Despite being probably the heaviest rotation artist for me in the past year and having discovered them through my investigations of Japanese dreampop, I’ve not written anything about Hitsujibungaku because, well, I don’t really think of them as dreampop. As I mentioned in my 2023 wrap up I’d grant you adjacent, maybe, as Moeka Shiotsuka knows her way around fuzz pedals and definitely has an education (apparently she was inspired to buy a Big Muff after hearing Yuck), but their output is so much more emotionally and sonically direct than most of what you’d associate with the genre. But I’ll bite, now, because barring unforeseen circumstance, I’ll be seeing them this weekend in Yokohama thanks to dumb luck and good timing. So I will share one of their more genre-borrowing singles, “Ghost” from 2021’s Powers, and just be excited that this will be my first show in Japan.

And a couple more YouTube guitar cover/lessons, because that is a thing and I am here for it.