Originally Posted by shirasagi
"Tokyo" is a showtune as much as "Shun" and "Ima" were, only both of those were highly praised and this one was pretty much dismissed immediately, when in fact they're all companion songs.
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1)
Shun is a masterpiece, particularly her vocal performance - one of the few I believe she's never equalled live.
2)
Ima actually received a lot of criticism at the time, IIRC. Although I personally like it quite a bit.
3)
Tokyo is not a bad song...it's just not fresh. The culmination of her show tune phase was
Onna no Ko wa Dare demo. I feel like everything after that is kind of redundant.
Originally Posted by shirasagi
I feel like genuinely liking a new Shiina Ringo album is unacceptable in this fan community and there's never going to be a truly intriguing conversation, which actually could be had. If I went on with what I like about the album I would feel like a Holocaust denier at this point. thespidereggs mentioned the word "apologists" earlier and that's exactly right. It's crazy.
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Liking a new Shiina Ringo release is not, in and of itself, unacceptable in any way, at least in my book. But look, you are one of the few people I've encountered who has been a fan as long as I have. At her peak, she was the best musician in the world. I mean that with no irony, and I believe it to this day. And I can't believe that, with a 15-year history, you can't see that she's not what she used to be - or that what she was is still inside her, somewhere.
Originally Posted by shirasagi
But one thing I'd genuinely like to hear is what album you all would like to hear. Musically, conceptually, track by track. Because whatever she puts out is just not up to some standard everyone has in their heads, but I'll be damned if I ever heard a real argument about that. I'm interested in constructive criticism and I'm just seeing cheap shots instead. It's been sixteen years since KZK came out and we all had plenty of time to reconcile with the fact that it's not happening again. Kate Bush's The Dreaming and Hounds of Love were once in a lifetime thing too, and I don't see anyone dumping on her for never quite reaching the same level of genius again.
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Don't even tell me about Kate Bush or anyone else. KZK was life-changing. In my world, there has never been an equal, and there never will be. It was not only a great album, it elevated the concept of what music even was. Now I am willing to accept that a lot of that feeling is based on my personal experience, or maybe lack thereof, and that the experience is unique to that album and can never be duplicated, even by Ringo. But to go from *that*...to *this*....it makes me fucking cry, is what it does.
I am not musically educated, and I am sure I lack the ability to give specific, constructive criticism, especially on a track-by-track basis. But IMO there is only one musical instrument that *every* musician plays, and that is the mind and emotions of the listener. And I want to be mentally and emotionally *transported* by music. Sure, that is subjective. But that is also what unites fan communities - ultimately we love Ringo because of what we feel when we listen to her.
I don't know really how to describe it, but I'll try to do so by way of analogy. What I want from Ringo, and music in general, is like a road trip through the Southwest. The hills, the valleys, the plains - the rocks and the sands and the forests - twisting, turning, climbing toward that majestic vista, which, when finally revealed, demands contemplation before descending into that golden expanse. And musically, that translates to the melody/structure being the topography, and the singer's voice being the vehicle. When I hear the closing track of
Sandokushi, I get the buildup, but not the payoff. We climb that mountain only to find it is a desert plateau. When I hear
Kakeochimono, we see the geological beauty on display...followed abruptly by a city. When I hear an auto-tuned song, like
Nagaku Mijikai Matsuri, we are traversing that expanse with a Prius, instead of a Mustang. When I hear
Isogabamaware, we are taking the freeway through the most level route, and those mountains and vistas are off in the distance, while we follow a safe, ordinary path.