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[Suerte]

Exodus '04 is the best song on the album.

 

[kiryogi]

Finally got my handso n this against better judgement. And my thoughts? It's actually not as bad as "Easy Breezy" was. Exodus '04 is sweet, so is Kremlin Dusk. I guess I'm somewhat content.

 

[norinrad21]

Leave Utada alone you punks, she's trying to break through in the west..........



I'm your Japaneeeeezyyyyyyyyyyyyy

 

[XMonkey]

Finally got my handso n this against better judgement. And my thoughts? It's actually not as bad as "Easy Breezy" was. Exodus '04 is sweet, so is Kremlin Dusk. I guess I'm somewhat content.

IAWTP. Exodus '04 sounded awesome from the teaser they put out as did Kremlin Dusk and they sound just as good on the album, my two favorite songs on the album by far.

 

[Trevelyon]

I liked it more than I thought I would, though definitely far from Hikki's best stuff. A lot of the tracks felt really lacking lyrically & her vocals seemed rather weak over her previous stuff.

But yeh, Exodus '04, Kremlin Dusk, Animato & Let Me Give You My Love, are probably the standouts of the album.

 

[mightynine]

After listening to the CD a few more times, I've come to the conclusion that this album was simply overproduced.

I think the reason many have listed Exodus '04 as their favorite(it's mine too) is because there's not much going on in terms of vocal effects and what not. Just a nice beat with a slight touch of a Eastern sound, and letting Utada rip it with her amazing voice. I believe Timbaland produced that track, so that might explain it's high quality.

But other songs just add too much noise, for lack of a better term. (The Workout comes to mind.) At some points, I feel like they're trying to make her sound almost like a poppier version of Bjork, and it doesn't come off too well.

For example, the last track starts out just fine with a little acoustic guitar, but then has to go all electronica by the middle, when just the guitar and her voice could of carried that track alone.

Hopefully on the next album, they'll show a little restraint and let her voice carry the album, not lots of background noise.

 

[Cool]

I saw this CD at Circuit City (Utada's) and I was like oh, wow, she put out an American album. I thought it was interesting, never has really a Japanese pop singer went big in the United States really, I think it'd be cool if the album could take off. THIS IS JUST MY OPINION.

 

[SolidSnakex]

After listening to the CD a few more times, I've come to the conclusion that this album was simply overproduced.

I think the reason many have listed Exodus '04 as their favorite(it's mine too) is because there's not much going on in terms of vocal effects and what not. Just a nice beat with a slight touch of a Eastern sound, and letting Utada rip it with her amazing voice. I believe Timbaland produced that track, so that might explain it's high quality.

But other songs just add too much noise, for lack of a better term. (The Workout comes to mind.) At some points, I feel like they're trying to make her sound almost like a poppier version of Bjork, and it doesn't come off too well.

For example, the last track starts out just fine with a little acoustic guitar, but then has to go all electronica by the middle, when just the guitar and her voice could of carried that track alone.

Hopefully on the next album, they'll show a little restraint and let her voice carry the album, not lots of background noise.

I doubt it'll change. She produces the majority of the songs on her albums and she likes doing all that crazy stuff in her songs. Kremlin Dusk is a great example of it since it goes from from some mellow track that sounds like it could be in an Enya song and to a full out loud rockish type song. She rarely ever does a song that doesn't have alot of stuff going on it. Dareka (her previous Japanese single for CASSHERN) is one of the few that's like that.

She'll probably be releasing a Japanese album next since its been over 2 years since Deep River.

 

[w0o]

i'm a fan of her japanese stuff but this new english album is horrible.
easy breezy makes me cringe.

 

[mightynine]

I doubt it'll change. She produces the majority of the songs on her albums and she likes doing all that crazy stuff in her songs. Kremlin Dusk is a great example of it since it goes from from some mellow track that sounds like it could be in an Enya song and to a full out loud rockish type song. She rarely ever does a song that doesn't have alot of stuff going on it. Dareka (her previous Japanese single for CASSHERN) is one of the few that's like that.

She'll probably be releasing a Japanese album next since its been over 2 years since Deep River.

Hmph, that'll teach me to read the liner notes before I go off on the production of the album.

So does that mean she's trying to hard to make a J-Pop album with English lyrics? Or that she had a rough time merging a Japanese/English sound?

Or maybe I just think she sounds better with less production.

Hell, I dunno. It's not like I paid for the CD, so I really can't complain.

 

[SolidSnakex]

Hmph, that'll teach me to read the liner notes before I go off on the production of the album.

So does that mean she's trying to hard to make a J-Pop album with English lyrics? Or that she had a rough time merging a Japanese/English sound?

Or maybe I just think she sounds better with less production.

Hell, I dunno. It's not like I paid for the CD, so I really can't complain.

I think she's doing the opposite, trying to make an album that sounds completely different from her Japanese stuff. It's much more similar to her very first English album that she did when she was 12 (Precious). In the sense that its very R&B oriented. It'd probably sounded better if she'd used that style she uses with her Japanese albums since she wouldn't be stressing to make it different. Most people haven't heard her Japanese stuff so it'd be new to them anyway.

 

[Suerte]

I actually quite like most of the backing tracks, it's just.... the lyrics are awful.