More XD. I haven’t been listening to many new albums other than the stuff I’ve been reviewing for LW, though.
Stephanie – Colors of my Voice (A-)
Stephanie’s sophmore effort at an album ends up being just as good as her previous effort, if not better. On the plus side, if people did not enjoy the cheesiness of her first album like I did (guilty!), they will appreciate this album a lot more. The songs on this album are strong from beginning to end, and I quite enjoyed listened to it when I browsed through it. A few points of critique about this album: none of the ballads are quite as strong as the ones on the past album. I don’t mean her whistle notes, because I’m kind of indifferent to them, but generally, the ballads just don’t stand out that much. Not that they did on the past album, but they seemed more enjoyable. In addition, Stephanie’s vocal performance is a bit sloppier on this album. I’m found that far too many times, her voice lacked the control and tone of the previous album. It’s still a good album, though, and worth listening to. Her pitch is a bit questionable at time, surprisingly and many of the album tracks are much better than the singles that came before. Forever is a catchy dance tune, which includes her americanizing the pronunciation of “Aishiteru” (and beings a lot of hilarity in addition to the “huur huur huurr”-ing).
Lil’B – Ima, Kimi he… (C-)
I’m seriously a bit horrified by this effort by these two R&B-pop-rap girls. These girls are probably most known for their song オレンジ from Bleach (which I didn’t really know about until searching up a bit on these girls). In any case, I tried this album on a whim because the album was girly, someone said they had nice voices, and last.fm wouldn’t stop bugging me about them on my recommendations. So I dove into the album and was horrified by these girls’ singing. Seriously, from the first track, all you heard is really out of tune singing. The girls occasionally have their good points here and there as they actually do have nice voices at times, just that they technique is almost non-existent at times. I spent most of the album cringing through the singing. On the bright side, most of the songs on the album are actually quite memorable if you ignore the really bad singing. There are a lot of catchy hooks and memorable melodies. Most notably, オレンジ has a lovely laid-back reggae feel. 15 also stood out to me, despite the bad singing. Hopefully these girls grow into stronger singers, because their music seems enjoyable.
