Tricot pack a lot of musical ideas into a single song — and they unwind or abruptly pause their guitar playing, all based on a sense of intuition. However, the band also prizes economy on their latest five-track EP, a set that’s tightly sequenced for a concise and continuous narrative: one falls out of love (“Daihatsumei”), yearns to fall back in love (“Butter”), finds something new (“Reflection”), has a fight and makes up (“Waruguchi”), rinse and repeat. “Daihatsumei” introduces a classic Tricot line-up of scribbled guitar riffs, stuffed drum fills, and a sharply shifting chorus. Caught in the commotion, frontwoman Ikkyu Nakajima remains bashful and hopeless: “At this point, confidence/ A secret trick / I’ve got none,” she sighs, giving up on saving a crumbling relationship. Her defeated vocal bleeds into “Butter,” which grows denser in its melancholic mood as the band stretches out this pensive longing in a near six-minute slow dance. “Reflection,” meanwhile, acts as the flip-side to the preceding song, with its length dedicated to admiring a newfound love from every angle. The languid music gets cut in “Waraguchi” (‘Badmouthing’), but the effervescence still shines through, shading the narrative about a lover’s quarrel in support of an endearing story: “I can listen to it forever/ Because that’s you” Nakajima affectionately sings, referring to her partner’s various flaws. If set right, Repeat eventually circles back to the opening line of “Daihatsumei”: “Ah, it always ends up the same / My ex-charm points get on your nerves.” And Tricot wrestles, again and again, with the set narrative, as if they don’t already know the course of their story.
Published as part of Foreign Correspondent | Issue 4.
