I’ve been burned by a few “archival” releases with fantastical stories. When the true story behind Deux Filles — supposedly a pair of teenage French girls that made music together to cope with their tragic lives — was revealed, I was a little miffed that I had been duped by a pair of veteran musicians in drag. Likewise, Jürgen Müller’s Science of the Sea was marketed as a private press love letter to the ocean by a passionate marine biologist, when in reality it was an elaborate hoax by Norm Chambers of Panabrite. With past chicanery in mind, I’m a bit skeptical of the backstory of Nobue Kawana’s Nobue’s Sea. Allegedly a posthumous release with a limited pressing in 1975, it was recorded by a young girl in her late teens at a beachside home. As Kawana battled cancer, she recorded an assortment of carefree songs about her love of the sea, accompanied only by her close friend and the serene sounds of nature. It all feels too romantic not to have been designed to tug at your heartstrings. Whether the story’s true or not, the simple fact is that I want it to be — because it’s a genuinely very beautiful album.