Nowadays I like it a lot better than when it was released
and bonsai hada is still one of her very best songs!

10 years since Shiina Ringo released a good album under her name.

Damn.

Still the album I go to the most out of any of her releases when I feel like playing her music. People were too harsh on it on it's release (though I've personally loved it since day 1), if only we had seen what was gonna happen after this in hindsight. Nevermind.

Re-listened to this when I reviewed the centaur album. I still can't get behind this album. Sounds dated. Bonsai Hada is the only song I can see myself in the mood for. The Westside-Story song is an okay one of those songs. Shun is okay for a bore. The Marunoichi Sadistic here is awful. She tries to be both grandma and kid friendly and only accentuates the lameness of both.


Sunny and Sandoukushi are both superior.

We're like opposites on this. Shun is in my Top 10 Ringo songs of all time and Marunouchi Sadistic EXPO Ver. gets a lot of airplay from me. :lol:

I think the album still holds up pretty well but I don't get in the mood to hear individual songs from it often. It's a lot like KSK where I just wanna play the whole thing and go on that journey again. For a while I actually preferred Mittei Monogatari to Mayonaka wa Junketsu but I've calmed down since then and have seen the error of my ways.

For me Sunny is better than SG, and sandokushi is worse than both
Ryuukou gets better every year, maybe it's even in my list of 20 favorite Ringo songs, I don't know O.o
rodousha, mittei, tsugou ii karada, futaribocchi, irokoizata, and yokyou are not my favorites, but I kinda enjoy them now
zero chiten kara, mayakashi and togatta are still very nice :wub:
never understood all the love for shun, sounds like it would fit better in TJ's Adult IMO (and this is not a good thing in my book... and now that I think about it I like all the songs from Adult better than this one O.o)
and I always skip this version of marusadi, I don't feel anything when I hear it
but I have to say every version of marusadi after Ringo released this one sucks, if you compare them to the versions released before this one

Ryuukou is AWESOME. I don't know if Ringo's ever released a track that's so catchy. I can see why it's in your Top 20 for sure.

Identity
I remember the first time I heard it in a friend's house
I heard it only once and it stayed in my mind for a whole week, no internet back then
I never forgot the melody, and I only got it in a cd-mixtape one year after that
so I could finally listen to it for the second time

I had that same experience too! When I first listened to Kabukichou no Joou I had it stuck in my head for days afterwards. Man, I miss Ringo songs having awesome guitar riffs like that.

I've been listening to some of her demos again and it's amazing just how much of her early stuff was already baked into the mix before final recording. "A New Way To Fly" was pretty rough but songs like Identity and Kabukichou no Joou were basically good to go.

I wish I could be a fly on the wall during Sanmon Gossip recordings because it's impossible to know how much of Ringo is in all of those songs versus collaborations.