REVIEW: ZUTOMAYO - Keisoudo

J-Pop mainstays drop a surprise return to form with perhaps this year's most generous collections of bangers thus far

68:28 // March 25th, 2025 // Universal

ZUTOMAYO’s mastermind-in-chief ACAね is one of the chief architects of a hyper-stimulated, superficially perky, neurotically suffused strain of J-Pop that strong-arms funk, jazz and rock through the busiest arrangements in commercial music and can be heard approximately everywhere in Japanese pop culture (especially online). Yakousei [nocturnality] is what Rateyourmusic terms this style, and the name can kiss my arse along with the rest of their bullshit conjecture-genres — but whatever you call it, ZUTOMAYO were there right at the start. What’s more is that, in my incorrigibly truthful view, their debut Hisohiso Banashi (2019) remains far and away the best record to have come out of the movement. With its fresh-faced energy and collision between metropolitan excess and overstimulated introversion, it played as a more palatable successor to Seiko Oomori’s 2014 masterpiece Sennou; both records seemed to pave the way for an era of pop where burgeoning individual complexities and structural adventurousness might rewrite the blueprint for the FMB (fuckoff massive banger).

The years since have not exactly seen this timeline materialise, though they have been otherwise kind to ACAね and the roomfuls of incogniti who perform her million-note-songs. Though her music alone is not quite the standalone talking point it once was, it has permeated a lot of things that very much are: if you don’t know ZUTOMAYO from Chainsaw Man, you know them from DanDaDan (and if you don’t know them from DanDaDan, put down this article and stop wasting those impoverished eyes of yours on foul, earnest prose).

In some ways, she’s stuck the landing better than her most obvious peers – she’s never been as shrapnel-happy as Yorushika or bent herself out of shape for a mainstream coup like YOASOBI – but the explosive ambitions of Hisohisobanashi found themselves dialled down over the following years. Albums #2 (Gusare (2021)) and #3 (Jinkougaku (2023)) made for sleek, frictionless showings that anyone could respect for their craft but, I struggled to feel remotely as excited about them. Both albums dropped promptly from my rotation and, notwithstanding how hard “TAIDADA” goes as the DanDaDan ED, my expectations for record #4 Keisoudo were little more than a dutiful check-in.

The reality turned out as perhaps the most welcome surprise of my year so far! Across eighteen songs and well over an hour, ACAね lays down her most creatively invigorated tracklist in years. Keisoudo is built equal parts on familiar thrills and unexpected departures, at times within the same song. It chops and changes so freely that I can’t see anyone calling it a ‘perfect’ record (I personally struggle with with the bubblegum funk of “Kani Shabu Funk” and “CREAM - Disco-Re-Edit”), but any collaterals of preference are a small price to pay for the personality that each individual track packs in swathes — all eighteen of them. Homogeneity has always been ZUTOMAYO’s most obvious pitfall (all the more so for the density of their arrangements), and I cannot stress enough how refreshing it is to hear ACAね exploring the possibilities of her signature sound with such zany relish after spending years doubling down on its fundamentals.

She and her band reinvent their scope time and again, shifting their weight breezily from cosmopolitan thoroughfares (”SHADE”, “Warmthaholic”) to polished discospace (”antimony”); from haunted house floorboards (”Medianoche”, “Learning How Not to Break”) to indie stomphalls (”Hippocampal Pain”, “yomosugara”), all the way to the panoramic theatre of balladry (”Matane Maboroshi”, “Pain Give Form”). The bustle and versatility of these tracks carries Keisoudo‘s hour-plus expanse in what feels like a fraction of that time, but there is so much to sink one’s claws into here that it fares just as well if you approach it as the overstuffed, miraculously generous kind of record that begs to be pulled apart and reduced to a handful of go-tos that are thrown onto repeat until the whole thing gets a fresh listen, whereupon a new set of winners inevitably jumps out and the experience recurs.

As I’ve flirted with various combinations of favourites, the two tracks that have stuck most tenaciously as constants are, perhaps unexcitingly, among those that have long been in circulation as singles, but they continue to prove their worth here. “Truth in Lies” is an instant ZUTOMAYO classic that ratchets everything about the group’s established appeal up to eleven: it’s all here, be it lavish orchestration, alternations between elegant motifs and abrupt changes of pace, lyrical ambivalence underpinning otherwise peppy trappings, ACAね’s breathless vocals, or, above all, a ruthlessly meticulous writing style. This song is so roof-raisingly catchy and snappily constructed that there is no doubting the watertight writing chops behind all those bells and whistles – let this lovely unplugged version be the final word on that score:

If “Truth in Lies” is the high watermark for ZUTOMAYO-as-we-know-them, “Warmthaholic” is the poster child for the new possibilities ACAね has tapped into for her sound. Structurally, this is actually one of her most straightforward outings to date (repetitive verse and chorus lines do the bulk of the heavy lifting), but its pairing of a showtune-ready swing arrangement with drum and bass rhythms make for a particularly colourful highlight, albeit an oddball one. This track’s intricacies really go the distance, as its stop/start pacing and playful chromatic fills are just as memorable as any of the more iterative hooks, and its carefree charm dispels any preconceptions of ZUTOMAYO of an overbearing catharsis vehicle. I’ve cited Sennou already, but this track in particular comes right out of that album’s playbook (and both are drenched in the energy of ‘90s Shibuya-kei), winning the day on the same zany breeziness. Make no mistake, everything about “Warmathaholic” sounds unmistakably ZUTOMAYO, but there’s a willingness here and across this whole tracklist to swerve from the template onto one unpredictable stylistic tangent after another — this is ultimately what makes Keisoudo the most exciting ZUTOMAYO record in years.

To think I was convinced this group had become a one-trick pony! This record juggles tricks with enough abandon to catch a lifetime ban from contract bridge! Even the skits cast long shadows: I initially had “ultra soul” pegged as a cute interlude in the form of a mock-lofi radio goofout until I realised that it’s apparently one of the most popular songs on the record. They played it on the literal radio while I was in an estate agent’s office last week and I had to work hard to keep even the faintest suggestion of a shiteating grin off my face. Would you let your apartment to the kind of dork who gets his rocks off to fake radio music being played as real radio music? Does “ultra soul” land as a standalone track? Fuck it, why not.

On that topic, don’t even get me started on “antimony”’s moody disco lacuna. I’m split on whether to call this one an ‘interlude’ or a revelation in ZUTOMAYO’s willingness to work with understatement. Either way, the album wouldn’t be the same without it — and if the same is inadvertently true for the 10-minute symphonic prog-pop finale “lowmotion algae”, which is equal parts too twee and too grandiose to land the jawdropper it aims for (its affecting final minutes notwithstanding), then, well, this record reps enough joie de vivre to pass off a little hubris. Keep balling, technicolour panic-funk lady!

8/10

Further listening:

ZUTOMAYO - Hisohiso Banashi
Yorushika - Tousaku
Seiko Oomori - Sennou
School Food Punishment - amp-reflection