Diagnosis: Limited Neon Yellow Vinyl LP Sen Morimoto

Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist Sen Morimoto’s third album Diagnosis sees him flip the script. After releasing two albums – 2018 debut Cannonball! and a 2021 self- titled follow-up – via his own Sooper Records, the artist signed to City Slang to co- release his third album alongside Sooper, and it came at a time of fundamental change.

The 12 tracks here, recorded at Chicago’s Friends Of Friends studio with a few close collaborators, skip between funky, bright jazz-pop (‘Bad State’), intricate guitar-based tracks with a Radiohead feel (“What You Say”) and orchestral wonderlands “Forsythia (レンギョウの旋律)”. Highlight “Pressure On The Pulse,” meanwhile, is a devastatingly intimate, quiet song that then explodes into an exuberant, animated whirlwind of sax and drums. A chameleonic figure at the album’s core, he can rip out a sax solo, dive deep into intimate singer-songwriter territory and lead massive, roaring alt-pop songs with equal aplomb.

Morimoto describes his musical reference points for the album as “equal parts Funkadelic and Dinosaur Jr.,” and while these touchpoints can be heard all over the record, it doesn’t feel beholden to them, instead using their inspiration before moving beyond it.

Tracks:

A01 If The Answer Isn’t Love 
A02 Bad State
A03 St. Peter Blind
A04 Diagnosis
A05 Pressure On The Pulse A06 Naive
B07 Feel Change
B08 What You Say
B09 Surrender
B10 Deeper
B11 Pain
B12 Forsythia (レンギョウの旋律)
B13 Reality