群青日和

Tokyo Jihen's debut single announces a band, not a solo turn — and it does so by racing. The tempo is brisk and clipped, built on Hirama Mikio's spiky, treble-forward guitar and a rhythm section that plays with the taut precision of session veterans who've decided to sound like a garage band anyway. There's a nervous jazz-pop looseness under the rock chassis, a piano stabbing in the gaps, everything mixed dry and close so you feel the room. Shiina Ringo's voice here is less feral than in her solo era: still capable of that throat-scraping snarl, but mostly poised, enunciating with a theatrical crispness that turns Japanese consonants into percussion. The lyric fixes on ultramarine — the color of a particular sky on a particular day — and uses it as a stand-in for a love that's both dazzling and impossible to hold, running toward someone through summer glare. Released in 2004 as the lead track from *Kyouiku*, it functioned as a manifesto: Shiina was going to be a bandleader now, in a suit, in a group with a name. It's a song for walking fast somewhere in bright weather, or for the first cold beer after work when your energy hasn't dropped yet.