Quiet, lyrical folk song that, at the same time, has a fierce and dynamic spirit.
Nagoya-based singer-songwriter and guitarist Shota Terai a.k.a. Gofish (ゴーフィッシュ) will release his new single “Hai” (肺), or “The Lungs”, on July 10th.
He is also a singer and guitarist of Niceview, a veteran hard-core punk band who still keep playing exciting shows all around Japan. But in the trio Gofish, Shota plays in an acoustic style with help by contrabass player Makoto Inada (稲田 誠) and cello player Seijiro Kuroda (黒田 誠二郎).
This song’s chorus is so catchy and beautiful that various musicians co-sang it with Gofish. Among them are Kensuke Ide (井手健介), Kunihiro Fujii (藤井邦博) from Uoza, and Satoko Shibata who also sings in a special unit called “Gofish trio and Satoko Shibata” (Gofishトリオと柴田聡子).
On this studio recording, South Korean singer-songwriter Lang Lee sings a chorus with her ethereal voice. “My lungs are properly feeding oxygen to bloods / I am holding my breath,” go the lyrics.
I think Gofish sings about his lungs and his breath, but it may be our lungs or someone’s lungs. Japanese language is very vague. It is sometime inconvenient, but sometime useful.
For some reason, the lyric reminds me about an atmosphere of Radiohead in the early “The Bends” era. Maybe because they have a popular number called “My Iron Lungs”. But the difference is that Radiohead sing about artificial respirator ironically, and Gofish sing about our vital lungs as it is, with no irony.
“Between the swollen night and the shrunk morning / What I worried about was that it would rain in the afternoon / Wearing a dull blue jacket / I am running to the meeting place / As I got off at the bus one stop before where I should.”
“In the grimy movie theater at night / Only a white light was moving on the screen / I started running the streets hastily while the rain poured down / Because the last train would leave in five minutes / I felt like I would never reach it again / And I kept running till my feet would be broken up.”
“My lungs are properly feeding oxygen to bloods
I am holding my breath, my breath”
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Photo: 三浦知也
