caribbean sonics with funky, breezy, mellow J-AOR. Using what sounds like sampled typewriting clicks they palm mute their way through a loving ode to some fondly remember sunlit jaunt. Dosed with heavy sighs of nostalgia, it’s one of those dance tracks (like the best ones) that makes you want to dance and drift off at the same time. Too bad that in this dream we only get a taste of two brilliant minds born together, somehow, lost to the sands of time.