(2020) Jonah Yano - souvenir


Review:
Souvenir is the full-length debut from Jonah Yano, a singer/songwriter who colors his dreamy, soul-tinged adult alternative songs with subtle electronics and jazz and hip-hop influences. It’s a particularly wistful release that includes a song originally written and recorded by his father, musician Tatsuya Muraoka, in the ’90s. Titled “Shoes,” it was reworked by Yano after the two reconciled following a 15-year separation. Muraoka still appears on the track, a gentle, jaunty tune about a pair of shoes he bought for his young son. Its central acoustic guitar and bass are fleshed out by spare electronic tones and effects as well as layered vocals by Yano, who answers Muraoka’s original vocals with lines like “What I recall is spinning in circles/Hoping one day I’d face you.” It closes the album on a touching note, with prior tracks addressing his father’s absence from much of Yano’s life, including some that take the point of view of other family members. Souvenir opens with the delicate “Poor Me,” an appreciation of his mother that establishes the album’s light, hazy atmospheres with acoustic guitar, mallet percussion, keyboard, and bass guitar. Fleshier songs include the jazzy “Anywhere” and the dramatic, Auto-Tuned “Strawberry!,” which ends in a burst of noise and a guitar solo fade-out. Elsewhere, warped, fluttery effects and woodwinds accompany the singer’s yearning vocals on “Monarch,” and the funkier “Delicate” is a standout memorable for its smooth groove and melodically descending chorus. The album takes a free-form, experimental turn near the end, on “What I Can Do to Help” before a spoken-word field recording links the sonic outburst to the album’s melodic closer. Souvenir remains in a pensive space even through these occasional diversions, which come off like expressive detailing on a poignant debut.





Tracklist:



Media Report:
Genre: dream-pop, indie-pop
Source: CD
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits