microphone fiend

Yeah, I was there, too. And you know what they said? Well, some of it was true.” –The Clash, “London’s Calling”

I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been a “casual” fan of Ayumi Hamasaki; in fact, since I’ve been a fan of hers I have been particularly and sometimes rather singularly concerned with her work. Now, I use the word “concern” and it sounds rather harsh and judgmental, like a worrying mother or something, but the truth is it just sounds far better than “obsessive”, which it could be argued I became with this album. For everything up to and including (miss)understood and Secret, I didn’t even know about the albums until they were already out. For GUILTY and NEXT LEVEL, I was following things considerably more closely than before, but I still can’t say anything came close to the level of interest and attention I have paid Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus.

Something about it felt special, maybe. My attention was possibly caught by the fact that she spent time recording at London’s Metropolis studio, and the not-quite-subtle-at-all direction hinted at by the album’s title itself. I’ve said it before in my reviews of Ayumi Hamasaki, and I’ll say it again: she is a rocker at heart. Her lyrics have long suggested darker and deeper themes, from the days of “A Song for XX”. Even her musical influences as popularly cited – Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin – suggest a long-standing love of something other than cloying ballads. This isn’t to say she doesn’t belong in ballads. When they are arranged and composed well for her, she can deliver a love song like no one else. But when Ayumi Hamasaki sings a song like “Microphone”, the lead track from Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus, you listen a little more intently.

And what a thing it is to hear. “Microphone” was leaked earliest from “the London sessions”. Featuring a driving guitar riff and notable melodic Britrock influences (harpsichord tends to be a theme in this album, but it works most brilliantly in “Microphone”), it manages to sound unlike any song Ayumi has really done before. Guitarist Fraser MacColl and drummer John MacColl deserve a lot of credit for the uniqueness of this sound, as nothing else on the album really tops the full-band sound of “Microphone” for pure rock. Other tracks certainly provide other experiences without needing the full band: “Sexy little things” manages to be the stand-out track, even though it is almost entirely digital. The sitar and tabla infused “Don’t look back” burns with classic Ayumi intensity, capturing an essence of rock and roll despite the lack of classic rock instrumentation. However, to look past the arrangement and the minutae of the tracks is to find the meat of what makes this album such a special thing: “Wouldn’t it be great,” I thought (and I know I’m not alone) back at the beginning of the year, “if Ayumi buckles down on all the things she is receiving so much criticism over – her voice, the lack of personality in her new songs, the lack of connection with her audience that was so key to the success and beauty of albums like I am… and My Story – and returns quietly to glory with this album?”

She doesn’t do it bombastically, or with an album that wrote pre-release checks it couldn’t cash, or with media saturation that tells us “Ayumi is Back” until, like good little zombies, we believe it. Unlike 2009’s NEXT LEVEL, Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus is keyed-down, elegantly presented, and left in our hands for judgment. I don’t believe it will win over those who are already bound and determined to dislike everything she’s done since I am…, but that’s not the point. This is not Ayumi’s audience. Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus is for the fans. And if Ayumi is indeed leaving it up to the fans, by and large the judgment is in her favor. She has succeeded in growing up. She has succeeded in overcoming the indulgence of her more recent releases. On record, in her visual canon, and even in her live act according to early reports from attendees of the first few Arena Tour 2010 performances, she has bounced back stronger than ever. And this isn’t much of a surprise: Ayumi Hamasaki finally has something to say again. For herself, about herself, to us, with us; it’s a lot more than she’s said with her songs in a long time.

It’s about time, too. After all, what attracted and still attracts many Ayumi fans to her in the first place are her more poignant lyrics, her resonant songs that were mature beyond her years. Then came album after album that seemed to backtrack, seemed to be less personal and more like something “just anyone” could sing. There have been amazing exceptions - “identity”, “untitled ~for her~”, “MY ALL”, for example – but by and large the catalog has been clogging up with songs that have fans using the phrase “not Ayu-like” more often. And it makes sense, at last. How could a song by a particular artist be “not like that artist”? I can still love those songs while loving Ayumi, but even I have to admit that Ayumi has not been behaving like herself, in concert or on record. But it’s as if the missing piece is back, and I didn’t realize how needful a thing it was until it had returned.

“Somehow, it feels like I’ve come full circle.” — Ayumi Hamasaki, Vivi May 2010

In Vivi magazine’s May 2010 issue, Ayumi provided fans with a hopeful glimpse at the album’s influence and meaning, and now that I have heard Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus it is clear that she wasn’t simply feeding us all lines. “The lyrics this time are sort of like “screams’ from my inner self,” she tells Vivi. “I chose songs which I felt that the past me would have chosen. When I did that, it wasn’t just rock and ballads, there were many genres as well such as pop and electro. So much at first that the producer said “that’s quite a scattered collection.” My reply was “When I sing, they’ll all probably become rock.”

