Thread or Yarn

Ten years to the day before the release of Thread or Yarn, Kudo Kamome, an indie-rock kid from Kobe (now solidly planted in Tokyo), released her very first solo album, her first tentative steps in crafting homemade sounds that matched her full imagination. Several more followed, and now here’s a scrapbook of items from across the elapsed decade, unreleased demos, early efforts revisited, and meaningful collaborations. 

Thread or Yarn opens quite courteously with “Please (Aux Mirari Remix)”, and remains generous throughout. The video for “The Smells of a Flower (10th Floor Version)” even provides some guidance in cooking up tofu donuts and pickle-fried chicken. In any case, Kamome’s whimsical strain of electro-pop is loaded with interesting and idiosyncratic gestures and decorations, placing her among the judicious practitioners of J-pop. Expect the unexpected, it’s fun to explore.

The final track is the moody “My Closet”, a sentimental ode to the vintage garments she’s amassed over time, markers on the path that got her to this point. It concludes a retrospective exercise (“a good place to place a comma in my life journey,” she says) that suggests more good stuff in the years ahead.