REVIEW: MORNING MUSUME “10 My Me”
10 My Me
(Zetima)
Available on CD. CD/DVD and from iTunes and JapanFiles.com
Rating:
If there’s one thing for sure about Morning Musume, it’s that they’re markedly consistent – and then some. Equally at home dishing out solid studio albums as well as top-5 singles, it’s the one constant in the career of a band whose lineup used to change from one album to the next. I know that when I get a new Morning Musume album out of my PO Box and put it in my CD player and iPod that I’m going to get a good album. Eleven studio albums (yes, I count the unnumbered Cover You) in, I wasn’t expecting to get surprised, but I did – not only did they live up to their artistic reputation, but with 10 My Me Morning Musume put their balls (OK, ovaries) on the line.
An unexpected sample – an English-speaking voice with a European accent saying “Electro-convulsive therapy, part one” – splices into the final seconds of an orchestra playing the final bar of a piece. A sudden shift of gears, and driving analog synths kick off “Moonlight Night ~Tsukiyo no Ban Dayo~” before the group makes with mock-operatic vocalizing and then back into their more recent group harmonizing. Musically, the song goes all over the place in an indescribable manner but makes perfect sense from section to section and as a whole. I want to keep scrolling the music file in reverse on my iPod to try to identify the different elements, but I can’t because the song compels me to listen to it as a whole.
Their final single with Koharu Kusumi, “Kimagure Princess”, follows – and the high-register vocals that the group starts off with serve as a delayed reminder that it’s not going to be business as usual all the time this particular go-round with Morning Musume, emphasizing the experimental tone that permeates 10 My Me’s core.
“Genki Pika Pika!” finds the group mining 80’s pop influences again, this time around delivering a vibe reminiscent of Sheila E’s “The Glamorous Life” by way of The Jets’ “Crush On You” – a perfect musical arrangement to accompany some beautifully breezy vocals from the group.
“Namidacchi” starts with some George Winston-esque piano and gentle bass, acoustic guitar and percussion before another sudden musical shift, whipping out punk guitar powerchords and some drum fills worthy of Flipper’s Steve DePace in the choruses. A little DJ scratching (something used to sublime percussive effect in their classic ballad “I Wish” way back when) slips in during the second verse as well. The song’s bridge goes further forward and backward (backward in a good way, of course), as the members trade off some rapped couplets a-la “Do it! Now” over the punky guitars.
After the band’s brilliant 2010 kickoff single “Onna ga Medatta Naze Ikenai” – which proves that you can play powerchords on acoustic guitars and have just as much of an impact on an uptempo rock song, “Ookii Hitomi” – the first of only three splinter-group efforts on this album, here highlighting 6th gen members Reina Tanaka, Sayuri Michishige and Eri Kamei – delivers a great match of European house rhythms and chugging electric guitars. A little AutoTune vocoder effect pops up in the verses, but, like some more tasteful, creative and honest uses of the effect (reference points again: Cher’s “Believe”, Bob Mould’s “Shine Your Light Love Hope”, and more recently Somaya Reece’s “Tramp” – the first truly good pop single I’ve heard from an American artist in close to a decade, by the way), it’s done to serve the song; In other words, it’s there for decoration, not for a burial. (Late bloomer Sayumi already proved she could sing on Platinum 9 DISC’s “It’s You” and Cover You’s “Ringo Satsujinjiken” – she has nothing else to prove to anybody but herself.)
The band’s leaders, Ai Takahashi and Risa Niigaki, take the spotlight on the second splinter track, “Anohi Ni Modoritai”, over a musical style that Morning Musume has been pretty much owning of late: urban contemporary R&B in the style of TLC, Mary J. Blige and early Destiny’s Child. “No Scrubs”-style acoustic guitars, G-Funk synth bass and a string quartet provide the musical setting for Takitty’s and Gaki’s mutli-layered harmonies.
The band’s 40th single, “Nanchatte Renai” (with the much-missed Koharu delivering the most mature vocals she ever did… to date) provides the album’s next recap moment, setting up the listener unawares for the next track. “Osaka Umainen” – the last of the splinter tracks, featuring 8th-gen members Aika Mitsui, Li Chun and Qian Lin – starts with a simulated 78RPM big band “sample” before some 8-bit synth blips kick off the song proper and compete with 60’s soul horns and plinking early rock’n’roll piano. The song itself comes off like a cousin of earlier MoMusu album tracks that provided what some bloggers referred to as some of Koharu’s more “cracktastic” moments like Platinum 9’s “Guru Guru JUMP” and Cover You’s “Ping-ping Pan Taisou”. This time around, without Koharu being around to throw into the mix, the song actually comes off more mature, especially when LinLin gets some solo lines.
“Loving You Forever” is a great power ballad in the “I Wish” tradition. Classic MoMusu harmonies and Beatlesque strings are propelled by an arrangement that recalls The Raspberries’ “Overnight Sensation”. The next time some armchair critics complain that Morning Musume hasn’t been the same since the departures of longtime members like Kaori Iida and Natsumi Abe, play them this cut.
The album closes with a great one-two punch: The band’s chart-topping Summer 2009 single “Shouganai Yumeoibito” followed by a version of Platinum 9’s “Ame no Furanai Hoshi de wa Aisenai Darou?” sung in Chinese (Longtime fans will recall that the closing of the original version has JunJun and LinLin singing in their native tongue.) The recording is not a complete port of the original recording’s backing track; instead a slightly extended intro of nylon-string acoustic guitar and strings leads into the group accompanied only by piano and strings at first, before a variant on the original arrangement takes over. Hearing the entire band sing in Chinese seems to add a noticeable degree of delicacy and fragility to their vocals. “Shouganai Yumeoibito” itself would have been the perfect closing track to the album; the addition of this “alternate version” of the song makes for a great encore.
I concluded my review of Platinum 9 DISC last year with the statement, “The streak of solid Morning Musume albums continues.” That statement, while it holds true for 10 My Me, isn’t enough. More to the point, 10 My Me is Morning Musume’s equivalent of Pet Sounds or Double Nickels on the Dime – an instant classic album to many, and something that will grow in stature as the years go by to many others.
