Miyavi is one of those performers who I just have an unconditional love for. His talents are amazing, and he’s a pretty amazing person, too. He often acts like he’s about 10 years younger than he is, and for some reason it’s not annoying with him, but incredibly endearing. While I’m okay with never meeting a lot of musicians I listen to, he’s one of the ones I really want to meet, because just being able to talk to him would be amazing to me. I could listen to him sing and play guitar all day, and his lyrics and blog entries alike have often made me smile.
When I first started listening to Miyavi, MYV Pops hadn’t yet been released. I fell in love with his indie albums and his first major album immediately. Today, most of my favourite songs of his are still from those albums, though he’s released some wonderful songs since then. But after “Kimi ni negai wo,” which was gorgeous, I found that I had trouble getting into a lot of his new releases. I’ve had mixed feelings about the neo visualizm style he’s been doing since the fall; some songs, like “Sakihokoru hana no you ni” and the covers of his own songs on 7 Samurai Sessions, were pretty nice, but others just didn’t do it for me.
But here we have it: his best release since Kimi ni negai wo.
“Hi no hikari sae todokanai kono basho de” means “In this place that even the sun’s light can’t reach” (or maybe “doesn’t reach,” but either way probably works). The title alone tells you that this is going to be a very different song from his last single, “Subarashiki kana, kono sekai -WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD-”. When Miyavi gets into moodier lyrical content, the results tend to be brilliant, and this is no exception.
The tone of the song is set right off the bat with the acoustic guitar. The music has a feeling to it that invokes thoughts of a kind of lonely, longing sadness; I’ve heard Jrock songs with this kind of feeling before, but I’m not sure I’ve heard it in a Miyavi song. Everyone feels this way at some point, so it’s important that there’s music like this to express these feelings and help us work through them. The guitar and vocals are both very calm at first, and Miyavi’s voice is lovely when he sings quietly like this. A bit of the DJ scratching Miyavi fans have become used to in his neo visualizm era comes in after awhile, but it only adds to the song nicely. There’s a lovely calm balance going on at the beginning that reflects a quiet, contemplative stage of loneliness.
Then the chorus comes, and the song gets louder. The electric guitar comes in, the rapper guy starts talking/rapping/whatever you want to call it in the background, and Miyavi’s voice grows louder, less calm. The build-up to the chorus is great, and the melody of the chorus is really nice, especially the longer notes that Miyavi holds. He starts some of his more emotional singing here. The rapper guy’s voice is quiet and not overpowering, so I don’t mind him here, and he actually adds to the song positively (I don’t care for him much in other songs), adding another element to the chorus instead of stealing the spotlight. In certain parts he kind of sounds like a seagull in the background to me, which you’d think would be weird, but I actually like it. He’s mostly yelling in the background, but it’s been made very quiet, so it sounds kind of like a yell in the distance, which adds to the emotional feel of the song (like he’s is out there alone, yelling, hoping their voice will reach someone). And I especially like what the guitar does around 1:48.
After the chorus fades out, the song picks up speed. First the acoustic guitar comes in faster-paced than before, and then comes the electric guitar and everything else, more aggressive than before. The song changes from having a calm, sorrowful feel to a more angrily upset one. The mental image I have of a person walking alone sadly turns into one of them yelling, crying, and thrashing around, letting out all of their feelings. It’s like the next stage of the loneliness that the song is expressing. Miyavi’s voice is fairly calm in the next verse, but louder than in the first one, to match the instrumental. The energy and emotion in his vocals picks up a bit in the pre-chorus, leading us into a more aggressive chorus than the first one, which is even more satisfying to listen to. It goes into a new part after the chorus, where he’s holding and hitting some great notes that add even more emotion to the song. At the end of this part, he holds this wonderful higher note over some acoustic guitar that leads into the next instrumental part, full of loud electric guitar that sounds amazing. Even the drums leading into the louder part sound perfect to me. Every little detail of this song is terrific and fits perfectly with the rest of it.
