ATARASHII GAKKO! on New Album AG! Calling , First World Tour, and Breaking the Mold

Sara Delgado for Teen Vogue

It’s almost 11 p.m. on the third and last day of Primavera Sound Barcelona 2024 when I sit down with Japanese girl group ATARASHII GAKKO! inside a tiny fishbowl-esque press hub by the entrance of the festival, where we are greeted by fans making their way in. The quartet will soon take to the Cupra stage at the famed festival, often lauded as the Coachella of Europe, for the first stop of their world tour. In just six days, and after many musical appetizers, their new album AG! Calling will be released to the world. Both are major feats in an artist's career, but you couldn’t tell from how aloof ATARASHII GAKKO! look. In fact, they are more focused on the lighting and thunder engulfing Barcelona as our interview takes place. “Sugoi,” Mizyu screams, tracing the outline of the lighting with her finger in the air. “Scary,” Kanon counters, in English, looking at her fellow member deadpan.

By the time ATARASHII GAKKO! sits down with Teen Vogue, torrential rain has been pouring on the festival’s Parc del Fòrum location for over two hours, forcing attendees to seek refuge by food stalls and canteens, the only sheltered spaces in the outdoor venue. Nonstop like the rain, Mizyu, Rin, Suzuka, and Kanon have also been doing interviews for the last two hours, and they still have a long way to go until their set is slated to start at 1:15 in the morning. With performances going on often well into dawn, the set times of Primavera Sound Barcelona are usually the biggest shock for both foreign festival goers and artists alike, but ATARASHII GAKKO! is not one bit bothered about performing at such ungodly hour.

“We already did in the Philippines,” the group confesses in unison, giddy with excitement. “It's a crazy time," Suzuka adds in English, winking from above the frames of her glasses, “but we like it.”

If you haven’t followed them for a while, you’d think ATARASHII GAKKO! is a relatively new group. The quartet reached new heights after signing with 88rising in 2020 to aid their global promotions. Even if you don’t know them by name, chances are you’ve heard their high-octane hit track “Tokyo Calling” somewhere, whether performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! or at Coachella. The song, released in late 2023, has propelled the group as one of the ones to watch this year.

“Tokyo Calling” might have served as their big breakout, but ATARASHII GAKKO! has been a group since 2015. The members have known each other since way before then, even if their exact genesis is still a mystery. In some interviews, the four have claimed they were childhood friends before they started making music together. In others, they simply refer to a greater force for bringing them together. There are also theories about a fated supermarket encounter when shopping for sushi.

When asked to clarify for us, the girls simply nod and chatter, settling on “destiny” as the de facto answer while linking their pinkies in a promise and smiling. They say “the times” just brought them together, that they just answered the call of the era.

“We are family,” Suzuka adds, once again emphasizing how they are just meant to be together. “We are an explosion [when we join forces],” she adds. It’s hard to push for specifics when the facts are hard to contest. They do seem to be fated together, so how could a mere observant argue with that?

Shrouding mysteries seems to be the norm for ATARASHII GAKKO!, who often prefer to use onomatopeias and non-verbal communication to express their feelings — partly to aid with language barriers and ensure nothing gets lost in translation and partly because words are simply not enough to illustrate what’s going through their heads, especially in the case of Suzuka, who is glaringly a lot more animated than the rest.

When asked about their feelings ahead of the official start of the AG! Calling world tour (which will be divided into Part I and II, with Primavera Sound the first stop of many), Suzuka simply screams “waku waku [わくわ]” and “doki doki [ドキドキ],” both onomatopoeic expressions often used in anime to denote heart-racing excitement.

“We are super excited to be doing these types of concerts and taking on these challenges,” Mizyu, the oldest in the group, clarifies, fixing her impeccable bangs as the rest of the members nod in agreement.

During their set for this world tour, ATARSHII GAKKO! will be performing songs from their entire catalog, but a good chunk of the show is reserved for AG! Calling, which is somewhat of a magnum opus for the girls. The project, spanning 11 songs and featuring creative credits from all members, has been years in the making and includes previously released tracks like “Tokyo Calling” and “Toryanse” as well as new songs like “Omakase,” “Forever Sisters,” and “Arigato,” all of which they performed live not only at Primavera Sound but also Coachella before their official album release on June 7, 2024.

“Some songs were recorded in Japan, and some songs were recorded in L.A., so the production periods are all at different times,” Kanon says of the process of working on AG! Calling. The project opens with “Fly High,” a track produced by frequent collaborators Yoshio Tamamura and Yonkey, which the quartet debuted at Primavera Sound. “It’s the worldwide live debut,” Rin hushedly teases, also selecting the song as her favorite from the album. “It’s the theme song for [Netflix’s] Baki Hanma VS Kengan Ashura; it's the first song on the album. It's just a really punchy song, and the choreography is great.”

