Time N Place; A Tribute To Our Past

Coming off two very successful albums and an eye-opening tour, Kero Kero Bonito found themselves in an odd position. They were getting bored of bubblegum pop, and they were eager to do something new creatively. Likewise, all four members had recently experienced a devastating loss in their lives, which pushed them into new creative territory. In their grief, the band gave up their electronic sound for instruments that they could physically hit and play. The basses and kits and guitars they learned music on in the. They wanted “something chaotic”, a sound to better reflect their emotions as they matured and evolved as artists. Likewise, the band looked to make something based on the suburbs and physicality. They wanted to represent a sound and time that they all shared, and eventually all lost, uniting the group in their grief and creativity. Likewise, the need arose for a fuller group, and KKB expanded to include guitarist james Rowland, and producer Jennifer Walton, as well as some friends of the band and a string quarter for “Sometimes” and “Dead Future Self” respectively. Even as the group shifts back into their usual sound with following projects, Time N Place is remembered as an moment of experimentation and introspection for the group. They reflected heavily on their own lives, inspiring the same within me, and I think the album, as well as the precursory EP TOTEP remains some of the best music they’ve ever created.

I found this album at such a strange time in my life. I was feeling so many things, and transitioning into the end of my adolescence. Music is so weird, because it’s hard to remember exactly when you found a song or an album, but you can always remember the impact it had on you. The first time I heard Time N Place, the brash rock sounds of Outside and Only Acting drew me in, but it's the dreamy synths on Time Today and Make Believe that held me. It’s the magic of it all, the vulnerability that I connected with. This album is all about the about reminiscing over childhood and missing the physicality of the past. It’s about garbage, water, dreams, birds. Arbitrary things that we can never get back. Spaces we can never occupy again, a lost era. The group uses their music to ponder time with some of the most beautiful riffs and chords I’ve ever heard, set against lyrics that are playfully fun and painfully relatable. 

Growing up sucks. Even as I get ready to graduate high school, I still find myself missing my old action figures. I still want to build Lego forts and sit around playing DS games. But my DS is broken, my G.I Joe’s sit in a box, likely to never be played with again, and I had to throw out my toys to make room for a growing wardrobe. Someone else is living in my childhood apartment, someone who doesn’t get Uno cards stuck in the vent and put Iron Man stickers on the wall, someone who doesn’t care where the furniture faces or believes that the bathroom is haunted. My childhood is dead, and it’s never coming back. But all of our childhoods, every Barbie and Power Ranger, every broken pair of headphones and popsicle stick, every lost gameboard piece lives on in this album. KKB understands that we can never go back to the way things were, but through Time N Place they have created a sound that represents a time we can never get back to.

Our inner child lives in little ways. In our passions, our clothing style, our sense of humor, and our art especially. Even as we grow and mature as people, and face increasingly adult situations, we ground ourselves in memories and hobbies we gained as children. Time N Place takes all the distant memories and warm feelings of our youngest years, and crystalizes it in the form of catchy beats and dreamy lyrics. It’s something we can all relate to, the desire to go back. But rather than live in the past, Kero Kero Bonito comforts us with memories of hospital visits and parakeets as we move into the future. We can never get back what we lost, whether it be a loved one, an era, an object, or a space, but it all lives on in shared experiences. This album is for everyone who’s ever had to throw out an old toy, anyone who’s ever moved away from their first home, anyone who’s lost their favorite stuffed animal, and those of us who still aren’t quite sure when we’re supposed to feel grown up. Being lost in this world is scary, but we’ll be okay. As Sarah says on the albums final track, “keep on keep on, and give it everything you've got, ‘cause only then we'll reach the end, the land where we belong”.