Aki likes shiny pants

I happened to come across a random Youtube video of some amateur visual kei band covering SID's "Watashi wa Ame" in Harajuku (well, supposedly it was a band... there was only one guy playing guitar and singing in the video) and I remembered just how much I used to like SID. Before seeing this video the only two songs I really remembered were "Ajisai" and "Alibi"; I had forgotten how many other awesome songs they have.

I'm not that familiar with their more recent stuff (recent being 2006 onwards) since I haven't kept up with J-rock since around 2005. This makes SID a little unique for me in that most of the bands I like have been around a lot longer and so I'm more familiar with their later, non-indies songs, whereas I'm much more familiar with SID's indies stuff than their later work. So I rummaged around and found their Renai album, and I'm beginning to re-familiarise myself with them.

So far, I've noticed that a lot of their later songs tend more towards the mainstream pop sound, with a lot less of that jazzy yumminess that was so prominent in their earlier songs. This doesn't mean that their current sound is bad; just that their style has changed pretty significantly, imo. Maybe the bass is also more prominent in their earlier songs? (Haven't listened to enough of their newer songs to say this for sure.)
Two of their recent songs that I've been looping are "Uso" and "Memai"; I especially like "Memai" because it's a little harder (rockier?) than their other stuff, even compared to their indies songs, and very very catchy.

They've also de-visualised for the most part, and unlike some other de-visualised bands they actually look pretty good. I watched a 2009 interview with them though and apparently they still consider themselves to be visual kei? I don't know if they're referring more to their music or to their appearance or both but I wouldn't have called them visual kei. In fact, I was under the impression that they didn't want to be visual kei anymore. This is all hearsay of course, since it's just stuff that I read online. And really, it doesn't matter to me whether they (or anyone else for that matter) consider themselves to be visual kei.

I just watched a video of their live performance of "Memai" and there are a few things I noticed:
a) the lyrics are awesome... I've never looked up their lyrics before but I definitely will now.
b) Mao would sound great in a screamy song and
c) Aki rocks out so hard... harder than I would expect from a bassist. o_O
d) Oh yeah, and Aki likes shiny pants.

Listening to right now: シド 「眩暈」　(SID - Memai)