American artist Cameron Lew¡¯s appreciation for pop culture from Japan¡¯s Showa Era (1926-89) helped shape the music he makes under the name Ginger Root. With his new album ¡°Shinbangumi,¡± he wants to emphasize that¡¯s not all the project is about.
¡°I feel like everyone wants to dilute and simplify what you do, and I think the buzzword that came to mind was ¡®city pop,¡¯¡± says Lew, 28, over a call from California. ¡°I wasn¡¯t upset about that or anything, and I am very influenced by that genre of music. But I feel like as a musician, I grew up on a bunch of other stuff that led me to city pop and gave me the vocabulary to dissect why city pop is so important to me.¡±
Released last month, ¡°Shinbangumi¡± highlights Lew¡¯s varied musical inspirations and worldview. The glimmering pop echoes of Japan in the 1980s ¡ª which came to the spotlight on preceding EPs ¡°City Slicker¡± and ¡°Nisemono,¡± collections that helped him gain a following around the world ¡ª remain. Now they are joined by songs nodding to the nerviness of Devo, the loose rock-pop of Hall & Oates and even Haruomi Hosono¡¯s ¡¯70s explorations of exotica to create a project that digs even deeper than what came before.
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