Relax

By the middle of the eighties, the organic West Coast sound that Sentimental City Romance had made their own was hardly the sound of the moment. The band kept working anyway, allowing the era's textures into its music without surrendering its identity. The floating, midtempo sensibility of Smiling and Dancing is still present on Relax.

“Boku no Mado kara” looks out on a pale green morning; “Only Lonely Flight” looks down at the streetlights from a seat by the wing. For all the change around them, both songs carry melodies that feel unmistakably theirs: bright and breezy on the surface, with a little melancholy moving underneath.