Hikaru Utada's Ultra Blue is out.
That is the cover above.
I actually had a very long and in-depth and descriptive review of this album worked out but my computer inexplicably restarted itself and I lost it. I'm incapable of reconstructing all of it from memory and I seem to have lost my ability to write coherently about Ultra Blue. I will do my best, so bear with me. In fact I will just say whatever random shit occurs to me.
I can only write like a music critic on select days. And this is not one of them, unfortunately. My original review had sentences like "The Utada Hikaru of First Love and Distance was a girl, but the Hikki of Deep River, Exodus, and now Ultra Blue has become a woman."
"Musically this album is a continuation of the sound on Deep River. Driving melodies, Japanese instrumentation, and Utada's distinctive vocals. It must be said that much of the material on this album actually predates Exodus, her English-language debut. "
I think there was something like that in there.
Uh, let's see:
"This is Love"...this song is um...driving, and propulsive, a great dance track.
"Keep Trying" recalls her earlier songs, from the First Love era, like "Time Will Tell"
I also wrote a great sentence about how I'd originally dissed 'Be My Last' but it had really grown on me and there was an awesome crescendo around the 3:10 minute part like "Ichiji kan aida ni..."
The crescendo is awesome.
This album is probably as good as Deep River, which had some of the best songs of all time like 'Traveling', 'Sakura Drops', 'Hikari', and um...'Traveling' is the best song ever.
Ultra Blue is really fucking good.
You should listen to or order this album somehow, like from YesAsia or Amazon.
The Great Swifty, Edmund Yeo, lost his virginity while listening to this album.
He called me at three in the morning like "Holy shit dude, I just scored with this sweet-ass Indian girl!"
Then I was like "What music was playing while this happened?"
And he was like "Ultra Blue, by Hikaru Utada. Holy shit, let me tell you about this girl Prema Ramanathan I hooked up with..."
And I was like "I don't give a shit, Swifty, tell me about the fucking CD."
And he was like "Hm, well, on this album Utada has a bunch of new songs like 'This is Love', 'Making Love', and 'Sunday Morning.' There is also 'COLOURS', which is the most emotional song of all time, ever recorded in human history, and if you listen to this song for the first time while watching the video you will probably suffer a brain embolism from the sheer emotion conveyed by Hikaru Utada's plaintive vocals, like watching leaves fall in an autumn forest."
"Swifty," I said, "I heard this CD contains 'Passion' from Kingdom Hearts 2."
"That's right." Swifty said. "This emotional ballad is even better than 'Final Distance' off Deep River. I sure hate those fucking Kingdom Hearts gamers, though. I hate how Hikki is becoming popular with dumbass kids in the US who just heard about her through gaming."
"But shouldn't the entire world know about the genius behind 'Traveling' and 'Automatic'?" I asked incredulously.
"So it would seem." Swifty said. "But in reality, no one ever feels grateful when people they don't respect like the same things they do. These semiliterate middle-school fucks shouldn't have access to the divine instrument of radiant evocation that is Hikaru Utada's larynx."
"I agree." I said. "But look on the bright side: none of them have even heard of First Love or 'Time Will Tell.' They probably think she always sings in English!"
"They haven't seen the 'Hikari' video either." Swifty reflected. "Well...at least I have Koda Kumi all to myself. Now let me finish the story..."
Miu Miu.
