The second I saw that a new Macross series was in the works – with Yoko Kanno on board for some of the music – I was looking forward to watching Macross Frontier.  Luckily for me, the series was superbly executed and maintained the classically-Macross juxtaposition of music and mecha.  The songs from the series’ two heroines, Ranka Lee and Sheryl Nome, work well in the context of the show, but many are good enough to stand on their own.  A quick rundown of my favorites:

Nakajima Megumi (Ranka Lee) – Seikan Hikou (Interstellar Flight)

~kyaa!~

Sugary, adorable, amazingly cute.  Spawned the Ranka horn meme, and for good reason.  The song got stuck in my head for about, oh, 3-4 weeks, and it wins awards for two things – 1) Songs that make me unintentionally drive faster without realizing it because i’m tapping my foot on the accelerator 2) Songs that I should be embarrassed about blasting with my windows down at an intersection.

May’n (Sheryl Nome) – Northern Cross

Sheryl’s music always comes across as more serious, and with a decidedly harder edge than Ranka’s – which doesn’t matter at all, since the Macross F soundtrack is universally good.  This is my favorite song of Sheryl’s, mostly because it really shows off May’n's (sp?) vocal prowess while keeping both a good beat and interesting accompaniment.  The bridge builds tangible tension, and once she unleashes the chorus, you just hold on for the ride.  Great stuff.

More after the jump.

May’n (Sheryl Nome) – Iteza Gogo Kuji Don’t Be Late

A pretty good song by Sheryl; I didn’t like this track the first 20 times I listened to it, and then at 21, I realized it was alright.  This possibly occured because you hear the song during the sponsor screens in every single episode, or because they always superimposed battles on top of it…

Nakajima Megumi (Ranka Lee) – Anata no Oto

Cute, easy listening.  The horns in the middle are mildly annoying, but overall not a bad song.  The biggest issue I had with Anata no Oto was that it felt and sounded like a Sakamoto Maaya song, and if Maaya is on the project (she sings the first OP, and does at least one character in the show) and you have a Maaya song, let Maaya sing it! 

May’n (Sheryl Nome) – Diamond Crevasse

An amazing ballad, one of the best songs in the series hands-down.  This series made me really impressed with May’n – her vocal control, which is used to enable those speedy pop tracks they use for Sheryl in Macross F, really shines when given room to breathe in this song.  Highly recommended.

Nakajima Megumi (Ranka Lee) – Aimo

The traditional Macross theme-ballad.  I don’t think it’s as timeless as Voices from Macross Plus, it’s still a perfect compliment to the series, and doesn’t disappoint as the focal-song in the storyline.  

Nakajima Megumi (Ranka Lee) – Watashi no Kare wa Pilot (My Boyfriend is a Pilot)

One of the reasons I loved Macross F were the times when it reached back and updated some of the classic songs in the series.  This (slightly) modernized version of the Minmay classic had me singing along during the episode, and I was excited that the producers think about the old school fans.

Nakajima Megumi (Ranka Lee) – Ai Oboete Imasuka? (Do You Remember Love)

A fantastically updated version of a great song.  I like this one much more than the original, if only for the teasing progression in the harmony.

Nakajima Megumi (Ranka Lee) & May’n (Sheryl Nome) – Lion

The second OP is a great duet between Ranka & Sheryl, and while it has a couple questionable lyrics (ahem) it’s still a great song that features each singer equally.  I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s no Hayashibara Megumi/Okui Masami combo, but it’s still pretty cool.

AKFG – Hello Hello (h/t to Zac & Japanator Radio)

A female vocalist on an AKFG song?  I was kind of shocked – in a good way.  The most compelling thing about their music that has stayed with me over time is a sense of gradual evolution.  I still like a lot of the early songs from Kimi Tsunagi Five M and Sol-Fa, and while it’s almost sacriligeous to say so, I wasn’t a big fan of World Apart (or much of the Fanclub album;)  Their sound is still distinctive – to the point where listening to other bands approach it is almost like trespassing into their aural territory – but the progressions are more sophisticated, and cleaner.  Goto’s vocals still hold a lot of the songs together, and you get the sense in listening to the (so-fantastic-you-should-buy-it-yesterday) World, World, World album that a great, solid band took some chances musically.  In my opinion, the singles, while good, were fairly standard fare for Ajikan – but some of the B-Sides on the album are simply magnificent.  Travelogue (トラベログ) has a killer hook, that comes together with astonishing tension and cohesion before its resolution.  

