Album review: Ayumi Hamasaki - Party Queen

Having developed a recent penchant for giving her albums conceptual titles with music which doesn't reflect it when you play the album through; something many wanted to crucify Ayu by her wig for with Rock 'N' Roll Circus, Enter ♪ PARLEEE KWEEEEEEEEN ♪. An album makes out that it's going to be this loud, all singing and dancing album, but isn't. Ayu beez in the trap. Not the one which makes money. But the one which has her sounding stale. No amount of kneeling under an oak hotel room table, assed out in underwear in a pair of Leopard print Louboutins can mask how dry this album is. And just how badly Ayu needs to move to London and hibernate until 2014.

Party Queen is Ayu's 'I'mma be aight' album. Her first release since her split from her husband Manuel Schwarz, the album see's Ayu taking bolder assertiveness with her image. Performing on tour in the skimpiest outfits she's ever worn, and running around the -6°C streets of London in denim cut offs and tank tops for the music videos. Ayu's not having a breakdown. She just realizes that her music is stale and is hoping we're so pre-occupied with drawing direct comparisons to her arch nemesis Kumi 'Black Mamba' Koda that we won't notice. Fission mailed. We see you Ayu. But we also hear you. And what we hear is some bullshit.

Ayu's ode to skankdom kicks off with the album title track "Party Queen", which is one of the albums better cuts. Heralding back to a time when Ayu was genuinely fun and colourful, as opposed to hollow and giving us vapid happiness to mask how miserable a bitch must really feel inside. Ayu's vocals are a warbled mess. But the 80s / 90s hit factory production is so on point that you let Ayu's lack of vocal prowess slide. Ayu tries to run this same trick again for "NaNaNa", but it's nah-nah-nah. With a musical backdrop sounding like some basement production from a Need For Speed game, male vocals dominating the entire song and Ayu sounding like she's choking on auto-tune - the song is a mess. Ayu tries for a third time with "Shake It ♥" - which once again has Ayu getting her glam rock skank on. She pulls this song off well, as she usually does - but she doesn't own it as she should have. A song this rambunctious needs a vocalist who can tame it, but here Ayu sounds like she's given up and has resided with letting the music carry her instead. This doesn't ruin the song by any means; but for a song so loud and commandeering, it needed Ayu to step up to the plate and command it, and she doesn't.

As every Ayu album does, things take an overblown turn into a fusion of rock and opera style orchestrations. "Letter" is your typical Ayu rock ballad. It sounds like ALL of the other songs Ayu has done in this vein, and it's almost indistinguishable from Rock 'N' Roll Circus' "Last Links" save for a few chord changes here and there - but it's not a bad song. This vibe bleeds into "Reminds Me", leaving me wondering why Ayu even bothered separating the two into individual songs, when they both sound more or less the same. "Reminds Me" is the least derivative of the two songs, but it has the weakest chorus, which is just Ayu wailing ♪ LA LA LA LA LA LA ♪ as though she's forgotten the lyrics or plain couldn't be bothered to write any - fuelling the sentiment that perhaps Ayu ran out of ideas for another of this type of song and should have just left it at "Letter" and called it a day. "Return Road" is PartyQueen's big goth rock moment; for no Ayu album these days can release without one. You know how this song is going to play out as you listen to it. Church bells, violins, screaming on the chorus and an instrumental section where somebody goes mad on an organ. As predictable as this song is, it is good and marks one of the few instances on this album where Ayu absolutely owns the song and feels as though she's in her element. For all of the lavish production and rich musical layering, she comes out head and shoulders above it all. The theatrics are eased up on in place of a brighter soundscape for "Call", which hearkens back to Ayu's fun loving days of "Blue Bird". It's by numbers and you'll forget it in a week. But it's a nice song, if oddly placed on the album.

Every now and then Ayu will dip her toes into an attempt at R&B. Not submerging herself fully into it, but trying a little sumn-sumn. Sometimes it works ("Real Me" and Why") and sometimes it flops ("Another Song"). "Tell Me Why" is one of those moments where it flops. And WOW, does it flop. You wouldn't be far off from thinking that Ayu snatched a sound from Kumi Koda's Dejavu, which would make them even after Kumi stole her Dejavu album cover from Ayu's Rock 'N' Roll Circus. The piano and overall sombre vibe of the song whiffs of Kumi's "Passing By", but is nowhere near as good a song. "Tell Me Why" doesn't go anywhere and Ayu's voice is too crusty to pull it back from the brink.

As is obligatory for every standard J-Pop release under Avex, no album can be pressed unless it features at least one ballad. "How Beautiful You Are" is Ayu's string laden opus of self acceptance. The sentiment of the song is nice, but it feels like an after thought. And there are numerous artists in Japan who have done a song like this before and done it so much better. But Ayu's heart was in the right place, I guess.

Ayumi Hamasaki's vocals are a...required taste, to put it nicely. She wails over songs and sounds like a banshee with emphysema. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn't. Aside from having a voice which grates easily, Ayu doesn't have a very flexible voice, and isn't able to sell every type of song with ease as some of her contemporaries are / were able to. Hikaru Utada is no vocal virtuoso. But she has a voice which is able to sell a range of genres. Over the years, she's managed to tame rock, pop, dance, R&B and acoustic ballads. In the beginning Hikaru sounded rough, but over time she really grew into her voice to a point where she never sounds as though she was out of her depth or comfort zone. The same can even be said for Ayu's arch nemesis Kumi Koda. But the problem with Ayu is that her voice is too particular and she's unable to truly mould it and adjust how she sings to suit a particular genre. So what you get is Ayu's trying to fit a triangle fisher price block into a circle hollow. She knows it doesn't fit, but she obnoxiously jams that shit in anyway. This is Party Queen all over. Lots of things which feel mis-matched and mis-placed.

Party Queen does something very strange for me. It makes me appreciate Next Level a whole lot more, an album which I cared very little for. I think it's because in my head when I hear the term 'Party Queen', I think of songs such as "Rule", "Sparkle" and "Rollin'" - all of which throw near enough every up-tempo song on Party Queen under a Nozomi bullet train.

Ayu is running out of steam and running out of ideas. As much as I was never a huge fan of Ayu's back in the day, I always appreciated her craft and her artistry in both her music and her videos. But much of that seems to have waned over the past 5 years. Ayu shows flecks of it here and there, but never gives enough to captivate for a whole album. Her name and her legacy is what is selling her records, not the music. And given Party Queen's first week sales, her name is barely carrying her shit any more. Ayu needs to find that creative and instinctive place within her which made her who she is / was - otherwise she may as well not bother. She runs the risk of damaging the Ayu brand if she keeps releasing these samey albums which bare no classics or memorable songs. She's not winning over any new fans and she's making her existing ones ask questions and leave her shit on the shelves of Tower Records.

Everything about this album feels so thin on the ground. Five felt unnecessary (as much as I didn't mind it), but if there were a full length release which should have been condensed into an EP and released in its place, then it's Party Queen. Had Ayu capped this off with "Party Queen", "Shake it", "Call" and "Letter" she would have had a tight little mini album. But the whole album feels so badly thought out and light on tangible substance, that it never holds up on its own and marks one of Ayu's weaker releases.

VERDICT: GURL, CALL THE TAXI

Highlights:
■ Party Queen 🔥
■ Shake it ♥
■ Call 🏆
■ Letter
■ Return Road