My first proper article on this blog was a big retrospective on Tetsuya Komuro's career and me praising stuff of his I loved, and venting frustrations about what he's been doing since the 21st Century. I said I might make a follow up if anything happened in 2023, and so what better way to start the new year than a sequel to the first proper article I ever posted way back in January 2023. So when I planned to write up this article in June, I learned TM Network would be involved in a new City Hunter movie. I decided to wait until this movie came out and we had the new music for it. Then as we were told another song would release later tying into this new movie, I decided to wait till it came out at the end of the year.
So flash forward awhile and here we are. 2022 was the year TM Network gave us the live show, the "Intelligence Days" tour and the Dave Ford mix of "How Crash?" but 2023 was the true year of their comeback. The tour, the promo stuff, the new album, the new City Hunter Movie featuring TM Network's music, it was all coming together. So how did the band fair this year?
Well it started very quietly, with nothing except for some Intelligence Days live album and boxset. However on the 9th anniversary of their kind of farewell album "Quit 30", they announced a new album called "Devotion", scheduled for release in June. I thought Quit 30 was a perfect farewell album. It modernized the band perfectly without once feeling like trend chasing or doing something ill fitting of the band. It also paid tribute to the past and included a nod to the band's 2000s comeback album by including a long progressive rock jam type song organized into a big multi part suite. I thought that barring the mediocre and unnecessary remix of the opening track to pad out disc 2, it was a perfect late career album to gracefully end on, but I always figured that being the father of J-pop TK had more in him, as his writing contributions for other artists since his return to music have all been great. So I had high hopes for Devotion.For Devotion they once again signed with Sony, which was the first album done with them in a long time. They released it on June 13th alongside a new single "Whatever Comes (Opening Edit)" to serve as a teaser for the new City Hunter movie. I want to discuss the album first, and then get to the other stuff later, as that is the real meat of this year's output from them.
We open with the title track. It's a catchy and solid J-pop song with a decent hook. Takashi Utsunomiya's voice has notably changed in the 9 years between albums, as expected of a man his age. It's not bad, but it is notable. All the harmony sections mask this really well though. The song is a fun upbeat number that sounds pretty solid. I like it, but it is not anything amazing or that I'm eager to listen to again. Next we have the thing that makes me the second most upset of anything on this album (yes folks, there is something that upsets me more later on the album.) and that is tracks 2-5. These 4 songs are remakes of classic TM Network hits. The first is "Resistance" form the Humansystem album, which is one of my top 5 favorite TM Network songs, so I am going to hold any remake under the utmost scrutiny. Actually it's really good, I have no complaints. If you wanted to make resistance into an overproduced modern day pop song, this would be it. It has the same spirit and energy of the original, while sounding truly modern. I love this version, even if I will never take this over the original. track 3 is a remake of "We Love the Earth" from the "Expo" album. Now "We Love the Earth" was made as an upbeat yet laid back pop song about TK's environmentally conscious mindset he had during the early 90s. It's long and has many dance elements to its sound. I for one, love that song. This remake is also really damn good. I was so mad to see old hits being remade as part of the track list, but this and "Resistance" both show the value in these songs being updated and modernized. Like the previous remake, this one carries the same spirit and vibe of the original while keeping with the modern overproduced sound of current day pop music. Again, not as good as the original, but this an excellent modernization that I love. I do not like the mix on this track though. Track 4 is a remake of "Kiss You" from the Humansystem album. This remake is based on the more new-wave/techno kayo sounding single version, compared to the more guitar oriented pop rock version from the album. I am not huge on the album version and that goes double for the single version, and this song being in the setlist of the "Intelligence Days" tour was a factor on why I made no effort to go see TM Network on that tour. However this modernization is also great. Same thing I said for the last two applies here. The issue is just that I think the original song is just okay.
Track 5 is our final remake and that is "Time to Countdown" from the "Rhythm Red Beat Black" album. Now inside that album there were two wolves. The first wolf said "we are a techno kayo band, BUT WE ARE GOING ALL IN METAL" despite having no knowledge of heavy metal beyond the few concerts TK saw. the second wolf said "Time for some bangers that will force the listener to dance". So how does this remake of "Time to Countdown" do? The piano opening is replaced with synth orchestra. The once pounding and frantic double kick beat that drove the song into a desperate yet fun frenzy is replaced with a boring and standard beat. Most of the guitar is now reserved for bridge sections and fills. This "la la, la la la la" section replaces most of the chorus sections when it was previously much less of an earsore due to the mile a minute nature of the original. When we get to the chorus things finally pick up, but it is just one section that leads to a long outro. This version is 40 seconds longer and feels 4 minutes longer. What made the original work was the use of live instrumentation and the frantic feeling the fast heavy metal inspired live instrumentation provided in contrast to the pop melodies of the rest song. TK wrote the song to really invigorate crowds at concerts and hype them up, and it is an incredible hype song. Regardless of if you like metal, that music gets people riled up, and so making a pop song with metal guitar and drumming as the backbone really elevates that song to be a great song to open concerts with. Using almost entirely programmed instrumentation and slowing the pace of the song down makes a great song drag on and feel like it takes an eternity because the fast pace, drums and guitar are what made it excellent. This and the remake from "Easy Listening" have fully convinced me that TK no longer understands what made the original work, and have hurt my opinion of him as a songwriter. So in short the remakes were a unnecessary addition that provided some good moments, but the "Time to Countdown Remake" hurt any goodwill these other 3 had. These don't even have any worth as new arrangements and instrumentation, because they play the songs live with something closer to their original arrangement. They have two drummers live for the purpose of recreating the drumming on "Time to Countdown". (Though I'm sure it also makes it easier to capture crazy drum machine beats in a live setting).