AKFG – Fujisawa Loser

Overall, Ajikan hits a sweet spot – anyone looking for rock that’s solid but not too crazy probably has a few of their songs in their playlist.  The new stuff doesn’t disappoint – but then again, do they ever?  I’ve got a lot more to say about Ajikan, so a full 

The one album you need: If you don’t have it already, Kimi Tsunagi Five M - it has the most bang for your buck if you haven’t heard their more classic stuff.  If you aren’t new to them, check out World, World, World -it’s probably worth your money.  

(And yes, i’m aware that I cheated on the ‘one’ album you need, and it hasn’t been a week yet )

The first perfect song candidate is one that I have some reservations about posting – not because of its quality, but because its so good it feels a shame to post it first.  I’ve always been a big fan of Maaya, both as a top-tier seiyuu as well as an artist; this song has a very simple formula:

Steve Conte (of Wolf’s Rain & Bebop OST fame) + Maaya Sakamoto’s gliding vocals + Yoko Kanno’s composition and lyrics = win.

It’s really that simple.  The song starts off slow and mysterious, and slowly folds more energy into each successive verse.  The emotive lyrics are some of Kanno’s best, and the mixture of English & Japanese in the chorus doesn’t come off as a forced implementation, but rather exactly the way it was meant to be.  

(music geek moment: the melody that Maaya sings over the chorus just might sound familiar if you’ve spent a lot of time listening to classical music or opera – the melody here is adapted from the song Povlotsikan Dance from the Russian opera Prince Igor.  After I had already fallen in love with this song, I heard the melody played on the carillion bells at the Burton bell tower here in Ann Arbor -you have no clue how long it took me to figure out where it came from.)

I should use this first post to emphasize that i’m not ranking these songs – since that’s impossible.  However, i’d like to hear from everyone what songs are perfect in their minds.  And (looking at the playlist I started for this feature) that makes 1 down, and at least 37 to go.

Suga Shikao (スガシカオ) - Yozora no Mukou (夜空ノムコウ)

Yozora no Mukou is a fantastic song, written originally for SMAP, but adapted and covered by tons of different artists – it even shows up in DDR Extreme, with a eurobeat remix with bizarre english translation. Suga’s voice has that intractable singer-songwriter quality, and the lyrics are simply amazing.  For a relatively simple song, it’s quite affecting, and if you had to ask which of his songs I enjoyed most, this would be (at least) 1a. But on to 1b…

Suga Shikao (スガシカオ)  - Hachigatsu no Serenade (8月のセレナーデ)

August Serenade lives up to its name – a beautiful song, and one that makes me think of summer (although the video, oddly, is of people playing uta-karuta.)  This song still has the strong sense of melody present in most of Suga’s work, but you get a bit of his funk influence with the signature guitar riff in the chorus.  Part of why I believe Suga to be an incredibly accessible artist to those outside of Japan is that his jazz, r&b and funk influences give his music more vibrancy than, say, Spitz (not that I hate Spitz, but they aren’t exactly built for toe-tapping.)  

A lot of people discovered him through anison, particularly his work on Honey and Clover (Tsuki to Naifu), xxxHolic (19sai) and the Death Note movie (Manatsu no yoru no yume) – all good songs to check out.

The one album you need: If you had to choose, i’d take Sugarless.  It has more great songs, pound for pound, than his other releases.  Koko ni Iru Koto is a pleasantly surprising track, and the album as a whole is fairly cohesive.

The first j-pop song that ever did this to me was kind of odd – way back in 1998, I was watching Neon Genesis Evangelion fansubbed (back in the days when fansubs came on crappy vhs tapes from geeks in New York, via mail order) and caught a scene with Asuka and Shinji buying groceries.  There was a song on in the background that had an incredible hook – and I couldn’t find out what it was.  It wasn’t on any of the first 6 or 7 soundtracks I bought looking for it, I couldn’t find anything telling me what the song’s name was or who sang it, and all I heard of it was one 12-second snippet of a chorus.  

It took me about 3-4 years to track down the song, and even then I found it by accident.  Listening to a freshly acquired Masami Okui album, and once the track hit the chorus, I knew I had found it – Bay Side Love Story.

Bay side love story – Masami Okui

The rest of the song is relatively forgettable, even though it has a really charming old school quality to it that a lot of her songs don’t usually carry – but the chorus is stirring, both lyrically and musically.  I was so happy when I found it, I probably listened to it for a few days straight.  Trying to rediscover that kind of feeling, searching for a perfect chorus or verse, finding a song that no matter how long you listen to it you can’t think of how to improve it, led me to find all sorts of great music.  I look forward to sharing more of it with you all!