Sheena Ringo still captivates on new single “Ningen To Shite”
Who comes to mind when you think of guitar-driven music from the 1990s? Perhaps it’s grunge rock pioneers such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam, or sunny L.A. acts such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Sublime. Or maybe you think of British bands like Oasis and Radiohead.
But there’s an artist whose sound is grungier than Nirvana, bigger than Oasis, more effortless than Sublime and who is at least as experimental as Radiohead.
It’s Sheena Ringo.
The Japanese singer-songwriter is not widely known in the United States, but she has long been recognized in Japan as one of the country’s most important artists of the post-war era, after exploding on to the Japanese music scene in 1999 with her debut album Muzai Moratorium (無罪モラトリアム), still a teenager.
Her melodic belting, sharp-tongued lyrics and now-iconic rolling of her “r’s” on that genre-defying album turned out to be just a taste of the utterly innovative music that was to come, and 25 years on from Muzai Moratorium, Ringo is still pushing the boundaries of her sound on her new single “Ningen To Shite.”
The song, released on April 16, is forged in her tradition of bending genres to her will, landing somewhere between musical number and Big Band jazz. It starts out with the dreamy, reverb-treated strumming of a harp, before sweeping strings and a glockenspiel solidify the fairytale-like musical landscape created by Ringo.
Yet, it would be wrong to assume that her lyrics match the upbeat tone of the music. What set her apart from other contemporary Japanese stars from the outset of her career was that she wrote her own lyrics and didn’t shy away from complex topics. On “Ningen To Shite,” Ringo tackles the philosophical concept of justice, gently pondering the absurdity of humans placing justice upon other humans.
A master of metaphors and multilayered prose, “Ningen To Shite” is one of Ringo’s more straightforward songs. “Not everyone is good or bad / Having tasted both medicine and poison,” she sings, before roaring at the climax, “Let's think about whether we love each other or whether we're gnawing at each other / Perhaps we might even end up respecting each other.”
Having released mainly jazz-inspired records since the early 2010s, the sound she produces on the single is new to her catalog. However, the leap she takes here is smaller compared to the ones she’s taken in the past. The song leans too heavily towards being a conventional musical number at times, and the beautifully lush production unfortunately only works to contribute to this point. Her other jazz records have been more exciting — “Ningen To Shite” is missing both the drum-and-bass fervor of “LET’S GO!” and the synchronization between Ringo’s voice and the brass section found on “Shuen No Onna” (主演の女).
Still, Ringo’s undeniable magnetism as a singer-songwriter shines through. She has matured as a lyricist and singer, but the raw and unbound energy that she brought to Muzai Moratorium continues to radiate on her newest release.
