7/10

Thirteen years can stretch like an ocean, but Senpai’s '25' feels like a message in a bottle finally washing ashore. Formed by brothers Renzo and Paolo Sala at the turn of the millennium, the Japanese-Genoese duo have always existed in a space between worlds.. With their sixth album, they lean into that liminal quality, crafting twelve tracks that shimmer with psych-pop colour while carrying the lived-in warmth of shared history.

Recorded between Genoa and Osaka, '25' is an album of parallels; east and west, past and present, dream and daylight. Renzo’s multi-instrumental palette conjures wide, cinematic textures that ebb between kaleidoscopic guitar work, measured piano lines, and string arrangements that feel almost like sudden gusts of wind through the mix. Paolo’s voice, familiar yet matured by the years, brings a grounding human thread, delivering melodies that sway with both delicacy and resolve.

Rather than chasing a reinvented identity, '25' feels content to stand in continuity with Senpai’s earlier work. There are nods to the off-kilter brightness of Well and the wistful undercurrents of Garret Afternoon, but the years away have lent their sound a kind of slow-blooming patience. Songs are given space to breathe and swirl in ambient hues before resolving into gently propulsive grooves. The psych elements are still there, but they’re tempered with less flash and more reflection.

It’s also an album deeply aware of its own timeline. '25' doesn’t just mark the band’s founding anniversary; it's a quiet acknowledgment of everything lived between then and now. Each track is its own postcard from the journey, but together they chart a map of persistence, kinship, and creative endurance.

For a band whose roots are split between two continents, '25' is proof that distance can still be a creative force The result is an album that sounds neither entirely Japanese nor wholly Italian, but distinctly Senpai; a rare hybrid of psych-pop curiosity and grounded melodic craft.