HARD ON

Finally there’s someone who isn’t afraid to let her happy thoughts spill out like crayon-drawn smiley suns and flowers. Tujiko Noriko is a musician who drops the rock star front and just lets her heart pour out.

This Japanese Parisian writes songs that warmly embrace the same pop culture that any Takashi Murakami or Charles Baudelaire character would otherwise mime with a forced and ironic grin. But ?to speak loudly about sadness,? Tujiko thinks, ?is too basic a thing? (I think that means, ?Irony is dead?).

So instead, she works to link playful, dribbling keyboard layers; clicking electronic riddles; and soft, rich arias. Turning away from the simplicities of a much too familiar world of sorrow and misery, Tujiko Noriko takes the uncharted path of finding things to really beam about.

But even though her methods are something a lot of artists and musicians couldn’t or wouldn’t think of stepping to, the sweet taste her music leaves in the mouth is proof of her success. Tujiko jokes that the sweetness really comes because ?The world’s made of non-calorie sugar,? but her music is exponentially more satisfying than any low-fat brownie or Fig Newton.