Shiina Ringo - Sandokushi (2019) Hi-Res

Shiina Ringo brings the word ‘legacy’ to mind like few others. Over the last two decades, she’s gone from being from being a resolutely independent outsider to releasing two straight masterpiece, one a personal all-time favourite, the other a genre-redefining art-pop flourish. She’s had a worthwhile stint with her band Tokyo Jihen and a respectable return to her solo work with 2009’s jazz-pop tangle Sanmon Gossip, but it’s the force of her early years that brought her such legendary status in and out of Japan. She’s one of the most revered Japanese artists in the West and for good reason - but how does this extend to her work today？ The Shiina Ringo of the 2010s has become more iconic than prolific, but the pedestal we associate with her still carries the gravitas of her most fully-realised artistic accomplishments, which in turn has created a very forgiving attitude among her fanbase, exemplified by the reception of her 2014 album, Hi Izuru Tokoro. This release was a deeply inconsistent and occasionally vapid affair with just enough patches of solid songwriting and upbeat performance to reward the many concessions made on its behalf. “Shiina Ringo is allowed to have a token worst album because if that’s still pretty good, what does it say about her other work？” we reasoned. As apologism goes, Hi Izuru Tokoro only demanded a modest amount of spin and was packaged fairly neatly into Shiina’s wider discography. Her legend, so it seemed, was safe for another half-decade.