Jenny-fa

Well, it's back to music reviews — for the moment, anyway.

J-Pop wonder Hikaru Utada released her fifth Japanese studio album, entitled HEART STATION, earlier this year on March 19. Long before that time, I had officially shed all interest and ties to the few pop artists I had formerly enjoyed (finally realizing the stupidity and vapidity of the genre), so I did not exactly salivate at the news of Hikaru's release. Which is why I'm reviewing the thing now, roughly three months later, as opposed to being extremely slow on the uptake.

A telling tidbit, at any rate, since an admirable or merely respectable musical endeavor would not have prompted any sort of mention here.

Why do I dislike HEART STATION?

• Patchy vocals. In retrospect, Hikaru's previous album, ULTRA BLUE, may be the zenith of Hikaru's singing career. Why does Hikaru sound like she didn't adequately warm up her voice before recording HEART STATION? The waverings, the other unmelodic failings… the only truly competent pieces, vocalization-wise, were "ぼくはくま" and "虹色バス" ("Boku wa Kuma" and "Niji-iro Basu," respectively), which is vaguely disheartening considering "Boku wa Kuma" is written for little unscrupulous kiddies and "Niji-iro Basu" ("Rainbow-Colored Bus," that is) sounds like something belonging to the same family.
• Degeneration to "standard pop." The fatal, furious mistake. Let's see. Hikaru Utada is famous for… what? Her contributions to the Kingdom Hearts soundtrack ("光/Simple and Clean," "Passion/Sanctuary"), her R&B classics "Automatic" and "Can You Keep a Secret?"… "COLORS" for just being one of the most widely circulated Utada pieces out there… so, en resumen, what did we learn here? Hikaru may be a pop star, but her most acclaimed works featured acoustic guitars, R&B beats, or ethereal wave stylings, among others. None, thankfully, were prominently "pop-ish." HEART STATION upends that hard-won sensibility with the most insidious destroyer of aesthetics — the shallow, the intolerable, the resolutely unmemorable "manufactured pop sound."
• It's just not a good album. A seeming lifetime ago (but in reality a shorter duration of several years), I considered myself a Hikaru Utada fan. I liked listening to her stuff (but at the same time conceded that her voice wanted improvement). Now, I skip through the tracks of the abominable HEART STATION, wondering, where's the magic? Where's the profundity? Where's that soothing and angelic quality that I just can't seem to locate anymore?

In short, I gave HEART STATION a single, cursory, and very incomplete play-through, then deleted it from my library. My only regret is that I wasted so much time.

Heart Station — track listing

1. "Fight the Blues" - 4:10
2. "Heart Station" - 4:36
3. "Beautiful World" - 5:17
4. "Flavor of Life -Ballad Version-" - 5:25
5. "Stay Gold" - 5:14
6. "Kiss & Cry" - 5:06
7. "Gentle Beast Interlude" - 1:13
8. "Celebrate" - 4:26
9. "Prisoner of Love" - 4:46
10. "Teiku 5 (テイク 5, Take 5)" - 3:42 [except US and CA release]
11. "Boku wa Kuma (ぼくはくま, I'm a Bear)" - 2:23 [except US and CA release]
12. "Niji-iro Basu (虹色バス, Rainbow-Colored Bus)" - 5:50 [except US and CA release]
13. "Flavor of Life" [Bonus Track] - 4:46

Jenny-fa's verdict: 0 stars. For the reasons outlined above. It was a complete disappointment.