Sports (Tokyo Jihen album)

Background

This is the first Tokyo Jihen album since 2007's Variety and vocalist Ringo Sheena made a comeback to a composer in the album. In 2008, Sheena focused on a string of releases to celebrate her 10th anniversary since her solo debut, such as a B-side collection, a singles box set and a string of concerts. In 2009, she released a new single, "Ariamaru Tomi", and an original album, Sanmon Gossip.

Recording and production

Tokyo Jihen wrote Sports feature the theme of sports as the title. Band members got together, each bringing some demos which they each created imaging sports. They built instrumentation from demos in the recording studio and Sheena put words on them other than Ukigumo's tracks.

Release and promotion

The first single released from the album was "Senkō Shōjo." It was released as a digital download in November 2007, two months after the release of their third album, Variety. It was written and recorded in the Variety sessions. The second single, "Nōdōteki Sanpunkan," was released three months before the album, in December 2009. Both singles has commercial tie-ups. "Senkō Shōjo" was used in Subaru Stella car commercials, and "Nōdōteki Sanpunkan" was used in an Ezaki Glico Watering KissMint gum commercial, featuring Sheena as the spokesperson.

"Denpa Tsūshin", "Season Sayonara" and "Kachiikusa" were released in Chaku-uta and Chaku-Uta Full format prior to the album. "Kachiikusa" was used for the second batch of Watering KissMint commercials. It was released to radio, as well as cellphone download, on the 16th of January. It reached #30 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 and #58 on the RIAJ Digital Track Chart Top 100. The band later performed this song on Music Station, a week before the album's release.

"Sweet Spot" was released as a digital download on iTunes on the 8th of February. It reached #13 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 the week of the album's release.

Tokyo Jihen embarked on an all-country promotional concert tour, "Ultra C" (ウルトラC), in March 2010.

Track listing

All lyrics written by Ringo Sheena except where noted, translated into English by Robbie Clark and Mika Arata. All music arranged by Tokyo Jihen.

All official European language titles according to Ringo Sheena's website.

Note this album tracks use the track symmetry (here topic and language mirroring, centered on track 7) as commonly used by Ringo Sheena in many of her albums.

Content and structure

The album, much like many of Sheena's solo works and the band's previous albums (such as Shōso Strip, Adult), features a symmetrical track list. Tracks are paired to another in title length, type of script and placement of grammatical particles. The official English titles given in the album's booklet also follow this theme (occasionally receiving non-direct translations to fit the theme).

Ikiru and "Kimaru" are both plain-form verbs with a single kanji (in fact, the standard reading of "極まる" is "kiwamaru"). Both songs end with a band arrangement and begin with a sparsely arranged section.

Denpa Tsūshin and "Senkō Shōjo" are both songs with four kanji in their titles. Both deal with electricity in some way.

Season Sayonara and "Sweet Spot" are both written in katakana. Both titles feature two words that begin with s sounds.

Kachiikusa and "Noriki" are both set phrases associated with sports. Both are continuative verb/noun compounds, with two kanji and one hiragana character.

F.O.U.L. and "F.A.I.R." are both English words in Latin script. Unlike some previous pairs, such as "Meisai" and "Ishiki" which name the paired song in the lyrics, neither song is named in "F.A.I.R." (but both are named in "F.O.U.L.").

Utenkekkō and "Zettai Zetsumei" are four kanji compounds that are set phrases associated with sports.

In the vein of Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana and Sanmon Gossip, the central song with no paired track was the leading promotional song ("Nōdōteki Sanpunkan").