First,
thanks goes to Jessica Stan for sending this in for
review!
Che'Nelle, a Malaysian born singer who moved to Australia and made a big splash on the internet through a Myspace page before being signed up by Virgin Records under their EMI label, is an interesting artist in the Japanese pop scene. Doing mixed Australian and Japanese releases in largely English, the artist quickly became a superstar in Japan and moved to the country to pursue a platinum career there. This release, Believe, is her fourth album and features a few songs that found their way, primarily, into Japanese TV shows along with one Toho movie, Umizaru 4: Brave Hearts (2012). While not a stellar album as a whole, there are a few stand out gems that should please fans of the artist.
Like a lot of her albums, this release is primarily done in English.
A few tracks do feature Japanese, but by in large these are English songs. Now Che'Nelle is a very talented artist, both in the vocal department and song writing arena. While I wasn't particularly captivated by this particular release, it's fairly solid for fans of Che'Nelle's style. The highlight, not surprisingly, is the title song "Believe" from Umizaru 4: Brave Hearts (2012). It does a good mix of English and Japanese lyrics and Che'Nelle is talented enough to make the transition work while the background music by Sweep and EIGO is enjoyable and soothing, and is represented here both in short and longer form. For fans of Believe, another great mixed language track off the CD is "I'm with U", which puts on full display the artists talent for drifting from one language to another.
Now my particular complaint with this release is the speed of the songs, and the ones I enjoyed the most were the more traditional R&B tracks.
A few just never let up though, in particular songs like "Story" and "Crystals of Love" that just almost feel relentless in their pacing and the latter of those two feeling fairly uninspired in the lyric department. On the note of songs that miss their mark, another is "You're My Only Shinin' Star" which just falters a bit in the delivery department of the lines and kind of stands out as the sole offender in that regard.
Overall, the songs are generally pleasant. A few miss the mark, but enough are pleasing to give it a pass although personally I prefer the piano and strings version of the song found on the Brave Hearts: Umizaru Soundtrack (TOCT-29010).
Rating:  |
|
