Onitsuka Chihiro – DOROTHY
| 鬼束ちひろ – DOROTHY October 28, 2009 |
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1. A WHITE WHALE IN MY QUIET DREAM 2. Kagerou (陽炎) 3. X 4. Storyteller (ストーリーテラー) 5. STEAL THIS HEART 6. I Pass By 7. Kaerimichi wo Nakushite (帰り路をなくして) 8. Losing a distance 9. Last Melody (ラストメロディー) 10. Hotaru (蛍) 11. VENUS |
After the disaster that was LAS VEGAS, I was praying and hoping that I would actually like her next album — hoping that LAS VEGAS was just Onitsuka recovering from her surgery and just a slight misstep from her older musical works. Let’s face it: I love Onitsuka to bits, but I was so disappointed with her last album. The singles worried me a bit since most of them didn’t really stand out to me (partially because I lost interest after listening to her last album) and quite frankly, the pig on the cover is horrifying. I was concerned. That was, until I actually started listening to the album.
The introduction, A WHITE WHALE IN MY QUIET DREAM reminds me so much of Native American music. It’s simply Onitsuka’s voice over some hand-hit drums. It’s haunting from the beginning and the lyrics of the song are actually quite poetic and beautiful. I was worried that Onitsuka lost her touch from musicality in the last album, but it’s entirely back on this track. She works with the melody with her voice really well with the softer parts of the song and the crescendos into some of the slightly louder parts. The last note of the introduction is done really well with the plosive (the [t]) being pronounced at the very end of the long note.
陽炎 seriously revives my faith that Onitsuka’s voice is recovering slowly and surely. It’s a beautiful, dreamy ballad. The song has a slight little echo put on both Onitsuka’s voice and the accompaniment and feels quite a bit like a journey on calm waters. The melody is absolutely gorgeous and the accompaniment adds a nice ethereal quality to the song. Onitsuka’s singing is controlled and well-supported and I love slight wave-like push she makes with the nuances of the dynamics and articulation of her presentation. She sings in a legato manner, but the song still pushes forward through emphasis.
I have a bit of a love-hate for X, I’ll admit. I love the music and composition; I’m not too fond of Onitsuka’s singing in the track. To be blunt: Onitsuka’s singing here is weak and her pitch goes all over the place, especially when she tries to sing stronger in the chorus and you can hear her voice start to waver on the higher, forte notes. Her singing is nowhere where it should be in terms of power on this track and she’s mostly buried by the rest of the accompaniment of the song. What Onitsuka lacks in vocal power here, she makes it up barely by her compositions skills on this track. Seriously, the song itself is fantastic. I love the haunting piano at the beginning and how she builds up to the chorus. When the electric guitars come in, the melody and the accompaniment takes a bit to adjust to each other (the rhythms aren’t quite entirely together), but it fixes itself quickly. The strings add a stronger dramatic feel to the song, especially when it first comes in with the staccato notes when it comes in and the flurry of notes during the chorus. The horrifying singing in the bridge does not help the song at all. If I wanted to listen to dying, airy vocals, I would have gone elsewhere.
ストーリーテラー (Storyteller) is one of my personal favourite new tracks on this album. It drops into the folk realm and Onitsuka does it perfectly. It’s such a great difference between this and how she sang in X. She does this track with confidence and a lot more support for her voice. She has quite a bit of attitude and style with how she starts off the song where she kind of slurs most of her phrasing. The acoustic guitar is calming but again adds quite a bit of style into the track, especially in its solo lines after the chorus. The “Hey” in the chorus is a little thin but otherwise, I enjoy this track quite a bit.
I always get a good laugh out of the STEAL THIS HEART PV every time I listen and watch it. I’m a bit of a fan of retro rock (I reference my liking of “Superfly” as proof here), but STEAL THIS HEART doesn’t quite do it for me, mostly because the vocal filter is really annoying and really quite alienating. Otherwise, the song is actually fun and I don’t really see much problem about it aside from whatever the hell they did to Onitsuka’s voice — she sounds like she’s swimming in water, seriously. On a side note beyond the filter, Onitsuka’s singing is enthusiastic and well-supported and the song itself is fine. Not my favourite, but I would like to see Onitsuka try something like this again, without the stupid filter.
I adore this new version of I Pass By, despite how terrible the Darksmoke Version was. It sounds so much better upbeat and full of fun, upbeat guitars supporting Onitsuka’s singing. Her performance is really quite good, especially with how she accents every note effectively and gives a rather lively performance of this song. I’m so glad the original version of this song is so much better — it adds an entire personality to the track, which was lacking in the initial version she released on her single. It’s fun, it’s addictive and Onitsuka pulls it off entirely. This definitely competes for my favourite new track off the album.
