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Tracklist |
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01 - DROPLETS
02 - QUESTIONS
03 - RUSH
04 - DREAMSCAPE
05 - JUST LIKE THAT
06 - JOURNEY
07 - DAWN (REMIX) |
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Review |
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Less than half a year after being doused with bucketfuls of Perfume by producer Nakata Yasutaka on her last album BEAUTIFUL, MEG returns with a new mini-album, JOURNEY. Thanks to the guiding hand of New York's Shanghai Restoration Project taking over behind the boards, MEG has ditched the dense robo-disco of BEAUTIFUL for a sparser, percussion-heavy trip-hop style. The switch has successfully taken MEG out from under the shadow of that other group Nakata's been producing, but that alone may not be enough to validate JOURNEY.
It could be that the songs on JOURNEY all fill a cheesy archetype, like the back-alley spy sleaze of "Questions" and "Just Like That", or the uplifting new-age of "Rush" and "Journey." It could be that MEG is not a very good singer, and that she falls short of defining any song (aside from "Questions") with her effect-laden voice in the same way that other singers have managed to do. Whatever it is, it's hard to actually imagine anyone wanting to listen to this record. The melodies are quite catchy, I'll grant her that, but the strange fusion of Radio Disney and your mom's adult-contemporary favorites found in MEG's tunes is absolutely baffling. One minute she'll be giving shout-outs to a bunch of Japanese cities like a cheerleader ("Rush"), only to fall asleep minutes later and dream about the clouds gathering before a cleansing winter rainfall ("Droplets"). A select few of The Shanghai Restoration Project's beats on JOURNEY manage to combine some disparate elements together into somewhat of an enjoyable soundscape, but they'd really need a stronger voice than MEG's to make them shine. Is Bjork looking for a producer?
MEG's experiment towards a new direction is honorable enough, but JOURNEY is too challenging of a record without any real reward. It hit number one on the Japanese iTunes charts, but I can't imagine JOURNEY getting as many spins over the long term as the shamelessly pop concoctions that MEG and Nakata once cooked up in the past. |
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