Picking a favorite song off the album is no easy task for ATARASHII GAKKO! — “We like all of them,” the group almost immediately says in unison when the question is posed. Finally, Suzuka chooses “Hero Show” because, well, the vibes are just great, she explains in Japanese. Mizyu, on the other hand, has a special connection to “Forever Sisters.” “I love the theme, the lyrics, the sound, and it brings back a lot of memories we made with producer Money Mark,” she explains. (The group worked with the producer for their five-track 2021 EP SNACKTIME, but this is the only song he has contributed to for this album.) After some back and forth, Rin finally allows Kanon to pick “Omakase” as her favorite. Her reasoning? “It's fun to dance to, and when you listen to it, you think, 'Oh, that's cool.'”

Suzuka bends the rules to give a shoutout to "Arigato,” explaining how the performances use broomstick mic stands, “which are really cool and fun.” On a more sentimental note, Rin adds that the lyrics for the song are actually inspired by messages they have received from fans, acting as a reciprocal love letter, which she thinks is unique to them. It’s not simply an ode to fans but also an ode to themselves and, above all, a hype anthem.

This cleverness has become a trademark for the group, and the album’s very name is a testament to it. AG! Calling means “ATARASHII GAKKO! is here for you,” as Suzuka and Kanon explain. “It's a combination of the Japanese phrase ‘korin [降臨]’ and the English word ‘calling,’” Mizyu adds. The wordplay borrows half the meaning from “korin [降臨],” which translates into both "calling" and "to descend" or "to arrive,” something they allude to with the cover art as well.

Since they “arrived” on the scene quite a while ago, it’s only natural to wonder why they decided to use this wordplay now and not in the past. Suzuka, trading her energetic responses for a more elaborate explanation, admits it’s all because of “Tokyo Calling.” The song, she explains, was a real turning point for the group, and they feel it’s truly the best reflection of their current era, so they decided to pay homage to it by weaving a piece of it into the album title since, in a way, it's the centerpiece of the record.

“We really did a mix of genres in this album to appeal to everyone. There are Shōwa-era pop songs. There are also songs with hero themes,” Suzuka adds. “We also have this song called ‘Toryanse,’ for which we wear kimonos on stage, which is a taste of Japanese culture,” Kanon adds.

They complete each other’s sentences with ease, but the members of ATARASHII GAKKO! and their personal tastes couldn’t be more different from each other. Suzuka is a sucker for rock, Rin prefers R&B and hip-hop, and Mizyu is a fan of ‘90s J-pop, the band Tama to be exact. Throwing a curveball, Kanon admits she doesn't really listen to music in her spare time. “But if you ask me what I listen to when I put on headphones, I listen to natural sounds, like the sound of water or rain.”

It’s because they are so different, Rin says, that their symbiosis works. “Everyone has their own favorite music. We have different brains, but when you're in AG!, we can just unify all those [influences] and make even more interesting music. It's like we have four brains, and they are telepathically connected to form a common one [with which we are able] to create something unique.”

Though disparate in tastes, there’s one connecting thread tying all of ATARASHII GAKKO!’s releases so far: their signature sailor-style Japanese school uniforms. Though remixed from time to time with custom variations, the uniforms have become a constant in the group’s aesthetic, serving as an outward reflection of their “youthful" (seishun) ethos. This is also reflected in their socks, which are emblazoned with variations of their self-professed “Youth Representatives of Japan” moniker. (For Primavera, one side also read “はみ出していく,” meaning “to stick out.”)

The group might be committed to the youthful concept now, but growth is inevitable, and often, growth means change — a factor that would threaten the longevity of the school uniforms. Rin, however, is convinced the uniforms are here to stay, both now and in the future… with some exceptions, of course.

"When we did the music video [for] ‘Pineapple Kryptonite,’ we dressed up as an American family and changed clothes because it has a meaning in the music video,” she explains. “We don't want to completely throw away the sailor uniforms because they are so important to us, but we will treasure them and make various changes and additions to match our future songs and what we want to express at the time.”

This “focus on now” mentality permeates through everything ATARASHII GAKKO! does. Why worry about it if it’s not happening now? Even their manifestations for the rest of the year are grounded in that perspective. “I'm just looking forward to this year's schedule and tour,” Suzuka confesses, making the rest of the members nod in agreement. “Part I, Part II, Japanese tour… We just want to have a great time and laugh along the way.”

For all the people out there who are yet to listen to an ATARASHII GAKKO! song and the skeptics who are still on the fence about giving them a chance, Suzuka has one suggestion: “Just come to one of our live shows.” She delivers the message firmly but nonchalantly, just shrugging it off. Like clockwork, Mizyu goes on to clarify: “We just think live performance is our strongest suit, so all of our feelings and what we want to say are conveyed better live.” Luckily for you, with the new tour in full swing, making this suggestion a reality will not be difficult.

ATARASHII GAKKO!’s AG! Calling world tour will run until October, with stops across Europe, Asia, and North America. All of ATARASHII GAKKO!’s quotes for this interview were translated from Japanese by an interpreter. They’ve been condensed and edited for clarity.

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue

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