Quote:
Originally Posted by paper_doll
^I feel you on that.
I just can't walk away entirely. When's the last time she put out something I truly enjoyed? A decade ago? Maybe longer? But her back catalogue is so incredible and so important. And because she puts out some really good songs every once and a while, it's worth sticking around for me. She'll always be my favourite even though I feel like I mostly just bitch anymore lol
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Kinda with you guys there. Like I love "A ONE" but it's still nowhere near what I feel like it COULD be.
I don't feel like Ayu is doing what she seemed to be on track to do through... hmm, maybe the "H" single. She seemed to be getting more intimate, allowing herself some rawness, she used a good mix of electronic, electric, and acoustic instrumentation.... her stuff had texture, and that gave it more resonance, because the music felt very deliberately created but it also felt very human.
These days I'll listen to music like old-school Garbage, Enter Shikari, late 90s/early 2000s BT, some progressive metal & dramatic Visual Kei stuff, Bjork's "Post" and "Homogenic" albums, Tori Amos' "from the choirgirl hotel" and "To Venus and Back" and I just think.... Ayu should be doing music somewhere at the midway between all that & her current stuff. THAT is where she seemed to be going, and I dunno if she got scared of going that way or what. And I think I'm disappointed that I never got to see a mature version of the material on "Duty" and "I am..." because NONE of the above music really scratches the itch for me. Enter Shikari has all the screaming vocals which I'm really not into. BT's stuff is just a BIT too engineered for Ayu (although I'd still ADORE a collaboration between them, I really would). Prog metal (and math rock) don't typically have the female vocals and when they do the singer just doesn't sound like she's really feeling what she's singing... like she's more focused on the technique than the emotion. The other stuff up there I've just listened to too many times, and there's nothing new that sounds like it, so I'm left kinda feeling like "okay, I'm done listening to all that, does anyone have anything for me? ...No? well crap..."
Ayu's big selling point for me was that her stuff was more personal & complex than most "pop" was, but it still had the polish & professionalism of pop... It was intimate like the rock I enjoyed, but it wasn't totally self-indulgent and thrown-together-in-a-garage sounding. My taste has always been stuff that's personal and noisy, but communicated in the polished pop music language. And Ayu exemplified that in a MAJOR way for awhile. And I've yet to find anyone to match it. Like I've never heard a song like "monochrome" by anyone else.
When Ayu occasionally releases songs that incorporate some deliberate artistry, it's SO WORTH IT to keep following her, because those songs are always "OMG MY FAVORITE SONG EVER" whenever they happen.