Anna Takeuchi - Tickets

Tickets is Anna Takeuchi’s second full album and serves as a bit of a coming out party. She’s graduated from university, moved to Tokyo, cut off her long black hair and bleached it blonde. If her first album Matousic was a showcase of who she is, Tickets is a demonstration of who she could be, as she explores all sorts of different angles in a bid to push her boundaries and break her ceiling. 

In a sense, Matousic had her in a corner, she was the nice singer-songwriter next door communicating a positive message to be yourself. No matter how strongly you believe that, there’s only so many songs you can write, particularly from that first person viewpoint. They were songs of hers, things she wanted to tell listeners. On Tickets, lyrically the songs are designed to be sung by anyone, not just her. The cuteness factor has gone up, and many of the songs are targeting an object of affection, a lot more about “you” and all the associated feels of falling in love and being crazy about someone.

This kind of content gives her a lot more to work with, and is easier to pair with other genres. Following the intro inflight announcement, the album bursts out of the blocks with “一世一遇 Feeling”, a real rollercoaster of a track with the descending “feeling for you” in the chorus on the beat and propelled by a modern era Calvin Harris type bassline. It’s got all sorts of bells and whistles to capture that sense of a once in a lifetime feeling (一世一代 combined with 千載一遇).You’ve got the lead single “手のひら重ねれば” which features gospel style singing and is driven by an uplifting guitar riff - it even comes with a delightful Wes Anderson homage promotional video (see link below). There’s a fun collaboration with Afro Parker that pairs well with her hip hop sense, and she does it even better on the other single “Ice Cream” which optimizes both her own guitar style and trap-lite rhythm (also props for the Shalamar reference).

Of course, she’s still Anna Takeuchi, so there’s a few songs that feature the “love yourself be yourself” message. One of the best things about Anna is that she’s relatable, she’s not supremely confident or egotistical, even though she’s become a successful musician, she gets down sometimes and needs to encourage herself like most of us. And despite the desire to break ceilings, some of the best tracks are in her familiar style like “Love your love”, “Good for me” and especially “いいよ” which pares back all the frills and features a lovely yet unorthodox melody.

For Anna, Tickets represents a small evolution not a revolution - despite the image change, it’s not a 90 degree turn or sonic overhaul. By trying out new things, she definitely shows growth and new possibilities, but there’s room for experimentation yet. At the same time, in her attempt to try different genres, they’ve gone a little bit overboard - even though “YOU+ME=” has a lot of great elements, the cheeky interpolation of Doja Cat’s mega hit ”Kiss Me More” just comes off as cheap, and the production/vocoding on the electronic track “+imagination” not only smells like Perfume but even its forefathers. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with these styles of songs, but it's a very fine line between inspiration and imitation. Ironically, it’s almost like she tried to be like someone else instead of being herself. Still, she deserves respect for going in different directions, she’s still working out how to best optimize her strengths. Luckily, she gets it right more often than not on this album.

At the end of the day, Tickets is billed as a ticket to visit different places, but as an alternative interpretation, you could see it as tickets to be spent at an amusement park to try different experiences. Some you’ll maybe only ride once or twice and others you’ll want to go around again and again. Depending on your tastes, you may (or may not) like everything, but it’s a lot of fun and definitely worth a spin.

More from Anna Takeuchi: at Two, Matousic

Tokyo ON also recommends: Sato Moka - Glints