My thoughts on “innocence soar”, the debut digital single from another new codomomental group TOKYO Tefutefu.

 
Release Date: January 13th 2020

Tracklist

1. innocence soar

While many things in Idol tend to come and go in the blink of an eye, others take a while to get off the ground and really get going…or end up not doing so at all actually. What a mess of an opening paragraph, anyway as you all know codomomental have had a rough go of things in the last year or so but they’re doing their best to get through all of the setbacks as best they can. All the while auditioning for and presumably getting a head start on a new addition to the agency’s family of Idol groups. A process that has taken months and months but finally we’re about to see the fruits of.

TOKYO Tefutefu is the result of all of those months of auditions and planning and they appear to be being positioned to get quite the push behind them coming into 2021. The 7 member outfit debuted on the last day of 2020 and have already shown off a couple of tracks in the months since, one of which I’ll be talking about today as their official debut digital release. There has also been some talk of there already being a dozen or so other tracks all finished and ready to go so we’ll see what becomes of that in time I’m sure. Needless to say it looks like codomomental are very much focusing a lot of their attention on getting this group off of the ground as quickly as possible.

I’ve kinda mentioned this in passing a bit before but I sort of fell off the codomomental bandwagon a while back there for boring reasons like most of my favorites leaving, the music getting a bit played out and things like that. As such I haven’t really been following along on the TOKYO Tefutefu journey up until now and don’t really have much of a preconception as to what the group is supposed to be or sound like. I’m just hoping for something a little bit different out of codomomental than the usual handful of styles that their producers tend to favor so hopefully I’ll at least hear something out of this group that makes me go “Hey, that’s kinda different…neat!” If not then oh well I’m sure it’ll still be pretty good anyway but enough chatting, let’s hit play and get into this review here and see what is exactly that we’re working with.

“innocence soar” doesn’t really give the listener much of a chance to get comfortable as the track pretty much launches right into things the second you click play. We’re presented with a piano tinged Rock arrangement that’s contemporary in sound and also a rather popular thing currently so TOKYO Tefutefu seem to be casting a wide net as they try to draw in potential fans here. Nothing really stands out as being super innovative or anything like that, but I did enjoy the light crunch to the guitars which added a bit more texture to the track when they could have easily gotten away with something cleaner and requiring less effort. Vocally we’re hit with the mildly vocoded codomomental style so you can definitely tell this is one of their acts and the structure and hook placement also goes along a similar sort of path. It gives everything a sense of familiarity but anyone hoping for a more unique sound is likely going to be left wanting here unfortunately.

Still, there’s a really nice energy to the song overall and there’s some nice hooks scattered throughout too so plenty of positives for sure. There’s also a rather glaring negative though and it’s the vocals in the chorus. I have no idea what the plan was here but whoever signed off on that high pitched delivery probably should take another look at things. Not only does it break the flow of the track but it also sounds really strained and that’s in the studio too so I can’t imagine what this would be like in a live setting. It’s unfortunate because it really does take a lot away from what was an otherwise decent but rather safe codomomental song. Maybe it works better for some of you though, it just really didn’t sit well in my ears unfortunately.

As far as a debut song goes, “innocence soar” is pretty decent. Within the context of codomomental as a whole though it’s hard not to feel a bit disappointed as they really haven’t done much to set TOKYO Tefutefu apart from even their own sister groups in a lot of ways. Couple that with the fairly safe instrumental and unfortunate decisions in the chorus and it’s hard not to come out of this track just shrugging your shoulders and going “Eh, sure I guess”. Not really the first impression you want your new group to be making but I’m probably just being overly critical and pessimistic like always.

Like I mentioned earlier, word on the street is that TOKYO Tefutefu already have an album’s worth of songs recorded and ready to go so I guess we’ll probably be hearing a lot more out of them in the not too distant future. Right now my interest in the group is pretty tepid but this was one song so I’m more than willing to give them several more chances to spark my imagination. codomomental are without a doubt great at what they do, but over the past several years their groups have all started to converge on this sort of “house style” if you will so hopefully they can maybe start to get away from that with these new projects that they’ve been launching lately. We’ll see but I wouldn’t say I’m overly optimistic of that happening at this point in time.