TV Obsessive
Sawayama (Deluxe) by Rina Sawayama
Hal: On December 4, Japanese-British singer songwriter Rina Sawayama released an appendix to her critically acclaimed self-titled debut Sawayama, Sawayama (Deluxe). The album itself was an unmitigated triumph, melding stadium nu-metal and decadent 2000s pop, it was an often moving and always compelling exploration of themes of identity and belonging, in context of herself as both a Japanese woman living in Britain and as a pansexual. Sawayama is indisputably one of the best pop albums of 2020. In line with the trend of more substantial deluxe versions released this year, Sawayama (Deluxe) adds an additional 11 tracks: three original cuts, a cover, a live version, three acoustic versions and three remixes. Unfortunately, it’s not quite as solid a line up as the original album was, however the highlights are godly.
The first original song is “Lucid”, released as a single, and it pains me to accuse an artist as unique and talented as Rina of unoriginality, but the track sounds so uncannily like Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Now That I Found You” that it’s honestly impossible for me to see the song as anything else. Perhaps more of the blame should be levelled at producer BloodPop than at Rina, but since she name-checks Carly Rae in the lyrics to “Bad Friend”, she really should have spotted that she was basically singing over a remix here. I started playing them back-to-back and during the instrumental passages I actually started to misidentify the two songs for one another. It’s actually embarrassing how similar they are.
Thankfully the remaining original cuts are a lot more original, though there’s still an undeniable familiarity that exposes the influence Rina continues to take from early 2000s pop. “We Out Here” is a superb, pointedly politicised queer pride anthem, with a fantastically charismatic performance by Rina, and camp, overblown production by Clarence Clarity. “Bees & Honey”, though brief, is even better, returning to the consumerist lyrical themes of a track like “XS”—once again showing her incisive talents as a songwriter. The track’s a buoyant, ironic and stingingly relatable anthem to the financial woes inherited by millennials, with Rina singing vibrantly: “we don’t have job security, just hustling on the side. It’s a gig economy, but we still got our pride!”
The cover is an absolutely magnificent version of The 1975’s “Love It If We Made It” from their 2018 album A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships. The original is one of the group’s more tolerable tracks thanks to the intensity of the lyrics, but this version blows it out of the water, restyled in glorious Sawayama fashion by Rina and producer Clarity. The original’s strained, flat and claustrophobic beat is rejuvenated by the dense, layered production and Rina’s vocal presence is miles ahead of Healy’s. Like Charli XCX and Christine and the Queen’s cover of “TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME”, it’s another example of The 1975’s main contribution to truly great music being to allow more inspired artists to cover their work.
From here though, Sawayama (Deluxe) hits a rough patch. The live version of “XS” sounds merely like a more anaemic version of the original, with none of the spontaneity and flavour expected of a good live album. Her vocals have more of a rock rawness than on the studio version, but neither the beat nor the strings have any punch, and with the backing vocals and sound effects still in place, it doesn’t have its own identity compared to the studio version. Sadly, the acoustic versions that follow are even bigger head-scratchers. The down-tuned metal riffs of “STFU!” do have a somewhat interesting flavour in acoustic form, but on “Bad Friend” and “Chosen Family”, the studio versions of which are heart-breaking, it’s so immediately clear from the song’s structures and the dynamism of Rina’s vocals that these were not written for acoustic instrumentation. I can’t imagine ever choosing to listen to these versions over their plugged-in counterparts.
Sawayama (Deluxe) picks up once again from here though, with remixes of “Comme des Garcons” and “XS”. The former has a magnificently sinister instrumental, retooled by producer Brabo, and both tracks have phenomenal guest appearances by rising hyper-pop stars Pabllo Vittar, and Bree Runway. I’m not a big fan of either artist, but I can’t deny Vittar’s beautiful backing vocals to “Comme des Garcons” nor that Bree Runway absolutely ate her verse on “XS”, perfectly playing to the track’s strengths and generating superb chemistry with Rina.
It’s unfortunate that the closing track couldn’t be similarly strong, with indie band Dream Wife arriving seemingly just to suck all the force out of the magnificent instrumental of “Bad Friend” and replace it with a mess that somehow sounds both desolate and cluttered. In contrast to the previous tracks there’s no chemistry between Dream Wife and Rina and the fusion is just a failure from the jump. Perhaps a collaboration built from the ground up would deliver more satisfying results, but they fail to make “Bad Friend” fit into their style at all.
Unlike the album that spawned them, the deluxe tracks for Sawayama are a very mixed bag, with as many failed experiments as triumphs. The album itself is a masterpiece though, and there are moments here that certainly do rise to those same heights, but having achieved such success with blending sounds and styles, Rina displays her limits here, seemingly trying out some new ideas, finding herself playing against her considerable strengths.
