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I can't really decide what I feel about this album I will just talk about what I like and what I didn't like.
LIKED:
- The awesome pop-rock songs that mysteriously appeared out of nowhere (count down, Last Links) - she can sound So Good with a stripped down guitar + bass + drums arrangement and a great hook (see Memorial address), I don't know why she hasn't been doing it more often! This is such a refreshing change from her usual bombastic tunes
- The campy/quirky i.e. Lady Dynamite and Sexy Little Things; both are great, great songs. Endearing and musically interesting enough to not bore me. I liked them a lot.
- meaning of Love - a ballad with a half decent hook, fancy that! Best ballad since Days, which still isn't saying much but...yea I liked it.
DISLIKED:
- Uh, circus theme? Okay to clarify, I didn't really have a problem with the circus theme as I do with the fact that it seemed really RANDOM and incongruous, considering the music. What on EARTH do count down and Last Links or ANY of the ballads have to do with a circus?
- The interlude/intro pieces; they seemed to be there just for the sake of creating the circus theme, and given that the music didn't really fit with it, these pieces just seemed really incidental. And it isn't like they were great songs to begin with; the intro here must be one of the worst she's ever done.
- The identity crisis that this album suffered from. There were a handful of great songs, but I thought definitely songs like count down and Sexy Little Things don't belong on the same album. It's just...weird. I thought with count down and Last Links and maybe Red Line and Sunrise she had a great opportunity to do a great, unpretentious, pop/garage rock album, but she decided to do a mixbag kinda thing instead, except this time it didn't really work cos the range of songs is just far too drastic, and the interludes just don't match the quality of the ones on her previous albums.
MEH/DIDN'T CARE MUCH FOR:
- Don't Look Back; I really hated this song when I first heard it, but now that I'm used to it, I think I can sort of tolerate it. It's just a very bland song for me though. I don't really care that she used interesting instruments here when the melody of the song is so monotonous to begin with.
- The singles - most mediocre bunch of singles yet, no? NEXT LEVEL at least had Sparkle, GUILTY at least had decision, Secret had loads of good singles; the singles here were just kind of blah. Not horrible, but mostly just lesser versions of things she's done better before (upbeat summer single, emotional ballad, ballad with Asian sounds etc). But then again, I don't know I kind of want to kill something each time I hear You were..., yet I allow it to play in its entirety, so there must be something there... I don't know, maybe a couple of weeks later I will start liking it. Maybe.
- The over the top stuff ala Microphone - I do kind of like Microphone? But it's just really something she's done a million times before. I can't bring myself to WANT to listen to Microphone when there are songs like Because of You, like decision, like kiss'o'kill. But it's not a bad song by any means.
OVERALL:
This was an alright album with quite a handful of likable songs, some of which I would even say are the most refreshing to come from her in awhile, and are songs I will continue to revisit in time to come. But overall the album was kind of let down by the incoherent theme and the weak writing on the singles and the really blah instrumental tracks. If by circus she meant a random assortment of songs with no relation to each other, then she surely has succeeded.
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