Summer Wine is the second track on Caution!, Shigeru's 1977 record. Haruomi Hosono isn't the producer this time around, but a few of Caution's songs still have him on bass and Tin Pan Alley bandmate Tatsuo Hayashi on drums. Summer Wine does, and the bassline is pure glory.
I like how Shigeru's vocals in the chorus mirror the characters' lassitude, the long sentences seeming to trail off, as if the speaker lacked the strength to articulate his thoughts to the end, let alone go through with what he says he wants to go through with. No, tomorrow will be just like today. And so the song fades out on identical repetitions of the chorus — no change in the beautiful vocal melody, no change in the defeated words.
They may not have been French bohemians like the two characters in the song, but Takashi and Shigeru were both in their mid-twenties.
:::
There is a host of angels,
all with their wings folded,
there in the emerald daylight.
And you gaze at the palm of your hand.
"That's your lifeline. Really short, huh?"
You give a snort of laughter.
I'm wondering what flower
I could compare
your profile to.
Day after day
we fill our wineglasses
with the day's allotted unhappiness.
I was thinking —
how about we drink down
all the days we have left
at once?
When I raised the empty bottle
and looked through it at the window,
I saw bygone times
materializing behind your pale shoulders.
There's a young girl inside you, isn't there?
Soaring in the sky outside that window.
Meanwhile, here we are,
in our mid-twenties.
Day after day
we fill our wineglasses
with the day's allotted unhappiness.
I was thinking —
how about we drink down
all the days we have left
at once?
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