Next song is "How Crash?", and it is awesome. It has the full vocals and melodies we were denied in the single version, and it is great. This is exactly what I wanted from TM Network in 2023, a sleek modern pop song that still retains their identity. David Ford mixed it, and he didn't mix any other songs on the album, which I think provides some inconsistencies with later songs on the album, but it is still great. I have nothing bad to say. The next song has a Japanese title that translates to "Looking at Your Sky". It is Naoto Kine's lone new contribution and I love it so much, the vocals, the melodies, the bridge section, the chorus, but there is "but" that I must stress. The song has a trap beat. It is the first and as of now only TM Network song to have one, but it sounds artificial and fake, and distracts from the song. When an actual drum machine joins in during the second half it gets less annoying, but it is a blemish on an otherwise great song. I love it, but that trap beat does a lot of harm to the song. "Please Heal the World" is the infamous NFT song. Like I suspected in my first article, it was an unfinished version, which explained the poor sounding mix and quality. However unlike what I predicted in that article, the song itself is mostly the same and not really any better. The vocals and harmonies sound better, but it is the same boring and mediocre song from before, just now a whole 4 minutes and with very little of note going on aside from drum stuff where I can't tell if it's natural or artificial. It is dull and uninteresting, I hoped for more but it is monotonous and weak. They played this as a prerecorded song to be played back during their tour at a certain point during the show, and it just feels uninspired. "End Theme of "How Do You Crash It?"" is a studio recording previously played at the end of their comeback soundstage concert video "How Do You Crash It?". The song played over some montage of footage of the band members doing various things shot cinematically at the end of the video. It's solid. It is a bit monotonous and drags on a bit, but it was a credits theme to a DVD, I have no right to really say anything to it and be fair. "Intelligence Days" is a prerecorded song to be played at concerts on the Intelligence days tour to open up for the band or during intermissions, I forget which. It is a boring instrumental that I have nothing to say about. It shouldn't be here. Lastly is "Time Machine", an acoustic balled (plus synths) written by Kine. "Time Machine" was one of their first songs, but it never got a studio version, so it is great to have one. It is a sweet TM Network coming full circle thing, finally doing a studio version of one of their first songs, one that never had a studio version. It is an amazing closer and it is a great ballad.
So the album failed to deliver more than a handful of good songs, what was this single released at the same time? "Whatever Comes (Opening Edit)" is the opening theme of the new City Hunter movie, in the edited form used in the movie. It was a very strong and well written song with an infectious chorus, a positive and inspiring message, and a great hook. It got me excited. In September we got the full version released as a single, and it was everything I hoped for. The band hyped this up as a modern sequel to their biggest hit single "Get Wild", which was previously the credits theme for the City Hunter TV series from the 80s. However it delivered, and is the best song they have done since they got back together again. My only gripe is that I think the section where they repeat the chorus in a jerky and unnatural manner is cool, but adds nothing to the song and is a bit out of place. There are two versions of this song. The first is a standard single with a cover similar to Devotion's album cover only featuring the band member's photos, and the other one was released in the winter as an EP with the song, an instrumental, a remaster of "Get Wild" and a cover showing the band members as anime characters next to the main characters from City Hunter. The song itself is a banger, enough said.
So what about the rest of the year? It was mostly promoting "Whatever Comes" (that's right the band saw this one song as more important than the new album let that speak for itself), that is until December when we got "Angie", an insert song for the new City Hunter movie. TK was instructed to write a film score-esque song to serve as the theme of the movie's newly introduced character Angie. This is why the song is a slow dower symphonic piece with repetitive piano and the same vocal melody repeated over with weird lyrics in the second half of the song. As a single this is absolutely weak, forgettable and very un-TM Network, but as a film score type of song it makes sense. I don't want to be too harsh on it for that reason, so I'll hold back any harsh criticism until after I eventually see the new City Hunter movie. Though if you ask me, releasing this song as a single and not a B-side to the full "Whatever Comes" film tie in EP that came out in the winter was a mistake.
So how was this year? Not the comeback year I was hoping, in fact "Whatever Comes" kind of saved them this year. Without that song I would have considered this year a bum year for the band, but overall with everything that they did this year, I am surprised it was so good for them. The album seemed to do well enough, and "Whatever Comes" is a great song garnering them a lot of attention. With any luck they'll use this momentum to give us a good album next year or at least something worthwhile to look forward to next year, as "Whatever Comes" is proof this band has still got it.
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