Miki Matsubara's second album keeps its question open.
A second album is often asked to furnish evidence: that the first was not an accident, and that its maker is not exhausted by it. Who are you? prints the problem on the cover. Miki Matsubara released it in 1980, the same year as her debut. That proximity lends the question a certain urgency, and gives an audience an early opportunity to adjust its view. It does suggest that getting to know a new singer need not wait until an audience's initial impression has hardened into an official description.
Pony Canyon's retrospective draws attention to the opening pair of Masamichi Sugi songs, “Aitsu no Brown Shoes” and “Kimagure Usagi.” Shoes and a rabbit bring an apparently imposing question of identity down to a lighter, more particular scale. One can read that beginning as a resistance to a stiff definition, without pretending the musicians issued such a manifesto. A question need not be answered by a solemn declaration. Sometimes a sequence of different songs can make the question more interesting than a single conclusive response would have been.
The label's reissue information also names Matsubara among the album's writers and keyboard players. That small credit changes the angle of view. The person at the center is not merely the destination to which songs are delivered; she participates in their making. It would be equally misleading to inflate that detail into sole authorship or to use it to make the other collaborators disappear. Identity here looks more like a set of simultaneous roles. Singing, writing, and playing need not compete for the one box available on a form.
For listeners who meet Matsubara through a single celebrated recording, the second album offers a gentle corrective. It does not have to function as explanatory material attached to the debut. It can ask its own question. City-pop categorization sometimes makes a polished surface seem like a uniform personality, as though a singer must occupy one perfectly furnished room forever. Who are you? leaves more flexible space. Roles can change, and a final answer can remain pending. The question mark is not a gap in the file; it is what a calling card cannot accommodate.