Hiding Place by Sugar Plant is really amazing for a first album. It was released in 1995 as Sugar Plant’s first album; they have a total of six albums released. The album has 10 total tracks that span 44 minutes and 12 seconds, the average song length is about 4 minutes and 30 seconds. There are three versions of this album; two of them being CDs and the third is a test pressing on a vinyl record. Some genres this album is placed under are slowcore, dream pop, shoegaze and indie pop.
Sugar Plant is a slowcore band who originated in Tokyo in 1993. Calling them a band is a bit of a stretch as there are only two core members with a changing keyboardist and drummer for different recordings and live performances. Chinatsu Shoyama is the lead singer and also the bassist, while occasionally doing the guitar as well. Shin’ichi Ogawa is the actual guitarist. I couldn’t find any credits for keyboard and drum contributions so that will be a mystery. In 2002 the band went on hiatus, but in 2018 they released a brand new album and are still continuing to release new music and remaster old songs and albums.
For the most part the slowcore tag explains what you would hear in this album, very slow and melodic songs. Probably my favorite part of the album is the guitar performances, the one in Hiding Place is amazing and takes up most of the song by replacing vocals. There are points where the vocalist’s accent sounds a bit weird since she is singing in English. I also adore when each of the songs reach their high points, the elevated vocals alongside the impressive guitar work together to make everything sound amazing. My favorite songs were fragile, route 128 and all alone. Overall, this is a very solid track list with no real stinker.
Sugar Plant is a very impressive band thanks to their variety, most of their songs have the same feeling but there are some points where they did other things and it was just as good. For being their first album, they hit it off with like no problems and some. I’m going to give Hiding Place by Sugar Plant a 4.4/5 because it’s all really good, I just think they got better later on.