The instrumentation at the beginning of 帰り路をなくして is possibly her best introduction yet. It begins with a lower strings playing long notes with a higher string playing descending and ascending notes at the beginning. Both of these together create a fantastic, dreamy quality to the track. Onitsuka’s entrance into the track is delicate and sombre to match the mood of the track and it’s done perfectly. Again, her voice has the echo filter to it, and it’s rather fitting for this track. Some of the phrasing on the track could be a bit more interesting, especially around halfway where she starts to sing similar notes for the melodic line, it doesn’t really sound like she’s going anywhere with them dynamically before the chorus. It just sounds like she’s sitting there, waiting for the chorus to kick in before not doing anything with the chorus melody. Too bad she dabbles in and out of mechanical phrasing because some of the delivery on the verses is really excellent. The key change does add a nice dimension to the track by making it more dramatic, although Onitsuka starts to strain herself a tiny bit with the notes in that last bit. However, Onitsuka is definitely improving from the singing from her last album at the very least.
At first I couldn’t remember what Losing a distance sounded like from looking at the title, then I listened to it and remembered this track as that soft ballad with the interesting key changes in the progression of the piano chords at certain parts of the song. Although it’s a delicate little ballad, it has its interesting compositional moments from the little bar or two of a different key. This is actually done really well as it blends into the rest of the song perfectly, especially since those piano chords, without the key change occur during the song quite a bit. This little compositional quirk is what brings this simple song from sounding too simple, and I like it. The song is rather light otherwise, and I don’t even really remember the melody of this song that well but it’s a nice, soothing track.
Amusingly, ラストメロディー is actually my favourite single track prior to this album (along with 陽炎). We’re back into the ambient sound and most of my love for this song is from the piano lines that open this track. It’s similar to 陽炎 but much brighter and upbeat in tone. This is a total ambient song in the accompaniment, and it all adds a rather “magical” sound to the accompaniment while Onitsuka sings a rather assertive-sounding melody. This is a much more melody-driven song and Onitsuka presents it perfectly with a bit of a hurt in the softer sections of the song and a stronger delivery in the chorus. I personally really like the little a capella part near the end of the track.
I always forget about 蛍. I in fact always forgot she released it, probably because it was the single that came right after LAS VEGAS (AKA when I really didn’t care to listen to her as much). This is probably the closest song to her older ballad style. It has the ongoing piano chord, and surprisingly, Onitsuka doesn’t sound too bad on it. It’s much more simplistic in accompaniment with the constant piano chord, and some soft string and acoustic guitar lines accompanying her. Onitsuka’s voice sings beautifully throughout the track and with plenty of assertiveness in the track. The melody is delivered very well, even considering that this was released just after LAS VEGAS. It’s simple and it’s done well.
The final track is also the longest track on the album. VENUS is a ballad which opens with gorgeous harp and piano lines over some more strings playing long notes in the background. It’s a bit noisy in comparison to when Onitsuka comes in, but that’s a small thing. I even hear a little bit of traditional instruments in the background of the track. The track isn’t quite as interesting as I hoped it would be though. Onitsuka’s performance is a little bland. The arrangement is definitely stunning though and really quite well put together as it has so many elements that just come together really well. The melody is nice, but again, I’m not too convinced with Onitsuka’s performance here. It’s like she crawled back into LAS VEGAS-land and decided not to emote again. I guess it’s a good thing that the arrangement for this track is ridiculously stunning because it definitely gives me something else to focus on. You gotta admit that the arrangement is really, really excellent.
Onitsuka Chihiro’s latest effort, DOROTHY is definitely an improvement over LAS VEGAS. Onitsuka’s singing is definitely a lot better on this album and she’s regaining her ability to emote, although some of the track still go back into some bad habits from her last album. Is she back vocally? Not quite, but she’s definitely getting there. Even if I really don’t expect her to regain her old vocal prowess entirely, it’s nice to actually hear improvement from her. One thing that her break from Toshiba-Emi did to her music is that it’s actually letting experiment a bit more with different styles instead of being forced to sit comfortably in ballads. Quite frankly, it’s a good thing because her compositional skills definitely show that she’s capable; I actually like the composition of all of these tracks. While I don’t enjoy her vocal performance all the time on the album, I do like all the songs on this album.
Favourites:
ストーリーテラー
Onitsuka Chihiro | Megumi | December 3, 2009
I liked this album, although her voice still isn’t as good as it used to be. She’ll get there one day!
I loved everything about this album. IDGAF what anyone says. I LOVE A WHITE WHALE IN MY QUIET DREAM, Kagerou, X, Storyteller and Last Melody <3