Conceptual albums arguably have become few and far between within our current cultural focus of achieving virality with hit singles.
However, Alternative Rock Band Cibo Matto’s (CHEE-BO MAHT-O) album, Hotel Valentine, lives up to its name, guiding the listener through a haunted hotel filled with lonely ghosts, an eerie abandoned pool and debaucherous maids.
The opening song of the album, “Check in,” sets the mood for the rest of the album—much like your check in experience at a hotel might do for your stay—with lively electronica beats and some spooky vocals and samples thrown in. In fact, this album seems to have it all! Aside from motifs of ethereal loneliness and hallucinatory experiences, this album also brings together a blend of jazz-funk-electronica-pop-rock.
Some of my personal standouts from this album include, “Empty Pool,” whose electronica style beats emulate the sound of flickering fluorescent lights one might come across in an abandoned hotel pool. To really drive home the feeling of unease, these repeated lyrics drive a shiver up your spine, “in an empty pool I was swimming alone when I felt someone watching me.”
Perhaps one of the more humorous songs on this album is “Housekeeping,” which details the shenanigans of hotel maids who smoke guests’ weed and complain about guests “doing it on the couch.”
For me, the most emotionally striking song is the album’s namesake “Hotel Valentine,” which merges more of the jazz sounds we heard before with the spooky ethereal vocals provided by Singer-songwriter Miho Hatori, “I’m a ghost, only you can see me… nobody cares or sees me, I just wander in this world.”
Cibo Matto was started by Miho Hatori (lead vocals) and Yuka Honda (sampler and sequencer). Originally, the band was just the duo but over time they recruited other band members, including Musician Sean Ono Lennon.
The band only has four studio albums together, with Hotel Valentine being their final collaboration, released in 2014. Unlike other thirsty artists who refuse to know when to quit, Cibo Matto came, created and disbursed.