Beyond the Sea ~ The Style. Edition

The cover of the CD only edition

ANSWER is Angela Aki’s 3rd album and it was released on February 25, 2009. The album reached #1 on the Oricon Weekly Charts and sold 159,616 copies.

♦ ♦ ♦

Starting things off is the album’s only single, Tegami ~Haikei Juugo no Kimi e~. The song makes a for a good opening track despite its slow first half and I do love the message and back story behind the lyrics too. It’s not as strong as previous album openers like Kiss Me Good-Bye and Sakurairo but it gets the job done.

I really do enjoy Angela Aki’s cover songs but I wasn’t impressed with her version of Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door at all. I have no problem with the music but the song just doesn’t work that well with Japanese lyrics. Most of the time Aki’s vocals sound disconnected from the main melody and it’s pretty noticeable. The bridge sequence is very nice though.

The next track is my favorite song off the album! Seriously guys, I am in love with ANSWER. It’s a fast paced song with a great mix of piano and electric guitar that is bound to make you feel good. The chorus is definitely a highlight thanks to the catchy lyrics and positive tone of Aki’s vocals. Her last two album titled tracks were awesome and this one is no exception.

A slower song follows and it’s Somebody Stop Me. This song is pretty interesting because of its odd structure but I was liking Aki’s soulful vocals. While the first half of the song is pretty normal, the second half stands out when she begins to sing the “somebody stop me” line and holds the note in “stop” for a good 10 seconds. I thought the addition of a lone xylophone near the end was cool too.

Now we have Dahlia, an absolutely gorgeous song with great strings and amazing adlibbing sequences. This song clocks in at 7:40 in length but the time just seems to fly by when I listen to it. The music has a nice buildup into the chorus and the strings get more involved when the chorus arrives too. Aki sounds radiant as well, especially near the end and during the adlibbing parts that I mentioned earlier. I love it when she goes “la la dahlia“!

The always pleasant Final Destination is next and it was originally a B-side on the Tegami ~Haikei Juugo no Kimi e~ single. I’m glad this song is on the album since it evens out the slower piano dominated tracks that come later. Like most of the tracks on her previous album TODAY, this song has more of a band arrangement with its prominent percussion section.

I don’t really remember the next two tracks. Our Story is performed solely with the piano and the arrangement is pretty impressive but that’s it. The whole thing ends up sounding monotone and not interesting at all. Not to mention that it gets repetitive pretty fast too.

I can say the same thing about Tasogare as well. This song is even more boring and drab than Our Story because it just seems to drag and bury itself into a downward spiral. There’s no direction in the music and I feel like I’m listening the same melody over and over. Where exactly is this song going? NOWHERE.

Hmmm…what’s We’re All Alone doing on this album? This is a new version of the Boz Scaggs cover that originally appeared on Aki’s Indies mini-album ONE, but still…why is it here? Anyway, just like her first version of the song, it’s performed with just the piano so there’s nothing new music-wise. However, she did record it with new vocals.

Finally, a GOOD song! Reflection is one of Aki’s most unique songs to date and it’s very refreshing to the ears. The piano chords are rhythmic and create a distinct reggae sound along with upbeat percussion, which I thought was really cool. Aki sounded like she was having fun while recording the song too since she displays carefree and bouncy vocals.

OMG…Requiem. What is there to say? IT’S FUCKING EPIC, THAT’S WHAT. Being over a whopping 10 minutes in length, the song is dedicated to her deceased grandfather and probably the most ambitious piece of music that Aki has ever crafted. How epic is it? So epic that it’s divided into 4 “movements” so it’s like a modern day Christian requiem (a musical composition that is used to mourn the dead). I’ll try to cover the 4 movements without too much detail. The first movement starts off slow but it gets dramatic around 3 minutes in when the music speeds up and becomes much more foreboding. This marks the beginning of the second movement. Upbeat percussion and strange woodwinds are rampant in the faster parts of the movement but disappear in favor of strings during the slower parts. You get about 4 minutes of that before the epic ikite iru toki ni, ieba yokatta sequence appears and the music just seems to escalate which in turn concludes the second movement. That’s when marching band drums open the short, but amazing third movement. Opera choir vocals appear and mostly adlib but the third movement ends with them chanting aeternam habeas requiem (Latin for “may you have eternal rest”). The fourth and final movement is the same as the first and ends the song in a slow, but extremely effective fashion. Yeah, I think the song is absolutely mesmerizing, but I listen to it in moderation since it’s so damn long. lol

After all that seriousness, it’s time to kick back and relax with Black Glasses. Aki worked with Ben Folds for this charming and uptempo number. The lyrics are in English and I think they’re pretty clever, especially when the chorus comes around. In the end, it’s a fun song with a great sound that can be best described as “short but sweet”.

On Aki’s last 2 albums, the final track was a ballad with English lyrics but it looks like she has broken that trend with Fighter. Closing the album with an inspirational track like this one works equally as well so I didn’t have a problem with it. I liked the song’s main message about how everyone has a fighter within them too. I felt the music was a little lacking though and the arrangement comes off as a tad bit underwhelming.

I hope nobody gets mad at me for saying this but even though I thought ANSWER was a good album, Home and TODAY were much better. Sure, you could say that ANSWER is her most personal album, but so what? That doesn’t detract the fact that nearly half of the album is pretty underwhelming. There ARE some really amazing tracks like ANSWER, Dahlia, Reflection, and Requiem but on the other end there were dull ones as well. I will hand it to her that the album contains some pretty daring material, but you have to go through a good amount of drab to get to it. Still, if you’re an Angela Aki fan, you’ll enjoy the album. As for me, I liked it to a certain degree, but just not as much as her previous efforts.

Overall Rating

4 stars

Tracklisting

1. Tegami ~Haikei Juugo no Kimi e~ (手紙 ～拝啓 十五の君へ～)
2. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
3. ANSWER
4. Somebody Stop Me
5. Dahlia (ダリア)
6. Final Destination
7. Our Story
8. Tasogare (黄昏)
9. We’re All Alone
10. Reflection (リフレクション)
11. Requiem (レクイエム)
12. Black Glasses
13. Fighter (ファイター)

Note: My favorite tracks are highlighted in blue!