Day 23 - Hamasaki Ayumi - ROCK'N'ROLL CIRCUS

My complaint about this album is the same as Zer0's: if you're going to call it "ROCK'N'ROLL CIRCUS," there needs to be some pretty significant amounts of rock on it. (Also, and this is only my opinion, but if you're going to call it "ROCK'N'ROLL CIRCUS" and not put very much rock on it, there should be a lot of "circus" music.") As is, out of 15 tracks there are two that fall in the rock category, and only one in the circus category. So, kind of a naming fail there, Ayu. Otherwise, the album is pretty solid. There's a lot of classic Ayu goodness ("Sunset~LOVE is ALL~," "BALLAD," "Sunrise~LOVE is ALL~"), some tracks with interesting instrumentation choices ("Microphone," "montage," "Don't look back"). There are only a few tracks that I think are just blatantly bad - "BALLAD" contains not just synth strings, but synth shakuhachi! WHAT?! - and the Asian-bollywood-Arabian-Nights flavor of "Don't look back" is frankly kind of confusing. But there are also some really interesting tracks. I like the rock/record scratchy/Ayu's poppy voice combo in "count down" and the acoustic + drum machine + real strings in "Last Links" is very good stuff. Same for "montage," only the classical instrument repertoire expands a little further with some pipe organ and harpsichord. Overall this is a pretty decent album, but the flaws with some of weirder tracks keeps me from enjoying it as much as the other albums I've reviewed so far.