Pizzicato Five: Triste
Like most pop music, Pizzicato Five’s catchy tunes often told upbeat stories of love. But what kept Pizzicato Five’s music from being completely cynical and commercial was Konishi’s genuine love for the genres and songs he was copping and turning into his own, along with a love for the more honest eras from which these songs came. Pizzicato Five’s songs are infused with a kind of romanticism found in movies from the 1960s, yet at the same time they pay lip-service to the kinds of people listening to the music by dropping in lines about rare records and the like. It’s an interesting mix.
With all that said, Triste is not a happy love song, but instead one about the end of a relationship. Like most Pizzicato Five songs, the lyrics are kind of sappy, but through Nomiya Maki’s classy singing voice and Konishi Yasuharu’s lush instrumentals, one is easily lost in the song’s story, along with its honest embrace of such strong emotions.
There’s something to the instrumentals in Triste that make it so compelling. While certainly upbeat, there’s a slight melancholic tinge brought out in the heavy piano backing. But along with the melancholy is the will to move forward and let go, told through the slightly loose horn riffs that open and punctuate various parts of the song throughout.
And Triste is indeed a song about the sadder things in life, and moving on from them. After all the talk of sad songs, sad dreams, and apologies, the song reminds us that one day, we’ll just “forget everything.”
The song then does just that: It throws out the lyrics, and sends the listener off with a string of upbeat la la las from Nomiya, reminding us that it really isn’t all that bad.