I must admit that I was not at all familiar with Stereo Girl before a song from the Tokyo based 5-piece’s debut album “Pink Fog” was recommended to me by that pesky YouTube algorithm but their story is a familiar one. Forming originally from the members of a high school light music club (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) back in 2014, the band have only really begun to break through in the past 2 years or so and this album is almost a culmination of that journey in a lot of ways. Keen ears will note the rather heavy Western influence on the band’s sound, particularly on songs like hit track “GIMME A RADIO” or the angsty strop of “I Don’t Play Baseball”. There are several, very flattering I’m sure, Oasis comparisons floating around online and even if you don’t agree with that analysis it’s still fair to say that this album and Stereo Girl in general aren’t going to be easily pigeonholed into the predefined J-Pop template of the day. Indeed, there’s a strong sense of wisdom to the band’s oftentimes noisy playfulness that belies a group of friends in their earlier 20s.
