Nearly two years since the release of their previous album, "LosAngeles", the brilliant green finally returns with their fourth album, appropriately titled "THE WINTER ALBUM". After the release of "LosAngeles", the group took a break while their vocalist, Tommy, focused on her solo project, "Tommy february6". But they finally came back in spring of 2002 with a new single. Fans of the brilliant green couldn't be happier to see this band back on its feet and producing some of their best music yet. "THE WINTER ALBUM" begins with a quick one-minute intro track. The feeling is very calm and relaxed. The real music begins on track two with a completely new song titled "Holidays!". This is a nice upbeat song for the winter holiday time of year. It makes an excellent wake-up track for the beginning of the album. The self-harmonizing that Tommy does in the chorus is very attractive. This is a very good happy song that reassures fans that the band is back in a serious way for their new album. The third track is another brand new song titled "Flowers". This is the new track that Sony is giving out samples for on the band's official web site, so you know it must be a standout track. It is one of this band's classic style mid-tempo ballads. Beautifully executed with a powerful melody and a string arrangement. This perfect song will stick with you long after you've finished listening to the album. Track 4 is the band's latest single, "I'M SO SORRY BABY". Actually, like all of the four reused songs from the singles on this album, this is a special album mix. However, all of the album versions of the old songs on this album have very slight, minimal changes from their original versions. Usually the mixing has been slightly tweaked and a few new subtle guitar or synthesizer sounds have been dropped in. The new changes are nothing to get excited about, but that doesn't mean that these old songs aren't still every bit as enjoyable on this album as they were on the singles. "I'M SO SORRY BABY" is an excellent hard rock song emphasizing the band's instrumentals slightly over Tommy's vocals. The song proves the multi-talented band's knack for hitting the nail square on the head, no matter what kind of single they're making. This song rocks! The following track is another single. It is "Forever to me ~owarinaki kanashimi~, the first single that was released after the band's comeback. Of course it is another slightly changed album mix. This song showcases the band's classic style at its best. Impressively dynamic, poetic, and just plain beautiful. If the brilliant green can't completely win you over with a hit single like this, I don't know what will. Track 6 is a completely new song titled "That boy waits for me". It is one of only three songs on the album with completely English lyrics. The band used to have a much higher percentage of English songs on their first two albums (their third album was a completely Japanese volume). The melody is addictive, the English lyrics are very interesting and well-written. Representing a first for the brilliant green, this song has a part where Tommy's voice is artificially repeated, a la techno style. It is very different from anything we've ever heard this band do, but it works. Overall, this is a very nice song. Another new song, "The night has pleasant time", is the most subdued of the album, and therefore likely to get lost on more uninitiated listeners. However, that is not a real worry, since the perfect balance of this album seems to keep the listener's attention for the duration of every track. Tommy's rich, foreboding singing enraptures the listener, easily holding its own above the sparse instrumental arrangement. These kinds of dark, soft songs show best how the band has matured and improved over time. The band has done some great soft ballads in the past, but never anything with this kind of deep, overwhelming, yet beautiful atmosphere. Tommy shows us the utter mastery of her trade in "THE WINTER ALBUM". The next song, another completely new one, lightens the mood back up considerably. "Day after day" is an upbeat, moderate tempo light rock song. The song wins us over with the simplicity of its catchy melody and smooth guitar riffs. Again, Tommy's delivery is key. We are once more confronted with a perfected version of the great kind of work the band has been producing throughout its career. Track 9 is the album version of the single, "Rainy days never stays". The most noticeable change in the new version is the light synthesized chords held out in the background throughout the song. This was already a beautiful song, but somehow the subtle changes bring it up just enough to reach that next level. Wow, I love it. This song is well-deserving of its status as one of the band's best-selling singles. Track 10 is a new version of "I'M JUS' LOVIN' YOU". This song was originally included on the "I'M SO SORRY BABY" single. Although there were lots of excellent B-side tracks on the three singles that were kept off of this album ("I'm a player in T.V games", "alone alone", "MOLDY HOLE!!", just to name a few.), "I'M JUS' LOVIN' YOU" was unquestionably the best, with its amazingly beautiful melody and genius all-English lyrics. This is the love song of the year as far as I'm concerned. It's a perfect song. The new song, "Running so high", is the last of the three all-English songs on the album. The only way to explain this song is that it is just weird. There hasn't been any other brilliant green song quite like it. It begins with a light-hearted melancholy feel, but suddenly expands into a loud, joyous declaration of feeling good. This song has a really catchy melody. It's so great in fact that this song is definitely among my most favorite of all the new songs on this album. This is just excellent work on the band's part, expanding their resume. It's strange, but it works beautifully. The final song on the album is titled "escape". It's a fairly slow, pretty, but not overly relaxed, closing ballad for the album. I couldn't imagine a better final track. Just like all of the songs on this album, the melody is incredible and very memorable. But even among all of the songs on the album, this song is still very much a standout track. It is just so pretty, and Tommy's smooth, airy vocals work in perfect tandem with the instrumental arrangement. It doesn't get anymore perfect than this. In the brilliant green's second album, "TERRA2001", you can hear Tommy's voice becoming more and more robotic and sterile, becoming more sharp and piercing to the point where it almost becomes grating. the brilliant green's latest run of three singles, and especially "THE WINTER ALBUM" recapture the magic of what made Tommy's voice so irresistible in the first place. That airy, yet full, melancholy, smooth sound that helped sell so many copies of "There will be love there" and "sono SPEED de" in 1998 is back and perhaps even more perfected than ever before. Tommy is my favorite vocalist, and the dead-on delivery of the songs on this album leave little question in my mind about why I chose her as my favorite in the first place. "THE WINTER ALBUM" contains a surprising ratio of slower, more ballad-like songs over the band's traditional hard-hitting rock style. Considering the genius of the band's past songs, this characteristic might lead some to assume that "THE WINTER ALBUM" is lacking that spark that makes the group's music so irresistible. Not so. If anything, the eight new songs and four songs from the singles on "THE WINTER ALBUM" make this the best collection of brilliant green music ever. Don't get me wrong, all three of the band's previous albums had some great songs on them, but none with just the right balance and level of overall perfection as this one. Maybe it's because the band had an extra year to work on this music this time. the brilliant green has released four original albums now, and still no best collection. (Good, the less best albums, the better. I want original albums!) Perhaps this could be explained by the fact that they are released by Sony, rather than the penny-pinching Avex, which is constantly trying to squeeze every last drop of money out of its most popular artists. But also, the brilliant green did go through a bit of a slump in the past. After the release of "sono SPEED de" a lot of the general public seemed to give up on the brilliant green, thinking of them as simply a one-hit-wonder, a passing fad that would come and go. Then the band started to really come back into the spotlight with the release of their third album, "LosAngeles", helping to propel Tommy's solo career forward. Now people have realized that the brilliant green is not just a here today, gone tomorrow group. They're here to stay, and they're not messing around. "THE WINTER ALBUM" is the pinnacle of their achievement since the singles of their first album, and no doubt their best album so far. I want more of this! So hopefully the band will keep going after this album and keep making more singles. Please! I would recommend "THE WINTER" album to anyone. With an amazing lineup of eight all-new songs, as well as the band's best run of singles yet, there is little left to be improved here. I've heard this album a ridiculous amount of times already since it came out, and I still haven't gotten tired of it. If you want the best selection of twelve songs 3059 yen can get you, look no further than "THE WINTER ALBUM" from the brilliant green.
Buy it here.
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