hitomi - Love Concent

After being bombarded by many singles, a whopping five to be precise, fans of pop sensation hitomi were finally able to rejoice as her much anticipated album Love Concent hit shelves in late September.

On first listen, quite a few songs stood out. Some of them feature some awesome guitar work. Japanese Girl, for example, sounds like something KISS would come up with if they ever updated I Was Made for Loving You with a little Asian flavor. It rocks, plain and simple. The only problem is the bizarre backing vocals during the chorus. They are slightly annoying, but easily disregarded thanks to the overabundance of "awesome" that this song exudes.

As impossible as it sounds, there's a track on this disc that actually blows Japanese Girl away. Change Yourself has a great riff and an even greater chorus. There really isn't much to say here, save that the music does the talking. This song should have been a single, it has that much power.

Venturing away from pop-rock and into pop itself, we come face to face with Arabian Dreaming, a quaint little number that features some cool military-esque drumming and some nice acoustic pinch-playing. It suffers from the same vocal-problems that Japanese Girl has during the chorus, but a strong overall performance and cool instrumentation save it in the end. Renai Hikou also makes do by being a simple yet enjoyable number that sounds like it belongs in an anime. It forces a relaxing melody upon the listener, accentuated by good atmospheric guitar and a haunting backing track.

CraGy Mama, a song that sounds straight out of the "007" films, succeeds for many reasons. First, it features haunting backing vocals just like Renai Hikou does. Second, it has a great chorus that features just enough six-string action to get your blood flowing. Third, the random talking parts are hilarious.

Lost Emotion in Darkness is a dance track that has some nice flamenco moments, but that's pretty much the only thing that makes it stand out. Think of J-Lo's Waiting for Tonight. Day-O is a nice flute-oriented piece, which happens to be very soothing. The rest is pure bubblegum fluff, from the 80's sounding title track and Love Angel, to the mandatory ballad So You. They aren't bad tracks, but they definitely are not the highlights.

This release has some very strong tracks accompanied by other good, if not great, compositions. It isn't going to win medals for anything, but it still puts up a good fight! Check it out if you enjoy hitomi's stuff, or if you're just looking for a decent piece of J-pop.