[Review] Baby ♡♡ Holic – Tokyo Mystery Tour Land

by Garry



My thoughts on “Tokyo Mystery Tour Land”, the first in a series of 3 digital singles from Baby ♡♡ Holic.


 
Release Date: April 1st 2021

Tracklist

1. Tokyo Mystery Tour Land

 

As you’ve probably noticed by now, when it comes to writing about music for this site I do tend to stick to a few broader genres that I’m reasonably comfortable talking about and probably more importantly find interesting/enjoyable to listen to. Getting out of your comfort zone is good every now and then though and since there hasn’t been a ton of new music coming out that has really been catching my attention lately I figured why try doing just that for a bit and see how I get on. Maybe you’ve noticed a bit more variety in recent weeks, it was definitely intentional if you were wondering.

So Baby ♡♡ Holic are certainly not the usual type of group that I would find myself writing about or even really listening to in general if I’m being totally honest. The 3-piece have actually been around for a couple of years at this point but only just solidified their current line-up in the past couple of months. To sort of mark that occasion they’ve released a series of 3 tracks, as is the popular thing to do these days, the first of which I’ll be taking a listen to here today.

“Tokyo Mystery Tour Land” is the name of the song and I guess maybe it’s a vague reference to a few different things but that’s speculation on my part. The cover looks pretty cute and Baby ♡♡ Holic have a pretty soft, colorful image so I’m expecting something pretty bright and Poppy here. The group’s concept is also based around being addictive so that would lead me to hope that there might be some pretty decent hooks out of either the vocals or instrumental, or perhaps even both. I have no real frame of reference for this one though so the best thing to do is to starting listening and see where this mystery tour ends up taking us.

The opening instrumental on “Tokyo Mystery Tour Land” gets going in pretty much the exact sort of way that I expected it to. Very bright, somewhat sparkly synthesized Pop with a bit of a clap track and a…dare I say it, quite addicting beat. Vocals come in after not too long at all and they vocoded, sort of anime style that they’re making use of here is also along the sort of lines that I was expecting and it works very well with what’s going on in the instrumental and makes for a very light, positive sounding song which isn’t something I find myself writing about all that often so in a lot of ways this is a refreshing change of pace. The pitch is likely to be an acquired taste but for how chaotic things can get at times between the vocals and the instrumental I still found the song pretty easy to follow and there’s some nice hooks coming out of each half of the composition.

There’s a very fantastical feel to it all, which I suppose ties in quite well with the song title actually and if you’re familiar with Anisong of doujin music from the early to mid-2000s then you’re going to notice a few familiar things going on here I think, I did at least. There are a few places on the track where things do feel like they get a bit too out of control for me, with vocal pitches being pushed to unnecessarily high levels which has the knock-on effect of blowing out everything else going on but we do get a pretty nice instrumental interlude and some catchy choruses so it just about balances out as a whole.

“Tokyo Mystery Tour Land” and Baby ♡♡ Holic definitely aren’t going to appeal to everyone, probably not many of you who typically read my articles in fact. Still, if you enjoy that energetic brand of bubblegum Synth Pop with a bit of a throwback feel then this song is something that you’re probably going to want to check out. Even if you don’t you should give Baby ♡♡ Holic a listen anyway, it’ll be a nice change of pace to the wall to wall EDM Hardcore that has been flooding into the scene for the past year or so.

I rather enjoyed writing about this release and I got a kick out of the throwback elements that were going into it to. So I figure maybe I’ll check out what else Baby ♡♡ Holic have in store for us with this series of digital releases and put a couple more reviews out in the process. I think that would be pretty fun and maybe I can convince a few of you to check them out in the process, that’d be cool too.

Rating:


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