“We really want this album to communicate with everyone who comes to our shows,” says Kazutoshi Sakurai (vocals and guitar), talking to Apple Music about Mr. Children's twenty-second album, Ubugoe. “Our previous album, miss you, had a strong sense of solitude, and the tour behind it somehow had a closed feel—we found ourselves hungry for connection with our listeners. That’s why, this time around, there are more melodies that people can sing along with.” That eagerness for the stage is clear from the album's first track, "Kingsnake no Yuutsu." “The instant I heard the demo, my mind went straight to how it would look live. I thought it would be amazing to perform this as the first track, so I played it with a feeling of openness,” recalls Hideya Suzuki (drums). Guitarist Kenichi Tahara adds that the key idea behind the album was ‘live feel.’ “We spent a long time thinking about what kind of album people would enjoy hearing in a live setting. Even when we were recording, we were responding to the world of the songs and layering sounds as if we were in a jam session. We didn’t really discuss it or anything—the album just naturally ended up with a live sound.” Over three decades into their career, the four members of Mr. Children continue to inspire one another. Bassist Keisuke Nakagawa’s eyes light up as he talks about it. “The moment a new song arrives from Sakurai is still the most exciting part. I think about how I’m going to approach it, and see how the other three respond. That’s a process that we've built up, and it gets more enjoyable the longer we do it.” The four members now talk us through the songs on this energetic album. Kingsnake no Yuutsu Nakagawa: The opening track almost feels like a release from our previous album, miss you. This one had a clear feel from the demo stage, so the direction we had to take was obvious from very early on. I built on that, and spent a lot of time exploring how the bass could sit within the track, and what kind of sound it should have. Sakurai: While I was recording the vocals I realized that part of the reason I was singing those lyrics was because I liked the hard “K” sounds. (laughs). I was really keen to sing some of the lines, like say, ‘kokoro no naka ni kyodai na kingsnake’. Normally we try to take those consonant noises out of the vocals, but for this track we left them in deliberately. Again Sakurai: The piano in the intro is so over-the-top that it sounds almost old-fashioned. I really liked the way it sounded, so I was fine with pushing ahead. I put together a quieter B section—which was inspired by Stewart Copeland—to help the intro stand out. That long B section really lets JEN (Suzuki) shine. Suzuki: I was sure that Sakurai was looking for something along the lines of Stewart Copeland, so I was grinning the whole time I was playing (laughs). The track shifts into double time (a technique of playing the beat doubled at a constant rhythm), which drew me in as we were recording, and the whole thing was over before I knew it. It has an intense rhythm structure that’s probably going to be difficult to play live, but that just makes this track more rewarding. Saturday Tahara: The tour is called “Saturday in the park,” imagining the concert venues as ‘the park’. We really wanted to bring some joy to people’s weekends. I was the one who added the sounds of dogs and sheep—it was so much fun that I actually started laughing while I did it (laughs). Sakurai: When I wrote the lyric, “Let’s throw open all the closed windows and breathe in the scent of freedom,” I was thinking of someone opening the windows and looking up towards the sky. Tahara had included the sounds of some animals on the ground, so I added the calls of birds as well. Glastonbury Sakurai: The song seemed to keep unfolding as if it were on a journey, which made me want to transport the listener’s imagination to somewhere outside Japan. Incidentally, the protagonist is watching Coldplay’s 2002 performance of "Yellow" at Glastonbury. Kindannomi Nakagawa: “I struggled for quite a while to get my own sense of breathing to line up with the breathing of the song itself. I had a feeling for the sweeping world of the song as a whole, so I built my sound with the idea of myself being actually being right there in that world. The saxophone is played by Sakurai. Suzuki: This one grew out of the demo recording process, with me recording my part first, and the others layering their parts over top. It had a sort of call-and-response feel to it, very much like a jam session. Stupid hero Sakurai: Even when I write lyrics myself, there are times when I can’t explain exactly what I was thinking when I wrote them. I think a melody, arrangement and the performance itself can sometimes say more than the words, and I trust in that magic of music as I work. If this song lets the part of me that’s worrying about something take a step back and think, “You’re being an idiot, getting worked up over something so small,” then to me, that’s a win. Tahara: The arrangement is very distinctive, with a style that somehow feels both unusual and familiar at the same time. The band weaves in the brass feel of the arrangement in a really interesting way, and we think this track has turned out really well. Ubugoe Tahara: This track was the last one completed during the album's production. Up until then, it had felt like there was something missing, but finishing "Ubugoe" felt like a miraculous moment, as if something that we had been waiting a long time for had finally arrived. Sakurai: Initially we only had the melody. Finishing a song in such an open-ended way was a first for me and felt almost embarrassing. After many attempts to figure out what kind of word might fit, we hit upon ‘Ubugoe'—a newborn’s first cry. When the track was finished and we were thinking of album titles, Tahara suggested that Ubugoe would be a good title for the album as well. To me, it feels like a song about something that had been living in the closed world of miss you letting out its first cry and stepping out into the open. Kazoku Sakurai: We had all the songs ready for the album and each of us was thinking about a track order, but the one we ended up using came from Tahara. Initially I was surprised at the idea of using "Kazoku"for the last track, but when I listened to the album all the way through, it felt absolutely right. It’s a little hard to put the reason why into words though! I think this is the most honest, true-to-life song we’ve written—one that reflects our actual age.