Quote:
Originally Posted by voltron
It was the same for the encore, as well. I'm not sure if it was mentioned, but the performer's interlude was catcher in the light.
She sounded great 95% of the night, with very few exceptions. To her vocal critics - I know she has better and worse performances, but I do think she takes her vocals seriously. I saw Namie, Koda Kumi, and Ayu in this trip and Ayu is really the only one that relies on background singers and doesn't use a significant backing track.
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I agree with this assessment. Just got back from Marine Messe and I was very impressed with her voice tonight. I tried to keep off the thread until I saw her so it wouldn't ruin too much. I did catch posts that some people said she was totally off and the tour was lazily put together. If you're comparing this to Cirque de Minuit, then yes, most of her tours would probably seem somewhat lazy in comparison. To be honest I was a tad disappointed just because she called it power of music and teased the string section. I was so excited to see a redux of the original power of music and then it was revealed to be totally different stage, orchestra-less.
Petty annoyances like that aside, I enjoyed it immensely. As voltron stated she was hitting the notes 95% + of the time. And I noticed she actually went lower on some of the notes for Forgiveness, I'm guessing she either couldn't or didn't think she could hit those particular notes that are regularly very high, but it worked and she did really well with that song, besides a few rough notes at the beginning. I thoroughly enjoyed the arrangements for the songs. Arrangement Highlights for me were evolution and Surreal plus the interlude. I love the classical arrangement of Catcher in the Light (again too bad not with the orchestra), though I really loved the entire setlist, minus one song I'm not familiar enough with to name.
In terms of the actual show, I was just shy of first row A block, so almost as close as one could be. And I mostly had either Princess or Yongae right in front of me (which I loved). Timmy didn't annoy me as much as usual, so that was alright. To be fair I had to leave and come back because I was soaked from the rain, had to go home and change and then rush like crazy to get back in time. Somehow I made it about 5 minutes before the official start time, but once I actually got to my seat I was able to start getting into it and ultimately had a great time, even if I did get hit in the face by the ball thrown by a dancer which the girl behind me got.
(To Voltron' earlier part regarding Namie. I noticed also that the background vocals really swallowed her live ones. Plus I think there was something wrong with the mic for the first third of the show I saw because it was giving weird feedback problems)