Title: Farewell Flowers
Album: GRACE (track 009)
Composer: ヒロト (HIROTO) & 沙我 (Saga)
Lyrics: 将 (SHOU)

The title of this song is so meaningful that it was featured in the name of their 2023 spring tour: LAST DANCE ACT.3「Graced The Beautiful Story」ep.2〝Farewell Flowers〟.

歌詞 》

Farewell Flowers

歌詞は「こちら」です。

You can view a copy of the lyrics in their original Japanese online [ here ].

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Romaji 》

Farewell Flowers

English Translation 》

Farewell Flowers

White, a colour brilliantly silky
Black, a curtain of darkness, plucking strings

Within the eyelids that I wipe at
The milky way transforms into a dream
I grip a lamp, follow a shooting star

In a multicoloured letter holding a prayer, what would I write?
I am of two minds, but
Even so, at times, it’s more brutal than I imagine
And I bring along with me even your smile

The goodbye I can’t put into words either
At the water’s edge softly came to be

I tried stilling my breath and heard the sound of life
The moon floated, an organ playing

It is a song of farewell—
Let’s gather up the light, decorate our memories,
colours hazy;
The morning when we doze off, not one thing remains
Aside from a memory that we loved

The drifting, floating shapes vanish, but
Being broken and breaking is okay when the future exists

It is a song of farewell—
Let’s gather up the light, decorate our memories,
colours hazy;
The morning when we doze off, not one thing remains
Aside from a memory that we loved
――Somehow, with a smile
Let’s meet again by chance

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The above was translated by me; for the original post and more notes, check out [ PuncProsody ].

If you’d like to share the translation, please link to this page. Do not repost it. Thank you.

Other Fan Translations:

English: glitterark .

If you would like me to host your translation, link to your translation, or know of another translation that has been made (in any language), please let me know and I’ll put up a link to it. The more the merrier.

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Behind the Scenes

Shortly after the album GRACE was released, Saga held a nearly 3-hour live event on Youtube to talk at length about each song on the album, and while the archive of this incredible talk was only up for a brief period of time after the event ended, I jotted down a few notes during the course of it, and here are some remarks about Farewell Flowers:

★ He explained that they’d had the demo for this song for a long time… since around the time Merry Christmas to U was made.
★ He was initially surprised by the fact that there was almost no guitar in the demo, that it was mostly synth.

Later, in ALICE NINE. Official note 176, Saga went into detail again about the song, all of which is above the subscription cutoff point and available for anyone to read. That portion of the interview in English is below.

Interviewer: And next is “Farewell Flowers”.

Saga: This is a HIROTO composition as well. I’ve listened to the demo in the past, and at one time that became the song called “Merry Christmas To U”. Because “that ended up becoming the Christmas song”, to me, we were done with it. We were done with it, but here that old demo once again appeared (laughs). So to me, with “Farewell Flowers”, it’s like we finally made the song in keeping with its chief image.

Interviewer: In other words, even though the original demo was the same, if “Merry Christmas~” were raised in a different family branch, the one raised in the original household is “Farewell Flowers”?

Saga: That’s right. Ever since before when I heard the demo, I’ve been saying “this’ll be a good song, might possibly be a lead track, so let’s hurry up and create it,” but work on it wasn’t really progressing. For this too, the demo was mostly synth. What’s interesting about HIROTO is, he’s a guitarist so it seems like he’d be gung-ho to put guitar in there, but he creates a lot of synth demos that he doesn’t add guitar into. To that, I adjusted the sound to fit the atmosphere of the album, and enticed it into being a thing we could perform as a band. This song was a ton of hard work. We were like, playing and replacing the synth parts by saying “here it’ll be guitar, here it’ll be bass.” Man, it was tough.

Interviewer: However, it’s a song that also became the title of the tour that will start from here on.

Saga: It turned into a song with that sort of importance. We’re still doing all sorts of trial and error in terms of the presentation of this song for the next tour, so I think I’d like you all to be looking forward to that.

Interviewer: How about in terms of playing it?

Saga: “Himitsu” is like that as well, but our band isn’t great at this sort of shuffle-type rhythm. So even if the singing and performance isn’t broken-up, we would figure out “how much will we make it sound like a shuffle style?”… For instance, when the drum was in the kick position for a moment and stuff like that — we thought a lot while creating the song. On bass fundamentally, I’m a pick-player so I went to great pains to bring out that nuance. Though in truth I should have performed it using my fingers.

Interviewer: Did you intentionally choose to play with a pick?

Saga: My equipment isn’t for playing with my fingers. Fundamentally, I end up choosing settings so I can play vigorously with a pick. When I play with my fingers, whether I like it or not, I end up playing more lows than I would with a pick and end up emitting a “bwonnnn” sound, my attack becoming stronger too. At any rate when I must play with my fingers, I fiddle with the knobs of my bass and reduce the lows and stuff like that, playing it while tuning it briskly.

Interviewer: When you play with your fingers, you were doing that onstage, weren’t you.

Saga: Yes. I’m tuning it by hand minutely.

Interviewer: For the recording of “Farewell~” did you play with a pick?

Saga: Nah, I was changing part by part. Pick and fingers. I did that for other songs too. For “Funeral” as well when it gets to that jazzy part I use fingers, and during the quiet spot in “Grace” I’m playing bass with my fingers.

Interviewer: A technique you can do precisely because it’s a recording.

Saga: That’s right. Onstage, my style is to do it all with the one bass I use, so for lives it’s gotten so that I play with a pick too much.

Interviewer: Though there are people who change their bass to match the song.

Saga: I don’t want to change mine. The number of staff members is limited and I think up the setlist, but because I want to put emphasis on its flow, I don’t want to interrupt that flow in order to do a bass change of my own. So I have it set up on the board at my feet to be able to do things with one bass. I have other basses of course, but I’m the type to do it all with one bass onstage.

ALICE NINE. Official note vol 176