Anything less than a 4-minute banshee wail from Ringo followed by a 3-minute atonal guitar riff that shrieks into oblivion will fall under the category of "generic" for a lot of people.

As per usual, I'll give this a first-listen from the actual CD, then a second listen with the lyric booklet in hand.

SR at 30 isn't anymore diverse than SR at 18.
Look at her early tracks and demos, she had samba (shampoo demo), bossa nova (aozora), punk rock (aozora gekokujyo live, identity), R&B (marusadi, in the same way early Utada tracks were R&B ), jazz (sakana), string quartet (yami ni furu ame), dance hall (yokushitsu), big band (mayonaka wa jyunketsu)....
And it all sounds uniquely Ringo.

Try listing that many influences from her work in the recent 5 years.

So my answer to your (rhetorical) question, She's lost it. (just about when adult was released.)

I like it so far,Yes it definitely sounds different,but that doesn't necessarily means is bad,And there is nothing generic to It,But I gonna wait until the album is released officially to listen to it again,This low quality rip really doesn't do any justice to this album.

Generic....yeah...whatever,This ain't generic at all.

;;googely love eyes;;

justriingo, the demos sound passionate because they are unpolished and raw, which is what a lot of us like in ringo's voice. she hasn't lost it, it is just a matter of studio magic, how to capture the spontaneity and spark in the studio. adding more members to the mix (jihen) just complicates it, but I think the difference between us here at EMF is that some of us appreciate and enjoy what happens when ringo gets mixed together with other performers, and some of us just want solo old school ringo. the problem is that an artist with such an ecclectic and varied catalogue is bound to appease and disappoint any given number of us at any given time because she can't be everything at once. I'm personally just grateful she doesn't turn out the same shit over and over. if she was pumping out albums like SS or KZK year after year I'd get bored.

tokjo jihen once again produce a very average album.

past 3 albums, variety, her solo(forgot the name), and this.

they all sucked. If ringo never made the albums before those 3, then it would be okay. But after she made those masterpeices, compare to those, these are pretty garbage.

ringo has always be able to write very memoriable melodies. for the past 2albums( variety doesnt count) she was unable to do so.

there are some okay songs in this album. but ringo made too many legendary songs. These are not good enough.

you gotta remember, chances are ringo only wrote one or two songs on here (3min and maybe another song or two). the majority of this album is like variety, penned by the band members (ALLEGEDLY!!!)

I'm really surprised none of the haters are comparing it to variety, to me they sound so similar except that I like this one (since it sounds more coherent). But you know, if you don't like it for other reasons, thats cool....not buying that its generic though, call it unoriginal if you want but generic sounds like you didnt listen to the whole thing.

For me, If an artist is trying to challenge themself and has an artistic vision, then its all a matter of how it sounds to my ears. I dont care if its original (though I usually prefer it) or similar to something else or difficult or easy. If there is anything generic about this though its that its so diverse that its sooo ridiculously generic ringo (honestly I'm quite tired of it, but thats not to say I don't like it sometimes).



Lets explore this though instead of just about the same thing;
I dont know why anyone wants anything NEW from ringo, shes done basically everything that wouldnt isolate her from the mainstream completely (ringo doing noise rock....hmmm? could be good but its not exactly easy to imagine her going THAT far) and I think shes jumped styles more than just about any musician out there who isnt trying to make a statement by doing so. She hasn't really deeply explored too many of the genres shes dabbled in though other than maybe heisei. I wish that if she were to do another non-TJ album, it would either be an as-solo-as-possible-for-what-she-wants-to-make (assuming she cant play EVERY instrument in her songs) album with everything composed and wirtten by her and musicians who have less of their own style and just do exactly what she wants them to do it OR it would be something like a soil and pimp collab.....ideally in japanese. I really think that would tie her to a certain style for an album and thats something I would really want to hear from ringo. Any genre would be fine as long as she gave it her best with songwriting and vocal melodies.

With MOST bands and musicians, I think demanding something new makes sense because most of them tend to stick to one or two genres or at least stick to one an album. I don't think applying this request to Ringo makes much sense because her #of styles explored to # of songs ratio is so ridiculous.

UH... no. Not true.

well Ringo has done borderline noise on zecchoshu and also Crawl on Kyouiku. I agree, there isn't a lot of ground Ringo *hasn't* covered, except straight up pop really. I mean she always kind of worked within the pop spectrum, but added little alternative aspects or ways to take it out of that realm. I'd be interested in hearing a 100% pop song from Ringo, like Ringo meets Ayu. I'm sure people are going to give me flack for that, but I don't really need Ringo to be some fallen rock icon, I like what she has done, and more importantly, I like what she does (as in, I like HF, SG, Adult, and I'll probably like this. I don't say Variety because it wasn't here, it was mostly Uki and Izawa).

since people are listening to leak and not paying attention to the main thread, I dug up some new sports-era photos from the kronekodow artist profile page and its up in the album news thread. kinda funny, take a look.

Because "we the haters" don't remember, and don't want to remember what it sounds like.