Osaka's Nagisa Ni Te, headed by Org Records (Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Hallelujahs) owner Shinji Shibayama, have never really played to the acid-psyche. Yes, they have, on occasion, featured a little searing guitar and hyper-spatial reverb acoustics, but those have seemed more ornamental than core aesthetics of their songs-- as opposed to, say, Acid Mothers Temple. I hear them as straight folk-rockers, perhaps more Neil Young than Pink Floyd, with a flair for atmospherics. In any case, there aren't many artists (outside of Jagjaguwar's entire roster, that is) representing for the flowers-in-your-hair old-school as well as Shibayama and company. On the Love Beach-- a play on the band's name in Japanese, On the Beach-- was Nagisa's first record, from 1995, and while a bit lighter in scope than their current stuff, is clearly of the same muse.

For the most part, Shibayama plays it very cool here, allowing his pick-up band to handle all of the freakier parts. "Me, On the Beach" features folky acoustic guitar strumming, slack drumming and a barely-there lead vocal from Shibayama, accompanied by occasional harmonica and his own whistling. This song, like many in Nagisa's catalog, is perfect for afternoons when zoning out seems a better choice than just about anything, particularly for anyone who likes their psych on the sweet and lowdown. Also typical is the beamed-in acid flashback of a guitar solo that closes the tune. If it weren't for interjections like that (see also the atonal solo in "Elegy to Betrayal"), Nagisa Ni Te might be mistaken for any number of college campus minstrels, albeit ones with a knack for tuneful melancholia.

Perhaps because of their general sunny slackerdom, Nagisa Ni Te's outright pop moments stand out: "Yesterday's Story" is top notch, Donovan-styled vibes with a tight arrangement of brush percussion, bells, handclaps and vintage backwards cymbal. And at less than three minutes, it's remarkably concise-- who says psychedelic folk meanders? "Deserting You", the second of two completely dissimilar versions of this tune, goes so far as to include faux-cabaret piano and brass (provided by Hiro Nakazaki and Tori Kudo of Maher Shalal Hash Baz), and comes out sounding like a young Tim Buckley rewriting the theme from "Cheers" for a community band.

On the Love Beach is never unpleasant or overly strange, in spite of the occasional forays into echo-chamber psych or strange stylistic experiments. In fact, I get the feeling that Shibayama isn't really so amateurish as his sometimes-unstable singing (except during the background harmonies, when he's always spot on) would have me believe. The arrangements are all ace, and taken as a whole, the songs really do transmit some brand of spaced-out naïveté. However, I wouldn't say they were terribly interesting by themselves. At this point, Nagisa Ni Te hadn't yet found a way to push their sweet nothings into the outer regions of cosmic balladry.

-Dominique Leone, February 6th, 2003