All well and good, but how does that “scattered collection” really shape up on record? How do these “’screams” of the past Ayu become the most cohesive, least self-indulgent album she’s put out since 2005’s My Story?

The lyrical content certainly helps. A thread ties all these songs together, from the blistering self-assessment of her relationship with music that is “Microphone”:

“I won’t lose my way anymore, I have no regrets
It was my destiny that I met you
Because you always give and teach me
The meaning and the significance of my existence
But sometimes I hate you so much
That I don’t even want to see your face
And I think to myself
“Never come into my sight”
But it doesn’t mean that I can be apart from you
After all, I want you to be my side most and anytime”

To her confident address of her deafness – and what reads like the apocalypse (“I hear some distant sound/You see? The end will begin soon/I’ll accept it as it is/On my left side/I need no compassion”) in “count down”, to a determined cutting of ties to her past self, her past career with “Don’t look back”. “Don’t look back” actually manages to provide a very interesting centerpiece for the album itself, sandwiched between two of the record’s three CMJK-composed interludes (the Wagnerian techno-baroque “montage” and the bass-driven bridge to the dance music that is “Jump!”) and winding things up with a direct question to the audience itself:

“I can’t go back, I won’t go back, there is no place to return
However much I may look back, I can’t change my footprints
Even if I repaint them beautifully
My mind alone can’t be deceived

How would you pull the curtain shut if you were in my shoes?”

After all that pining and angsting (and shall I mention here that, in a rather sleek move, three ballads precede the entr’acte of “Don’t look back”? I’m counting “Last Links” as a ballad and “count down” not so much. I think it has to do with the lyrics – “Last Links” gives me an “a song is born” vibe), Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus moves into some more actively “pop” territory, and it is here that the strange little track that could, “Sexy little things”, resides. Remarkable, I think, that everything she seemed to be trying to accomplish with NEXT LEVEL came together in one cut with this song. It manages to sneer at you and still remain cute at the same time, delivering the feminist statements that have become not-as-perfunctory for Ayumi as they once were (see “My Name’s WOMEN”, “Real me”, “Beautiful Fighters”) while doing so much musical mad science that it’s easy to forget this is Ayumi Hamasaki, queen of the J-Pop power ballad, you’re listening to.  For me, “Sexy little things” is the best new track on Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus from a purely musical standpoint. I love everything about the tweets and ticks, the vocals, the arrangement, the mixing. This doesn’t sound as rushed or as amateurish as certain tracks on NEXT LEVEL (enjoy them though I did).

The requisite Ayumi love song trifecta follows, but I have to commend the transition from “Sexy little things” to “Sunrise ~LOVE is ALL~”. I know many were wary at the album’s announcement not only that the Sunrise/Sunset coupling would be too much for one album, but that the “technopop” sound of “Sunrise” seemed like a problematic thing on an album geared toward ROCK ‘N’ ROLL! But that crazy harpsichord returns, and it was in those first strains of “Sunrise ~LOVE is ALL” that I really appreciated how well thought-out and cohesive the album was.

We are effectively bounced from the thoughtful, expressive “cries” in the first half (even “BALLAD” and “Sunset ~LOVE is ALL~”, two melancholy and desperate love songs, fit into this theme), are presented with an ultimatum in the entr’acte, and are told to screw it, keep dancing, forget the past, and enjoy the moment in the latter half. “meaning of Love”, which seems a weak and girlish track at first, only suffers from the power of the company it’s keeping. On its own, it is a sweet, optimistic ballad. Not for everyone, and still my least favorite song on the album (what can I say, I was hoping for even more rock than I could take), but the message of the lyrics (“I don’t need words, just stay by me/If you are next to me, I’m all right/Ah, what I feel for sure now/Is formless, but/I suppose this feeling is/Surely what people call love” – and don’t for a minute think this might not be a direct response to the lyrics of her own rock ballad “is this LOVE?” from the amazingly executed but slightly self-indulgent (miss)understood) leads beautifully into “You were…”, and to the album’s finale.

This album’s finale. How do I begin to explain this? The final song is “RED LINE ~for TA~”, which is not only one of my favorite Ayumi songs easily (if you want to wonder about the others, don’t. A few are “Humming 7/4″, “Memorial address”, “Free & Easy”, and “NEVER EVER”), but the perfect choice to end it. It was the only track I didn’t listen to the “album version” leak of, and now I am completely, completely happy with that.

