Traveler Tim

Fragmented impressions of another time and place.
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‘For so sworn good or evil an oath may not be broken and it shall pursue oathkeeper and oathbreaker to the world's end.’
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

A song by bluebeard.

Bluebeard was a Japanese emotional rock band, active around the early 2000s. The band's music had a likeness to the emotional rock scene happening in the States: Sunny Day Real Estate, Mineral, Texas is the Reason, etc, and bluebeard carved out an identity for themselves in the indie music scene in Tokyo. (Emotional Rock, or emo rock, is the same genre as the more popular American Football.) In a rare interview, it became known that bluebeard intended for their music to be at the same level as the bands of their influence, and worked hard to do so, so they could be enjoyed by a wider audience, including the States.

Their genius showed: in 2015 the band had a year-long reunion, much like American Football and Mineral at that time, and ended for packed venue(s). Just like American Football, the band had only released one full length album.

Yoshikazu Takahashi is one of the brains behind the music of bluebeard, and he is the voice behind the lyrics. Snow, was written about the singer songwriter's loneliness he experienced at adolescence. At writing it, he was likely around the age of 20.

If you're talking about the great emotional rock bands that make up that era: listen to Bluebeard, who saw the scene as it was happening in the States, and emulated what they heard and saw with soul and unique vision. The truth behind their lyrics, the genius of their music's composition, the mentor influences from British punk bands who Yoshikazu idolised (and likely others), and Yoshikazu's own soulful, renegade voice: bluebeard bleeds that era of emotional rock.