Japanese pop group
My Little Lover found immediate success with their 1996 debut album Evergreen, but it is on this belated 1998 follow-up,
Presents, that the band really hit their stride. The relatively long wait (by Japanese pop standards) results in an album of well-crafted MOR pop songs including four Top Ten hit singles and relatively little filler. Perhaps rather counterintuitively, part of what gives the album its character is the extent to which
My Little Lover are happy to rip off other bands. Rather than ploughing the well-worn furrow of overwrought balladry that provides the comfort zone for much Japanese pop,
Presents is full of influences cribbed from rock history. "My Sweet Lord" may allude to
George Harrison in its title, but the melody owes more to
the Bangles' "In Your Room," and the organ line in "Kairou (Corridor) Wo Nukete" contains echoes of "Lean on Me" by
Bill Withers, but the album nevertheless maintains its own laid-back, anesthetized style. Edgy and groundbreaking it most certainly is not, but the wider gene pool from which it takes its influences means that there is more variation in the rhythm and melody lines, and in songs like "Shuffle," with its catchy melody and upbeat Motown style drums, and the
Beatles-influenced "Anniversary,"
Presents has a set of memorable tunes that lifts it above most of its contemporaries.