My thoughts on “Romantic Escape”, the latest single from Seireki13ya.

Release Date: October 21st 2020

Tracklist

1. Romantic Escape
2. mata ne
3. Romantic Escape (Instrumental)
4. mata ne (Instrumental)

In perhaps what is going to be the most exceptional year in any of our lifetimes, it’s understandable that most people would be a bit more…risk averse than they might typically be shall we say. Well not codomomental, who have been trying out all kinds of new things musically while also being forced into making some pretty substantial personnel changes along the way too. The results have been a bit mixed in my opinion but it’d be hard not to respect that they’ve obviously got a vision for where each of their groups are going and aren’t afraid to do what it takes to make it a reality.

It would be easy then for the agency’s youngest property Seireki13ya to get a bit lost in the shuffle of everything going on around them. Where their sister groups have been pushing the envelope, by comparison they’ve taken the approach of continuing to do what they’ve been doing since their debut with maybe a few much smaller tweaks to their sound and image here and there. The results have been very positive on the whole but if you’re looking for drama, excitement, turmoil and all of that kind of stuff then you’re going to have found very little of it in the Seireki camp in 2020. A refreshing sense of normality in these strange times, or not enough action? I guess it’s up to you guys to be the judge of that.

“Romantic Escape” is the group’s latest single, in a year which has already seen the release “Aiuta Nichiya” (review here) and “Baby baby Cupid” (review here). The former saw them try out a few new things while the latter took on a very contemporary sound and style of music that is very popular right now. At the end of the review I said it felt like codomomental were getting ready to get behind Seireki in a big way so it’s going to be interesting to hear what sort of direction things take on this new single. They’ve certainly been doing a lot of work promoting it and hyping it up so let’s see if all of the hubbub is warranted and get into this review.

There’s a very strong anime song vibe to the way the single’s title track opens, which I suppose could be considered a good or a bad thing depending on how you feel about that sub-section of J-Pop generally. Lots of autotune on the vocals to give them that sugary sweet tone and a pretty bright and melodic synthesizer instrumental to back it all up. A strong start in my personal view and I also rather liked the subtle introduction of some harder synthesizer wubs as the song developed to add a bit more texture to everything. It does take over a bit the further into the track that we get but I thought it balanced out the higher pitched vocals rather well, even if it did make them sound a bit more subdued at times than they actually were by comparison. I also thought it was pretty nice how they managed to weave a bunch of fairly catchy synthesizer melodies around all of this and I think it definitely rewards repeat listens so you can pick them all out. As far as the choruses go, I didn’t dislike them in general but at the same time they’re just sort of there for me due to various factors, but mainly the lyrical content isn’t the most memorable and the style is something that I’ve heard a lot of over the years so that didn’t help either. On the whole though this is a pretty enjoyable track and if codomomental are trying to position Seireki for some kind of anime work in the future then stuff like this is a great place to start. Current fans should be happy with this one and there’s potential to gain some new ones too so great stuff in that regard.

Moving on to the single’s b-side now and we have “mata ne”, something I said quite a bit at the end of my last Tokyo trip, but I didn’t think it’d be this long until I was going to be seeing a lot of my friends again. I kinda figured that this was going to be some kind of sentimental Ballad based purely on the title alone and yeah, that’s pretty much what we ended up with here in a lot of ways. Piano and a symphonic melody set the tone early on this one and some fairly clean vocal performances are laid over this to make for a very bright, almost wistful atmosphere which certainly hits on a lot of the key elements of a Ballad type of track. I did like the inclusion of the clap track and drumbeat to spice things up a little bit though and I think in general there is a sense of building momentum over the course of the track too, so while we do find a lane and stick to it it doesn’t mean that we’re always observing the speed limit if you catch my drift. To touch a bit more on the vocal side of things, it really is quite nice to hear Seireki get the chance to show off some more natural vocal performances than their usual autotune or overly exaggerated style and yeah these girls can all sing really well and put on quite the beautiful performance here I must say. It is a Ballad of course so if you’re not into that sort of thing then I don’t know how much you’ll enjoy this song but I got quite a bit out of the instrumental melodies myself so I don’t know, your mileage may vary I suppose. On the whole though, a solid b-side track to what is a pretty decent single that we’ve got here.

“Romantic Escape” looks to be another very solid entry into the Seireki13ya discography, with quite a bit of wide appeal to both tracks that feature in my personal opinion. It’s not really rocket science to say that this group is being positioned to be the more mainstream friendly of the codomomental properties but it really does feel like they’re pushing a lot harder in that sort of anime song direction of late. Hard to argue with the results though, that much is for sure.

I expect that’s going to be it from Seireki as far as 2020 is concerned but I think all things considered they’ve had a really good year and are in a great position to really push on from all of that in 2021. An anime tie-up wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest at this point and I can see the group’s popularity really taking off if that were to ever materialize. While Zenbu Kimi no Sei da may still be the top dogs in the codomomental yard right now, there’s a young up and comer that’s going to be right up there with them in time, as long as they can avoid too many line-up mishaps along the way.