Customer Reviews

Love Psychedelico - Greatest Hits

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I've been in Japan for a year now, and it took me almost that long to finally have an open mind about any other music that didn't have the words "Stone Temple," "Rage Against" or "Beck" in the title. After I finally went out on the economy and started listening to the local music, I got hooked on it. Sure it's in Japanese but hey, Radiohead might as well be a foreign language, right? Anyway, there was a period where a certain song titled "Last Smile" was getting extremely heavy radio rotation. Love Psychedelico had the single out and I bought it. It was later released on The Greatest Hits, which is actually their first album, but it might as well be their greatest hits. This band is very heavily influenced by early 60s acoustic, folk and hippie music, like the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and they make several references to the 60s in their songs. Plus, a lot of their songs are in English (parts, anyway) and it's just plain good music. Every song on this CD is worth listening to.

I went 6 months without knowing this band's name... it was only the sacred tape containing really cool songs that I found in my workplace's cassette player. One of the co-workers who quit probably forgot it there. I became hooked on songs such as Your Song, Last Smile, and Nostalgic 69. I was happy when I found out that I had the MP3 laying around in my computer... Love Psychedelico! I quickly went out and bought this album at a local cd shop and to this date Last Smile is still one of my favourite songs. However scrolling through all the songs in the CDs, I liked all of them. If you like this 60's-70's style of music... a.k.a. wild and free... then definitely get this CD.

Now if only I had a good old car to go with this CD =)

I picked this up while visiting Tokyo having never heard anything by Love Psychedelico before. I checked them out on the headphones at the record store and immediately heard how they are so different from all the other Japanese techno-pop stuff going around.
The songs are well-crafted and well produced with catchy melodies woven around a classic rock sound. The lyrics... well, mostly in Japanese, but some songs mix in a lot of English. More than a few songs have US hit potential, especially "I mean love me".

Love Psychedelico is by far one of the most talented acts of the 70's-style rock revival, having much potential for international appeal. Vocalist Kumi-chan blends many styles of vocals, from Janis Joplin to Sheryl Crow, to create a broad spectrum of singing diversity. The music sounds like the garage ganja rock of the 1970's, very gritty, and *VERY* rock-and-roll.

My favorites:

"Your Song" -- A straight up jam, with colorful acoustic guitars and wonderfully mixed vocals. Kumi Sato does an excellent job at keeping her singing down-tone and preserving the "jam" feel of this song.

"I Mean Love Me" -- The only fully English song on this record. The grammar may sound a little broken at times (forgive them, they're Japanese!), but the country-rock-soul edge keeps the listener listening and his fingers tapping.

"Nostalgic '69" -- My favorite Delico song! Kumi-chan relishes in her style of blues-style singing and switches to a more tambourine-smashing high-pitch singing voice for the chorus.

"Low" -- Starts out with a little jamming freestyle, and breaks out into Zeppelin-esque guitar work and jazzy singing (complete with doo-doo-doo's).

Excellent CD!

Kumi's voice is infectiously fresh and arresting, Naoki's guitar relentlessly driving. All kinds of (chiefly North American) influences are strongly present here: indie, country, straight-ahead rock, Cal-Mex, Morissette angst, hints of Grace Slick and early Airplane. But far from being simply a talented pastiche (a charge always unfairly leveled at Japanese groups), it stirs all of these elements together into a brilliant, dream-like evocation of youthful, danceable, and---yes---sexual, energy. Love Pychedelico's seamless mixture of English and Japanese lyrics adds to the mesmeric force of the music. Get this CD, you won't be disappointed.

Some of these songs -- like Moonly -- could be Liz Phair, except with some lyrics in Japanese (hey, didn't she cover "Turning Japanese"?). This band also can sound like or Juliana Hatfield or Joan Jett or sometimes Sheryl Crow. Some tunes and riffs you'll recognize from somewhere else but this is a fun pop record.