Miyavi comes back in sounding angrier than he has yet in this song. From the time the song first picks up the pace, the passionate, angrier emotion builds up, becoming more and more powerful as the song continues. By the time it gets to the last chorus, everything is powerful and aggressive and amazing. Miyavi’s vocals and the electric guitar both take my breath away. The note he hits in the part that starts at 4:50 has a really good emotional effect, and the last note he hits in that part, at 5:03, is just perfect, turning into a yell as the whole song reaches a passionate peak. I can’t help but call this perfect, and I haven’t felt this inspired by a Miyavi song in quite awhile. Everything from this point until the ending is so brilliant it leaves me in awe. The song ends with the first line of the first verse, his vocals quiet again over a louder instrumental to bring yet another emotional effect, and then the whole song ends on the last syllable, all at once.
This is exactly what I’ve been waiting for in terms of Miyavi’s releases. I looked up the “WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD” single just before I looked up this one as I began catching up on Jrock singles I’d missed, and it didn’t do much for me at all. I felt a bit discouraged by it. But then I listened to this, and it blew me away. I don’t even believe that this review can do the song justice, but I figured I’d try to describe what the song makes me feel, anyway. You really need to listen to the song for yourself and see how it makes you feel. But god, I’m just so, so impressed by it. Thank you Miyavi, Sugizo, rapper guy, and everyone else playing on it, for bringing us this amazing song. (I haven’t really mentioned Sugizo in this because I just don’t know a lot about him - don’t worry, of course I know who he is, I just haven’t been exposed to much of him - but I certainly appreciate his contributions to the song.)
The PV fits the feeling of the song very well. When I first listened to the song, I fell in love with Miyavi and his music all over again, but now I find that there are multiple moments in the PV (which I was distracted from, when I first watched it, by the amazing song) that also make me fall in love with him again - and again, and again. The moment at 0:50 is a good example, but after that I lose count pretty quickly, because there are just so many terrific Meev moments in this PV. He’s smirking and singing and gesturing like he always has, but I sense this newer maturity and a higher level of confidence that comes with it, and it’s wonderful to behold. The band shot is the best example of this, but throughout the PV he is amazing. (I’ve been using the word “amazing” a lot in this review, but that’s what this single is, so I can’t help myself.) The shots of Miyavi walking (with his guitar, of course) and the place where he is in these shots perfectly fit the song. I like the dancing person draped in black fabric, and the little girl is no surprise in a Jrock video, but doesn’t seem like an annoying Jrock PV cliche or anything. The best moment with her is near the end, right before the best part of the song, when Miyavi sings a line that means something like “Will you let go of this hand?” (I’m not totally sure; I’m only in my second year of Japanese school) and he’s in the shot with the girl, taking her hand and staying beside her. A bit after this there’s a shot of a helicopter, which makes me wonder if Miyavi and the girl are going to be rescued from this place they’re in. This is probably a metaphor for someone coming along and rescuing another from loneliness (I do get a bit of a sense of hopefulness in the music towards the very end of the song, too), making the rest of the PV a metaphor for that loneliness and the way it feels. Again, the PV fits the song perfectly. Not seeing Sugizo there, but oh well. His contributions to the song itself are what matters.
Add to all of this a nice, simple acoustic B-side (”My name iz Oresama.com”, a title deserving of an lol) and this is probably going to be my first purchased Miyavi single. (I’ve only bought albums of his before.) I’m going to have to get the version that comes with a DVD, since I love the PV so much too. This has become one of my favourite Miyavi songs, not just my favourite of his recent stuff, and now that I’ve seen how good he can make this neo visualizm style, I hope that future neo visualizm releases are also this good. I was surprised by how (one more time) amazing this song is, but I probably shouldn’t have been. After all, this is Miyavi we’re talking about. I can always trust him to do a damn good job of what he does, even if there’s a single here or there that isn’t brilliant. I am, without a doubt, one happy Miyavi fan right now. =)
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:59 am
…what a review! I agree with what you say about this being one of Miyavi’s greatest songs. When I first discovered him it took me a while to get into him and his songs as I found more music and more about him. But as soon as I watched the “Hi no hikari sae todokanai kono basho de” PV I also re-discovered my love for him and the song really blew me away.