Um, Um, Um, Um, Um

EPO's relationship to American pop was always affectionate and slightly playful, and this track — borrowing the onomatopoeic title of the old Wayne Fontana song while transforming it into something distinctly her own — captures that quality perfectly. The arrangement is light and spacious, built on a shuffling rhythm that gives the music room to breathe. Piano and acoustic elements sit alongside soft synthesizers without crowding each other; the production has a handmade warmth that distinguishes it from the sleeker, more processed city pop contemporaries. Her voice is the defining instrument: bright, agile, capable of moving from conversational to soaring within a single phrase. There is a mischievous quality to the delivery, a sense that the singer knows something she's only half-revealing. The song is about the ineffable frustration of unexpressed feeling — the um-um-um of someone unable to find words for what they mean, the small stutters of the heart. In the context of early 1980s Japanese pop, EPO occupied a unique space: more jazz-inflected and eclectic than the polished idol pop, more accessible than the avant-garde. This song belongs to Sunday mornings — sunlight coming through curtains, coffee going cold because you got distracted, the specific contentment of nowhere to be. It has the quality of something overheard rather than performed, which is its quiet trick.