Originally Posted by Tokyo Jihad
What Baruga said.
I wanted to comment on Scribble R's comment: why I liked Sunny, but not Sampukan.
Sampukan was a part of Shiina's "paint by numbers" era. I felt this era was particularly uninspired and maybe in attempt to jump start the creative process, she seemed to pick a style of song. But it never felt like she ever made these songs "hers." They were just kind of generic or corny.
Sunny felt like Shiina was in the drivers seat. Yeah, half the album was old stuff and some of this older material was bland, but the more recent, original work was more interesting - more exciting. More "Shiina Ringo" than most of what we got post-"Ringo no Uta." She felt in command. She wasn't letting some style or collaborator drive.
Sunny has its sore spots. Its not as good as Reimports was. The mastering is extreme, but its no more offensive or incongruous to the material than Reimports (or Kyouiku.)
Sampukan felt labored. Sunny felt invested. That's just my interpretation of what I hear though.
|
I agree with Baruga's post too. She's used autotune in the past, and it's been clearly for effect. Autotune is used to cover up imperfect vocals, but if there's an artist who sings in
spite of imperfect vocals, it's Shiina Ringo (and Ukigumo :p). So when she uses it, it's for effect. I do feel that some of you guys are too locked into the autotune is automatically bad mentality to actually see what it's doing here.
3min when it came out, was fresh. I actually miss that era. At first, it seemed that SR was doing a 'groovy by numbers' song, but it's much more than that. I've posted why before.
I get that 3min is more immediately familiar than some of the new Sunny tracks, and I agree with your Sunny review in that you couldn't instantly tag some of the tracks as being x or y. Especially 'Ocean of Full of Trees' even if Himitsu was the more convincing song.
I don't think this is really worse than anything from Daihakken, but on its own, it doesn't surprise as much as you'd want from post-Jihen work (in the way that even Irohanihoeto, Reimport and Sunny) does. That slight electro-swingish distortion though, is attractive and could hint towards a surprising album, but we know that she will probably package it with those earlier 'rock' singles.