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Old 2007.09.24, 12:01 PM   #25
madpawn
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What I like about the album are the shifts--not just the shifts in mood/genre between the songs, but within the songs. Uki's songs, in any case, veer off into some bizarre and mostly welcome directions with some regularity, and that regularity prevents it from feeling chaotic. Right?

In any case, this feature of the record reminds me of "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand—that song is basically four or five perfectly good choruses of pop songs stitched together. Now, I don't like that song, but it works here--I don't have the same complaint that there are no choruses, but rather I see it that almost everything is a chorus. Maybe I'm just an optimist.

The shifts in Ringo's vocal style are what alarm me the most. I find sometimes the song is sometimes brought down a bit by her singing. What I love about her vocals are when they get ugly. That's what keeps me coming back. I love her raggedness in HF's Gamble, her growls in OSCA, anytime she gets shrill and weasely—it's delightful. Which is why I think Killer Tune is certainly her best vocal performance on the album. You know how a sadistic Ike Turner wrote songs for Tina that were consistently just above her comfortable vocal range? It's kind of like that. Ringo is straining to get those notes, squealing almost, and it's just painful enough to make what would just be a catchy, bit-too-pretty ballad-in-the-rain into something interesting—desperate, almost, and filled with tangible, piercing emotion. The uglier the better.

Which is why I dislike her performances on Mirrorball (rote and over-edited), Shiseikatsu (smoooth until the end when it's drowned in schmaltz anyway), Fukushu (I would actually prefer this song with another singer... never felt that way about SR/TJ before, but there you go). Tsukigime Hime--when it gets interesting, her voice is mixed DOWN and processed so you can't really hear her or ascertain her vocal timbre. WTF?

Listening to it again, her performance on Sake to Geto is brilliant. The shift to an almost dour Christmas mass song to a gothic rock-opera voice is done really, really, well. KU(roneko)DOS.

SSAW is something special because it's the first time I've really heard her effectively blend her voice into someone else's. It's not like in Kono Yo No Kagiri where Junpei's voice either drowns her out or doesn't exactly jive. Yes, she smooths her voice out in this song, but the two voices together are really nice and don't sound as if they would be better on their own, a common complaint I have with her duets.

More thoughts later, but as a singer I had to get this stuff out of the way first.
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