22nd July 2025
Hi all, hope you're doing well. It is considerably less warm than it was when I wrote the previous article and somehow I did survive it. Today I'll be writing about one of my favourite albums, Skip and Make it Flower by Red Go-Cart. Please enjoy :)
Formed in 1996 in Japan's northern city of Sendai by Yuji and Tomomi Usui, melodica infused Red Go-Cart (RGC) quickly established a unique sound. Influenced by the Twee bands of Europe (RGC got its name from a Throw That Beat song), their handful of cassette and 7" releases in their early days felt reminiscent of the Tontipop and Cuddlecore scenes which were popping up at that time. While these releases are all excellent in their own right, they did all have one major drawback - the recording quality! While many bands today chase a fuzzy, lo-fi sound, I wouldn't have blamed RGC if they wanted something a bit less noisy. And this is where their debut album comes in.
Skip and Make it Flower (CLCD-403) marked a new - and less fuzzy - era for RGC. The album was the hard work of Yuji Usui (Bass, Chorus, Guitar [Additional], Glockenspiel, Keyboards), Tomomi Usui (Vocals, Melodica, Drums, Tambourine, Bells, Keyboards) and Dai Watanabe (Guitar - because not everyone has to play 5+ instruments). Recorded between March and December 1998 and releasing in March of '99, Skip and Make it Flower came out at a time when their home at Clover Records was starting to venture away from the charming, but limiting, cassette tape. The shiny new meduim of CDs allowed RGC to acheive a smoother sound. This is evident when you listen to the album. Tomomi's childlike vocals and the accompanying jangly guitars sound much cleaner than any of their previous records.
It's very easy to draw comparisons between this and RGC's previous releases because the majority of the songs here are rerecordings of many of those tracks. It's most obvious with tracks like "Simple Question" and "Red Bicycle". But it's not just the sound quality which has improved - each of the tracks has been given time to develop. Red Bicycle, which was the iconic, fast paced opening track to the bands debut cassette, is now much slower here. Simple Question has that quality also. It sounds almost bittersweet, which is what I think they were trying to acheive in the original but didn't quite reach that level. I wouldn't call any of the original songs bad at all, but it is definetly better to hear the visions fully realised.
RGC and Skip and Make it Flower will always be special to me. This album was one of my earliest exposures to Twee pop and if it wasn't for them my taste in music would probably be very boring. You can listen to the bands discography on Bandcamp, spread across Clover Records, KiliKiliVilla and their own page. Amazingly, RGC is still actively performing to this day. They're supporting Linda Smith when she comes to Tokyo in September, maybe you should attend if you can...
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