Shintaro Sakamoto – Yoo-Hoo

Shintaro Sakamoto's Yoo-hoo arrives as his first album since 2022, and it feels shaped by movement: the songs draw on impressions from recent tours in the US and Mexico while keeping one foot firmly in Sakamoto's Tokyo home base. Best known for the 21-year run of psych-rock group Yura Yura Teikoku, where he sang and played guitar across 10 albums, Sakamoto uses that long view to make something relaxed but wide-ranging rather than nostalgic.

Written, produced and performed by Sakamoto, Yoo-hoo expands his solo catalogue with a characteristically off-centre mix of blues, mood kayō, 1960s soul, surf instrumentals and funk. That blend has become one of his signatures, but here it also reflects the album's travel-worn perspective: familiar styles are reshaped into something light on its feet, melodic and quietly eccentric. AllMusic also notes colourful contributions from players including Manami Kakudo and Toru Nishiuchi, details that fit the record's loose, richly arranged feel.

As Sakamoto's fifth solo album, Yoo-hoo sits naturally alongside Like a Fable while showing how restlessly he keeps refining his own songbook. If you came to him through Yura Yura Teikoku, this is a good reminder of how far his solo work has travelled; if not, it is an inviting place to start, full of vintage pop ideas that never feel boxed in by revivalism.

Genre: Global