Honey Moon

There's a languid sweetness here that earns its title while simultaneously examining it. Hosono moves at a slow afternoon tempo — no urgency, the journey entirely its own reward — acoustic and electric elements interwoven with a tropical rhythmic undercurrent that feels handmade at the edges, slightly warm and imperfect. His characteristic vocal understatement carries deliberate emotional restraint, the kind of performed coolness that reveals feeling precisely through what it doesn't say directly. Even in the sweetest passages a subtle irony surfaces in the arrangement choices; the honeymoon period, after all, is beautiful precisely because it ends, and Hosono rarely lets sentiment go unexamined for long. The production sits within his ongoing project of metabolizing foreign musical forms — American easy listening, Latin rhythms, Hawaiian exotica — and producing something distinctly Japanese in sensibility from the materials, the cultural borrowing so thoroughly digested it becomes native. Lyrically the piece stays impressionistic, evoking sensation and atmosphere rather than narrative: the warmth of early love as physical environment rather than emotional argument. Best for lazy weekend mornings when no schedule exists, sunlight through curtains, the small luxury of having nowhere to be for a few hours and someone to be nowhere with.