VOL.177 new album“STAY 〜夜明けのSoul〜”成员interview(first half)

●○○From music freak magazine Vol.177

GARNET CROW

New Album
『STAY ~Yoake no Soul~』
2009.9.30 Release!!

GARNET CROW’s seventh original album, 『STAY ~Yoake no Soul~』, was released on September 30. True to its powerful title, it is a work made up of songs full of presence and vitality. We spoke with the members about this album, which once again revealed the flexibility of the GARNET CROW sound.

●When did you start talking about releasing this album?

Yuri Nakamura (hereafter Nakamura): We weren’t originally writing songs with the specific intention of putting out an album. Even after releasing an album last year, we continued creating songs steadily, and once we had accumulated a certain number of them, we started from the feeling that it was probably time to bring them together as an album. As we selected the songs to include, there were moments when we thought, “We don’t have this kind of song; I’d like one,” so we wrote and recorded new material to fill those gaps. There was a little bustle toward the end of production while we made those adjustments, but overall it progressed quite naturally.

●Was there a particular standard you used when deciding which songs to include?

Nakamura: Once “Stay,” which also became the album title, was finished, I felt as if I could see the album’s outline. We wrote it around the time after “Doing all right” was released, and it may have been a turning point in the production process. We approached it differently from anything before, moving forward almost like improvisation, taking things as they came. For the demo, instead of refining a melody, I sang whatever came to mind and that became the demo, which we then sent straight on for arrangement. I didn’t first build a complete world and finish the demo myself; I sang it as “la la la,” without even a guide lyric, and turned that into a song, so it felt extremely free. I had never made a song whose melody and chord progression seemed almost to exist and not exist at the same time. When it took shape, I thought, “This is going to become a very important song for us.” Then, when we began seriously selecting the album tracks in early summer, we couldn’t ignore the presence of “Stay,” and my desire to make it the core grew stronger. “Stay” is a song that conveys the inner part of our passion and feelings toward music now—our Soul—and I think it became a song through which people can feel the spirit of GARNET CROW. We decided to build the album around it.

●“Stay” has a very distinctive development.

Nakamura: It’s extremely free. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make a melody like this again. This was the first time I wrote out a melody line while listening to my own demo (laughs). I sang it impulsively, so I don’t remember what chords or melody I used. Because the song was created from the heart, it really is packed with Soul. The A and B sections have a jazzy feel and a hint of blues, while the chorus suggests gospel harmonies, so in that sense it has a flavor our songs have never had before. It was also the first time I had deliberately made something that ended up carrying that kind of scent as a result rather than by design, which made it very fresh.

●When you first heard the song, Mr. Furui, did you have a feeling that it would become the album’s centerpiece?

Hirohito Furui (hereafter Furui): I did. I felt it was a really good song, and I strongly wanted to take care in making it. But I didn’t agonize over it; I naturally assembled it piece by piece. After I arranged it, lyrics were added and then the vocals, right? I could feel it gaining strength through that process, becoming a better and better version of itself.

●Mr. Okamoto, did you feel that this was a different kind of song from what you had done before?

Hitoshi Okamoto (hereafter Okamoto): The melody was very fresh, and I thought it sounded difficult.

Nakamura: When you heard the demo, could you remember the melody right away?

Furui: You can remember it after listening a few times. I sometimes worked while humming it to expand the image of the song…

Nakamura: I’d like to hear you sing it (laughs).

Furui: I lock my room, so no one can come in or hear me (laughs).

●Nakamura’s singing on “Stay” sounds different from usual.

Nakamura: It’s a mysterious song, somewhere between singing and speaking. Since it’s a song with room for improvisation, it sounds cooler when you loosen it up. At first I considered singing it in an even more broken-up way, but I held back a little for the balance of the album. The accents don’t line up, and the vocal chases after the backing track; it’s completely different from how I’ve sung before. Normally that kind of construction would feel strange, but with this song it didn’t at all. If anything, it’s more pleasant to listen to that way. It is full of the beauty of music that can only be expressed in that moment, a vocal created from the atmosphere and my state of mind at the time. Even if someone asked me to sing it now, I don’t think I could reproduce exactly what is captured here.

●So it’s a song that can keep changing as you perform it in the future.

Nakamura: Yes. I actually think it should keep changing. It’s a rewarding song to sing, the kind that makes a vocalist feel fortunate. Rather than singing exactly as written, it’s cooler to sing it in your own way, according to your mood and the way the performance feels at that moment. In that sense, it became a song with a new aspect of GARNET CROW’s musicality. I think we managed to take it in a new direction while retaining its melancholy and fragility.

●Did making “Stay” the album’s pillar broaden your range of choices?

Nakamura: I think it gave us the feeling that any kind of song could be accepted. Many of the songs on this album are dramatic and carry a sense of poignancy or fragility, but that is our individuality, and it is where the musicality we love comes from, so we decided to put it all in without resisting it. This album has a great many songs with a strong sense of glamour. That made the running order difficult (laughs). When I heard “Hello Sadness,” I thought it would be cool as the first track, but I felt the intro needed something extra to make it an opening song, so we had some strings added like a sound effect. It gives a sense that something is about to begin, and after the drums enter, the song’s expression changes, making it feel like a prologue that invites you into the world of the album.

●Was “Hello Sadness” written recently?

Nakamura: Yes. It was recorded toward the end of album production, so I think it’s the newest song here. I wanted a song to open the album, so I tried making something upbeat, groovy, and full of movement.

●Since it has an introductory quality, were there any particular points you focused on in the arrangement?

Furui: We wanted the synthesizer sound to come fully to the front. I don’t think we’ve ever gone this far with it in one of our songs.

Nakamura: The synthesizer section feels as if it is being urged forward like a movie trailer, and then it leads into the main feature, so it worked well. I think it lets you take a trip into the GARNET CROW world in an instant, making it very effective.

●“Hana wa Saite Tada Yurete” is an album version, and it has a slightly different feel.

Nakamura: The sound pressure is greater, isn’t it? The layers of sound are thicker, so I think it makes a different impression from the single. The same phrases are played on different instruments from the single, so you should be able to enjoy a variety of tones. The changes are easy to hear, and while the arrangement inherits the single’s strength and beauty, it has gained more depth. It is bright and substantial, and it was good that it also balances the album’s overall world.

●“Elysium” was included only briefly on the first-press DVD of “Hana wa Saite Tada Yurete,” so it was a song whose continuation I had really wanted to hear.

Nakamura: I think it became an upbeat tune in the GARNET CROW tradition. I feel that longtime fans will enjoy it too.

Furui: It may have an early-period scent.

Okamoto: We had an image of the instrument sounds bringing old GARNET CROW to mind.

Nakamura: When I heard the arrangement, the intro already had the scent of “Nakenai Yoru mo Nakanai Asa mo,” so it felt very nostalgic.

●Did you consciously add that feeling of nostalgia, Mr. Furui?

Furui: I may have arranged it this way because I was in that kind of mode myself. When I looked back on the past, I found myself thinking that things had been freer during our indie days.

●Yuri Nakamura loves summer festivals. She was happy to have been able to attend two fireworks displays this summer.