Haruomi Hosono's 'Yours Sincerely' Is a Warm, Unhurried Letter From a Lifelong Shape-Shifter
“It’s not really a record written for the whole world,” Haruomi Hosono has said of Yours Sincerely. “It was intended to be delivered to the people closest to me.” That is a strange thing to say about your 23rd album and your first for Ghostly International, and it turns out to be the exact reason the thing works.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Hosono has been one of the great bass players of the last half-century, and the low end here is played like conversation — stepping, pausing, occasionally declining to arrive where you expect. Nothing is compressed into obedience. The Spatial Dynamics: The record moves through registers that shouldn’t cohabit. “Rojiura (Walking Vibration)” and “Anemo Wheel” sit near the electronics; “To A Wild Rose” and “Figlio Perduto” reach back toward parlour music and opera. Writing for Bandcamp Daily, Patrick St. Michel described the album as a work that “acts as a collection of Hosono’s many musical forms,” and the mix treats each form as a room rather than a costume — you walk between them, doors open.
Standout Performance
The guest vocalists. Several tracks hand the melody to a female voice — “Note of Mothership,” “To a Wild Rose” and “Figlio Perduto” among them — and Hosono steps back to accompany. For an artist who could reasonably centre himself, the generosity is the statement.
Why It’s Certified
Because it’s the opposite of a legacy lap. Paste framed it as a demonstration of how “pop music shape-shifts restlessly,” distilling decades of influence from doo-wop to classical, and St. Michel heard “special tenderness and ache” running underneath all of it. “Sincerely,” “Aayurveda,” “M for Mandala,” “Happy Holiday,” “Humming ‘Dream Of Love’” — ten tracks, no throat-clearing, no summary statement. Just a man writing to his friends in every language he knows. Certified great.