IWASAKI AMI – Hot Baby
(1) Multi influences straight away. House piano, Pioneer brass, nice vox, sweepy strings. I hope the Ill Advised Phonetic English isn’t a huge feature of the album MV 1/5 HNT 6/13 K 8/10. (2) NOT the slow one; we’ll hope. Although….let’s be patient and concentrate on the production. Plenty of background noises: it’s a 3:00am kissaten song as opposed to a 3:00pm one. And, of course, achance to show how nice and restrained CP vox are. (3) The perky one. The spring morning song. Delightful, honestly! MV 0/10 HNT 4/13 K 7/10 (4) At last! This should be a killer. Something like an identity of its own, great production and instrumentation. Even the ill-advised English isn’t bad MV 3/5 K 8/10 HNT 10/13. But why does it turn back into a Slow One halfway through, though…? (5) Nice enough album track. Ami’s trademake is suddenly lurching into lolitapop vox at….inopportune moments, which is, you know, a Thing. At least this one is fun: let’s say MV 1/5 HNT. (6) The lazy HR one. Just OK. MV 2/5 HNT 6/13 k 7/10. She tries to get some grain into her voice, which isn’t a great move. Mind you, this kind of thing fell flat even when Momoe tried to do it. (7) OOH!! A Proper OP song to which we’ll give MV 1/5 K 8/10 and HNT 10/13. (8) Suspiciously like another show one. Not very interesting at all. So here’s the thing…..an album with some halfway decent ideas and honestly, Ami has a nice voice, but not *enough* ideas or, honestly, energy.