So remember that new release from magic love that I predicted would come around the end of 2014? Well it’s finally arrived. Night Falls is the Tokyo trio’s first new release since they put out their previous EP Dawn in the summer of 2014 (the two-track Night Before single doesn’t count, because it was just a filler release with a couple live tracks). Just as their sophomore effort followed a pretty lengthy transitional period, magic love has spend the last two years since its release retooling its lineup and re-recording some previously released material. It’s been a long wait, but Night Falls features everything we’ve come to love about magic love and then some.
Night Falls kicks off with a new version of “Waiting for Rain”, a track that originally appeared on the Dawn EP. The new version is essentially the same as the original but with female vocals complements of new-ish addition Marika Sato. “Midnight Baby” is a brand new track that had only previously been released via the Muso Asia comp at this year’s Kyoto Shoegazer event. Along with “Popularity”, the middle segment of the EP is a little more dream pop than the roaring, guitar texture-laden shoegaze tracks we’ve come to expect. There aren’t many shoegaze bands in the country that belt out waves of huge guitar noise as well as magic love, but they show that they can mix it up a little bit without sacrificing quality. It’s a nice departure from their usual sound, but a brief one, as the EP wraps up with a blaring, bendy hook in “Ghost Novice”. Though tonally this is very much back to what I expected of the new EP, there’s a bit more energy and a skip in the step of the chorus that plays more like a 90s US alt rock track than a straightforward shoegaze song.
Though magic love showed us something a little different on Night Falls, the band’s quality remains consistent and they continue to establish themselves as one of the best – and underrated – bands in Japan. The EP was first released in Taiwan where they played “Meow Bang Party vol. 1” along with Fuguko and Bison Country. Currently physical copies are available exclusively at shows, though you can purchase the digital EP on Bandcamp. According to the band’s Twitter account, the CD may soon be made available online as well. Give them a follow on Twitter and Facebook, and keep checking their Bandcamp page to stay tuned.