hakobune no common

Japanese rock band the SUGARSTAR is CRYING will digitally release their first album, "hakobune no common".
The album features eight tracks, including "ageha" (entered in the Best Rock Song category for the 68th Grammy Awards), the lead single "haru", and a cover of "Superstar", best known for The Carpenters' rendition.
It's an album of rebirth - both old and new - imbued with the authentic spirit of the 1990s alternative rock era, crafted by a generation who lived it firsthand.

In the early 2000s, when Radiohead sought transformation with "Kid A" and Number Girl disbanded, the SUGARSTAR is CRYING aspired to share their music with the world.
They created an eight-track album - half in English and half in Japanese - for promotional purposes. Despite approaching labels in Japan and even traveling to the U.S. to pitch it, they were unable to secure a deal, and the album was ultimately shelved.

These eight songs were anything but commercial.
Main songwriter Meg Arai (vocals/guitar), who spent her childhood in Japan, Ghana, and the United States, became deeply aware of Japan's unique sense of beauty and its view of life and death - reflected in the changing seasons and the memories flowing through the body across generations - and wove these themes into her compositions.
The band's stoic performance, carrying her songs through a heavy guitar-rock sound, was almost athletic in its precision. There were no sweet love songs or sing-along choruses (apart from the cover track). Yet paradoxically, this very quality gave the music a timeless universality that could move listeners across eras.

Twenty years later, the band opened a long-forgotten box hidden in the back of a closet.
All that remained was the final mastered tape. They enlisted guitarist Shinjiro Okada of the rock band Pirokarupin - a long-time collaborator - as recording engineer. Using the same demixing technology employed for The Beatles' final new song "Now and Then", they separated the vocals and individual instruments from the original tapes, then meticulously remixed and remastered them.
Furthermore, "ageha" - the song written soon after the band's formation and cherished above all others - was completely rebuilt through a new recording session.
Seven tracks reconstructed with state-of-the-art audio technology, plus their "oldest new song", make up eight tracks reborn for the present day.

The 2025 version of "ageha" was entered in the Best Rock Song category at the 68th Grammy Awards, fulfilling part of the band's long-held wish to share their music with the world.