Pied Piper is the new studio album from the famous Japanese rock band the pillows. With more than fifteen albums under their belts, many people already balked at Pied Piper at the very announcement of its release, as ‘just another album from the pillows‘ (not the hardcore fans of course, cheers!). But, I have to disappoint the booers the ‘fans already fed up with the pillows sound’, because Pied Piper is pretty much has everything a fan could wish to hear from their favourite band. It’s fresh, it’s rocking, it’s fast, but slow when it has to be, it’s cool, it’s deep, err… it’s… the pillows

At the official pillows myspace there is a translated article by Sawao Yamanaka on Pied Piper (the original Japanese article can be found here). The explanation by Sawao (lead vocals and guitar) helps us to understand the songs and the whole album a bit more. If you have time and if you enjoy the album check it out, because this kind of additional information can change the perception of a few tracks from bad to good (or vica versa, but this hopefully won’t be a scenario ; ).

1. Pied Piper
2. New Animal
3. No Surrender
4. Last Holiday
5. Tokyo Zombie (The Knock Came at Dead of Night)
6. Across the Metropolis
7. Purple Apple
8. Tokyo Bambi
9. Ladybird Girl
10. That’s a Wonderful World (Song for Hermit)
11. Poison Rock’n'Roll

The albums starts off with the title track Pied Piper, which beings with a slow, ‘magical’ intro and then switches to a bit faster paced ‘pillows trademark’ song (you can check this out on Youtube).

This album also has the the obligate sad, love-song, Last Holiday. Compared to the other tracks, this song along with Across the Metropolis were the weakest parts of the album.

Tokyo Zombie is the only instrumental song on the album. It’s quite nice; the guitar has a unique texture to replace Sawaos vocals.

Purple Apple is the prime of Pied Piper, no arguments on this. This is the pillows. The bass line along with the funky guitar sweeps away everything on the album. It’s so charismatic and playful that’s just makes me happy every time I hear it. The chorus gives good company to this, and when the whistling part comes in, it’s just simple perfection. Hopefully this song will get a PV in the future, a ‘feelgood’ one similar to Terminal Heaven’s Rock.

The other tracks are cool also, although they were the type of songs that you have to listen a few times to get the hang of them.

This album is a good choice if this is your first encounter with the pillows and also I’m sure that die-hard fans who were a little bit discontent with the band’s latest works will like Pied Piper.

8/10

Watch the PV for ‘Pied Piper’

Official MySpace

Buy Piped Piper by the pillows