Banzai Butterfly

Just darling and dreamy!

I loved "Doko" and its video, and while I'm not often sold on Kaela's concepts, she does manage to look like she's having a lot of fun and cute to boot in "Banzai", which is a nice, fun song.




And then she surprised a friend at the friend's wedding party by coming out and performing this song impromptu for them. I like the melodies involved, and while I think the song could benefit from a sparser instrumentation, I think it works all around. :)

Kimura Kaela - "Doko"

This video creates a dull ache in my heart. Lovely.

I think if her most recent album and singles have been any indication (the fluke brilliance of "Yellow" aside), Kaela's road to artistic maturity while maintaining integrity has been flanked by growing pains. I appreciated a lot of the strange-yet-fun's stuff from her 2nd album and just fell flat on my face in love with her 3rd album's manner of conveying awkward emotion honestly, but her more recent stuff had been weird for weirdness's sake.

(A study by Miskatonic University grad students last year proved, for example, that "Jasper" is an empirically terrible piece of audio and video, suitable only for assisting in dark, eldritch rituals for the purpose of raising ancient cyclopean cities from their tombs beneath the waves where unspeakable horrors lie in your most feverish dreams.)

I like the modern Super 8-like sheen to a lot of the video, with the muted and washed-out colors, and the way the sun looks. I like how old the situation feels, what with the old phone and the old car and the high-collared thing she wears that make her look distressingly lovely.

I like that this video feels so normal, what with the 'weirdest' thing being the military jacket. But even then I'm like, 'why yes, I will follow you on an adventure through the fields', if only because I can't stand to see her so forlorn. Having a glass of water and staring out the kitchen window--I have no idea what sort of phantom memory that's tugging on, but that little part is perfect.

Dig that masterfully-constructed chorus, too.

I have been consuming so much of the same light post-rock these days because I guess I'm craving the emotional rides, grand and small, they take me on, but I'm craving catchy vocals too. And it's been nice to come across songs from artists I already like that are just like that, only more compact and with vocals. In conclusion, I am a huge baby and also it feels so good to be punched in the face by Aestheticism all over again. :)