Cat-loving J-gaze godheads Tokyo Shoegazer have just released their fourth album Remains, and obviously believing that their name tells you everything you need to know, did not release a single video or preview of any kind. And since the whole thing is out now, you can just go and listen on the platform of your choice (and you should, it’s great). So in lieu any official promotional materials of that but to still commemorate the occasion, I’m finishing up a post I started forever ago mainly for my own edification, but which could also be interesting – who have been the voices of Tokyo Shoegazer?
The core of the band have always been drummer Hiroshi Sasabuchi, and guitarists Yoshitaka Sugahara and Kiyomi Watanabe. Founding bassist “The K” left in 2013, leading to their initial dissolution, and did not return when they reformed in 2020. But a key part of their formula has always been the soft, female vocals overtop their thunderous musical backdrop – it’s the shoegaze formula, after all. Interestingly, they’ve never had a permanent frontwoman – the voice (and often third guitarist) has changed from era to era, and each with decidedly different personalities beyond the basic similarities (soft, female, occasionally wielding guitar).
Please keep in mind that this research is based strictly on what I’ve been able to scrape from the internet, and that things like album credits are wildly inconsistent or incomplete. Add to that the fact that pseudonyms abound in Japanese music, the whole foreign language thing, and oh yeah that the band has tried to redact large chunks of their recorded history and I make no promises this is accurate. But I think it’s reasonably close.
Their 2011 debut album Crystallize remains their finest moment, with vocals provided by Yukiko Watanabe, aka Yuki, who came from and returned to her post-rock/post-metal band with Sugahara, Presence Of Soul. She remained with the band during the recording of their second album Turnaround, but left before the recording was completed. Despite that, it is her voice on the copies of the album (or digital rips thereof) that remain. I don’t know that the photo below is of her with them, but given the youthful appearances of all involved, it’s a reasonable guess.
The band followed through with some live commitments between the album release and their dissolution and for her replacement, they enlisted American singer Ananda Jacobs in May 2013 for the few live shows the band performed in support of Turnaround before splitting that October. She formed a new band after that, Jacobs, and continues to release music under her own name.
After reforming in 2019, the band enlisted a new singer-guitarist, Shoko Inoue, to be their face and voice. She appears on the first releases of their new era – the tour-only Moondiver EP, which like the original Turnaround, has also been scrubbed from the internet, and the original release of the Coaltar Of The Deepers covers EP Gyoninzaka In The Four Seasons. After that initial round of activity, she left the band to focus on her own excellent shoegaze outfit, COLLAPSE. I do knot know if this photo is of her with Tokyo Shoegazer or COLLAPSE, but having seen the latter in 2024, I’m pretty sure it’s her though she now plays a much more distinctive Zemaitis Flying V-style guitar in that band.
One of the official reasons Moondiver has been redacted is because the band reused a number of the songs and ideas in their third album, 2022’s Moonworld Playground. For it, they enlisted another new singer – Rie Funakoshi, who already had a long solo career as singer-songwriter Rie Fu. Fully bilingual and having a very different voice and style of singing from her predecessors, it makes Playground something of an outlier in their discography, particularly with the sound of Remains regressing to the mean.
With her own career to attend to, Funakoshi did not stay in the Tokyo Shoegazer lineup for long and by the end of the year, the band announced the latest incarnation of the band with – again – the erasure of a former incarnation. With the original Gyoninzaka In The Four Seasons circulating only as digital files, they released it to streaming services in a new edition featuring all-new vocals by new singer Kyoko Sahara, aka Sahara, who also makes rather quieter music as Siraska. She is the primary vocalist on Remains, and if you find any live footage online from the last few years she’s front and centre with the Bigsby-adorned Telecaster.
There’s a brand-new interview with the band at Rolling Stone Japan where Sahara’s vocals and how they fit in the band are discussed:
Sahara’s vocals are also not shoegaze at all. I was introduced to her through a mutual acquaintance, and she’s more into Shiina Ringo and that kind of thing, and she’s not at all into the shoegaze falsetto singing style. But her ability to absorb and adapt is incredible. She picks up everything you throw at her. Even if I give her a request that’s a bit unconventional, she’ll have absorbed it all by the next rehearsal. I think that’s because her skills and potential are quite high, and it’s been a huge help.
Yoshitaka Sugahara. Tokyo Shoegazer
東京酒吐座が語る「シューゲイザー」の呪縛を乗り越え、拡張した新境地、Wispとの共演秘話 @ Rolling Stone Japan
And so that’s it! I think it’s correct. And while I loved Watanabe and Onoue’s work with the band, I’m really enjoying how Sahara fits with them so I hope she sticks around, though with her voice on two official records now, we are in uncharted territory.
Update: And that’s not quite it! A recent interview with the band at HK site Bloody Mary touches on the question of their many vocalists, and made me realize my comprehensive timeline was missing their recording of My Bloody Valentine’s “Only Shallow” for the Yellow Loveless tribute compilation, which I’ve also meant to get to for years.
Q4. We noticed that the female vocalist of Tokyo Sake Bar has changed several times, and this position doesn’t seem to have a fixed official member; it’s more like a collaboration with the band. What are the considerations behind this arrangement? Also, when you participated in the cover album *Yellow Loveless*, the female vocalist who sang “Only Shallow” seemed to be a foreign musician. How did you facilitate this international collaboration?
Sasabuchi: The lineup was originally set, but we encountered a lot of trouble. A lot of trouble that I can’t go into detail about here! So we had enough and decided that “three people will do.” The singer for “Yellow Loveless” was introduced to us by a friend. I vaguely remembered hearing she was an English teacher. Actually, we first met on the day of recording. “We have ‘My Bloody Valentine,’ so it’s good to have a foreigner sing it. Since she can sing, let her sing.” It felt like the band was figuring things out as we went from recording the vocals to finishing the song. I don’t remember much about what happened a long time ago… Please forgive me if I’m wrong!
While the timeline points to this being Ananada Jacobs – mainly in her being a native English speaker in 2013 – Yellow Loveless came out in January 2013 and she didn’t join the band until May. Also, if it had been someone who stuck with the band for longer than one recording, perhaps Sasabuchi would have a better recollection of her? HMM.
