In the Morning
Mrs. GREEN APPLE
"In the Morning" comes from Mrs. GREEN APPLE's 2016 self-titled major-label debut, and it carries the loose-limbed energy of a very young band that hasn't yet learned to over-produce. The guitars are clean and jangly, the tempo is brisk and slightly restless, and the whole thing has the airy, sunlit quality of Japanese guitar pop before the group's later maximalism set in. Motoki Ohmori was still a teenager here, and his voice has the thin, reedy brightness of that age — less controlled than on later records, but with an eagerness that suits the material. The song moves through a morning's small awakening: light through a window, the ordinary act of getting up, the sense that a day is a thing you can enter rather than endure. It never overstates itself, and the arrangement leaves room, which the band would later fill with brass and choirs. Contextually it's a document of the mid-2010s Japanese band-boom, when four-piece guitar acts were the mainstream. It's a genuinely good early-morning record — not motivational, just the sound of a room getting brighter, best heard on the walk to a train before the city has fully woken up.
medium
2010s
airy, sunlit, unpolished
Japan
J-pop, guitar pop. band-boom guitar pop. airy, hopeful. Stays gently ascending throughout, mirroring a morning slowly brightening without ever overstating itself. energy 5. medium. danceability 4. valence 7. vocals: thin, reedy, eager, youthful. production: clean jangly guitars, brisk tempo, spacious arrangement. texture: airy, sunlit, unpolished. acousticness 6. era: 2010s. Japan. Walking to the train before the city has fully woken up.