UK band Tokyo Tea Room’s sophomore album, Feel Forever, is incredibly comforting. Released this past Friday, the 10-track, 33-minute record feels dreamy, calming, and inviting. The album makes you want to move with its grooves while also giving you a reason to slow down, sit with it, and reflect. No matter what it’s making you do, Feel Forever has an incredible warmth that makes it an easy, optimistic album to settle into.
Following up their debut album No Rush, released last year, Feel Forever finds Tokyo Tea Room exploring the deep feelings and rushes that come with love. It also comes with a sense of warmth, but also honest and heartfelt truths.
They achieve this balance through the way Tokyo Tea Room approaches its creative process. For this album, songwriter, producer, and guitarist Dan Elliott developed the themes and concepts of the songs before working with vocalist Beth Plumb to create their melodies. From there, Elliott and Plumb worked with bassist Ben Marshall and drummer San Teather to find arrangements that best suited the sounds and emotions they were looking to convey.
Plumb’s vocals contribute to what makes those sounds and emotions work. Her voice throughout this entire project is serene, adding a layer of warmth and comfort to the record. “Hypnotised” opens the record, immediately establishing that romantic feeling while being absolutely groovy as fuck at the same time. The lyrics “I feel hypnotised, I’ve been bitten by your love,” convey that almost intoxicating feeling of falling hard for someone.
This sense of adoration continues into “Eyes Off You,” the album’s lead single and one of the tracks that stood out to me most. The repeated line “Can’t take my eyes off you” really made me feel the pure love and sweetness described in the song. “Leave You,” with its soulful guitar, explores how different it feels when you’re with the person who truly makes you feel right. Once you have that person, you never want another lonely night, never wanting them to leave your side.
“You’re Mine” was another one of my favorite songs on the record, with the bass and drums throughout giving it such a great groove. I loved how the love this person has for their partner feels so uncontrollable, while they are also so happy to call that person theirs. The repetition of “You’re mine” really hits, especially with the synths coming in during the last minute of the song.
The album does a great job of featuring different textures. The last stretch of “Temporary Love” has these energetic, fuzzy guitars, with the distortion giving them a psychedelic edge. You then have the final track, “Slip Away,” with calming guitars and drums that feel reflective before a single word is sung. The line “Stay inside, the world can wait / But never mind,” adds to a quiet atmosphere that feels very fitting as the album’s ending.
What locked me into Feel Forever was how Tokyo Tea Room moves through different feelings that come with loving someone, capturing the ups and downs of living every day with someone you care for so deeply. Their indie-psych sound reflects those feelings just as much as the lyrics do, moving between grooves that make you want to dance and quieter moments that make you want to sit with what you’re hearing. Love is rarely ever one emotion; it’s happiness, sadness, uncertainty, excitement, and everything in between. It’s what makes love so special, and I don’t know the last time I’ve heard an album express those complexities as well as Tokyo Tea Room does. Doing it in such a comforting way has me ready to press play again.
Feel Forever is now streaming on all platforms. Tokyo Tea Room will support the album on their North American tour this fall. The tour kicks off on September 24th, with stops following in Austin (October 5), Houston (October 6), and Dallas (October 7). Tickets are on sale now.
