I made my first visit to Nagoya, Japan a few weeks ago, but only saw their Shinkanesen station and Legoland Japan, situated on the city’s port lands. There’s no point to this besides to say “hey go look at my holiday pics” but also that if local shoegaze ambassadors Blurred City Lights had released their new song a little earlier, I could have indulged my proclivity for vacation location-related content a little more. But here we are.

It seems like they just put out their second album Utopia/Dystopia, but that was over a year ago. A pair of interviews with Japanese shoegaze blog Sleep Like A Pillow covers topics like their disdain for Tokyo, the accidental framing of the release as two EPs instead of double albums, and the unconventional DIY packaging of the CD releases which, while I’m glad to own them, make them a real pain to store. There’s also in-depth track-by-track commentary of all the songs on the release and in all, it feels like a definite bookend to whatever press cycle a small independent release like it might have.

【前編】Blurred City Lights『Utopia / Dystopia』インタビュー @ Sleep Like A Pillow

Further evidence they’re clearly ready to move onto their third act comes with the aforementioned new single, released this weekend. 『 月光 』- or “Moonlight” – is declared by the band as their first proper single, distinguishing it from the past releases which they say were just demos. And while that seems like a semantic distinction – those songs still appear on their first album 天使のいない街で which is too good to be relegated to dry run status – it’s true that the new song comes with a sonic confidence in both the writing and production that feels bigger and fuller than earlier releases, and the accompanying video is decidedly slicker than their previously proudly homespun visuals.

The song comes in an EP form backed by a couple of instrumental b-sides which are also hardly throwaways. Needless to say, whatever Blurred City Lights are planning for their next release, I’m here for it.