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Soundtracks & JMusic
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Written by maehara
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Thursday, 20 January 2005 00:36 |
 What is it about second albums? I've often heard about
the "Second Album Curse", where a group or artist who has had a hugely
successful first album, has crashed ignominiously with their
second. Now, along comes the second mainstream album from angela, who originally made a splash in anime-land with their songs from Stellvia, and their extremely good first album, Sora no Koe. Can they avoid the Second Album Curse?
Song titles in brackets are bablefish'd
translations.
CORE
introduction [I/O]
Short acoustic track that could really do with being longer.
Gives you a good idea of what atsuko
sounds like when she's not belting the lyrics out, which is something
you don't get to hear often...
謝罪状況 (apology
circumstance)
Normal service is resumed, with this track that sounds a lot like Kirei no Yozora
from their previous album. Although the backing track is
happily
less of a cacophony, it's still not the greatest example of an
angela song. It does grow on you
after a while, though.
merry-go-round,
solitude,
on my way
~reborn~
Three catchy little tunes, here, with solitude in
particular being the sort of tune that gets stuck in your
head. on my way
is catchy without having a real hook to it (I don't mean that in a bad
way, either - there's just that 'something' missing from the
tune).
笑い者の Fairy tale
(Laughing person's fairy tale), feel, like a
breeze
The slower tracks. Fairy tale is definitely in the
'play it loud' category, while feel,
like a breeze is more the 'chill-out background
music' style, and probably has the better replay value of the
two.
maybe...maybe...
A slightly strange tune that switches back and forth between dark &
foreboding and more upbeat sections as it goes along - it works
surprisingly well, though, and is one of my favourite tracks on the
album. Quite powerful, in its own way.
cheers!
Party time - or at least that's what it sounds like when you listen to
the background of this track. While it tries to get something
of a
South American / festival feel going, it didn't really work too well for
me, and is one of the weaker tracks on the disc.
小さな歴史の詩 (Poem of
small history)
Perhaps the nearest in tone to what I've come to expect from an 'anime'
tune, even though it's not actually from any show, this track manages
to be quite upbeat and melancholy in tone, at the same time - just
something with the way the track is scored that works on both levels,
and makes this another really good track. While it's not
something you'll be humming for hours after you've heard it, it's
definitely one of the highlights.
Shangri-La,
Separation [Pf]
You'll probably recognise these as the OP/ED themes for
Sokyuu no Fafner,
although Separation is in its acoustic form
here. These songs together were the best thing about
Fafner, with
Shangri-la being one of the best recent theme
songs, period. The original version of
Separation
was also very good, but sadly the version here really doesn't work too
well, having lost a lot of what made the song so powerful.
My reaction after my first listen to I/O was that it wasn't a bad
album, but it also wasn't nearly as good as
angela's first album,
Sora no
Koe.
Now that I've listened to it a few more times, I can safely say it's
one of those albums that really does grow on you if you give it the
chance. While there aren't any outright 5-star original songs
here, most of the tracks have their own style & appeal that will
have you replaying the album again for quite a while to come.
Taken as a whole, I/O is definitely worth getting hold of - just temper your expectations first. angela seem to have avoided the worst of the Second Album Curse - here's hoping there's more good music to come from them.
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