First you must understand something about ‘RED LINE ~for TA~’. In the summer of 2009, a member of Team Ayu talked about his/her suicidal thoughts and plans on the message board. Ayumi was so worked up about it that she wrote a personal blog entry appealing to this fan, and worried through a good day of a-nation ‘09 performances until someone confirmed that said fan was okay. I wrote about this at length on my Facebook page, but didn’t really want to bring it over to my blog proper, considering the personal nature of the topic to my own life. Her dedication to her fans touched me deeply, and her words about not giving up gave me so much hope. Also, her dear friend to whom the ‘GUILTY’ album is dedicated, by all accounts, committed suicide. It’s a dear topic to Ayu.

And it’s a dear topic to me, having been there. A couple of times quite close, but basically living a full three years of my life being suicidal. It sucks, to say the very least.

To understand the power of what I am about to relate, you need to know the lyrics to ‘RED LINE ~for TA~’ (interestingly, this is one of the few songs ever that Ayu did not include lyrics for in her single booklet):

“We turned our tears into just one prayer
The miracle we saw at that moment, on that day, was not an illusion

But we are lost in our daily lives, in our sadness, aren’t we?

If you have a feeling of despair, please remember:
“This day called today on which you are going to give up,
Is the tomorrow on which someone, somewhere, didn’t want to give up”…

…and that I’m tightly, tightly
Holding your hands

I want to accept another sunrise as a precious thing…

Please don’t be afraid of the step forward you want to take

If you run into a wall, please remember:
“This day called today on which you are going to lose,
Is the tomorrow on which someone, somewhere wanted to fight”…

…And that your hands are connected to ours
However far away it may be”

Got that? It’s a lovely mid-tempo song, very breezy, very uplifting.

On the album, it is the very last track. The song trails into a choral refrain of “na na na naaaas” just as on the single cut, but in this version they fade out, with Ayumi’s “na na na naaaas” replacing them, until it is just Ayumi and a faint pipe organ (very reminiscent of “RAINBOW”, I thought automatically) in the background.

Then everything fades out, except Ayumi and her microphone. My eyes jerked open as I lay in the dark, listening to the very last lines of this album. Ayumi sings completely a capella:

“Omoidashite mite zetsubou o kanjita ra….sono te o boku ga tsuyoku…nigitte iru tte koto o”

“If you have a feeling of despair, please remember: I am tightly holding your hands.”

It was the perfect finale, and I am not ashamed at all to say that I began to cry on the spot. In fact I could not stop crying. Whatever personal feelings I may have about this album from a fan’s point-of-view, I cannot stress enough how difficult it is to execute a great ending to an album, much less bring tears to my eyes in the process. The last album to do this was The Resistance, but no one can deny that “Exogenesis: Symphony” wasn’t designed to bring on the waterworks. Ayumi’s finales have been a little off for several releases. She used to be the best of the best. Look at RAINBOW’s blistering “independent +” hidden track finale, look at I am…, which is iconic enough on its own, and it’s combination of “Endless sorrow” (another one of my favorites) and “flower garden”. Memorial address’ closing goes without saying, twisting the knife already buried from “No way to say” and “forgiveness”. And, though I know many people dislike it, “Humming 7/4″ is probably Ayumi’s greatest rock cut ever, and using it to close up My Story makes nothing but sense. Then, things started to quaver a little. “rainy day” seems to keep us on tinter-hooks after all the build-up. (miss)understood is an album full of amazing songs, but unlike Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus, it suffers from horrible track placement. Secret suffers from the same problem, with the dominant, vocal-flaying “kiss’o'kill” followed up by the completely keyed-down “Secret” for a finale. I have no words for how schizophrenic Secret plays, from start to finish. Another nice grab-bag of songs, but seemingly thrown into track placement at random. GUILTY has the some of the best cohesion of the last five years (“untitled ~for her~” kills it as a finale track), but that is still way too many interludes. But after that, NEXT LEVEL’s tribute to “The Rose” seems just plain pandering. The order of tracks is okay, but the problem with NEXT LEVEL was, from the beginning, a handful of single tracks that had to, but could not possibly, blend with a concept album. “Curtain call” is a simple, sweet song with powerful vocals, and seems like it would make a perfect finale, but after hearing it up against the much more cohesive albums of Ayumi’s career, and especially after comparing it to Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus, well…

Again, I come back to what I said much earlier. I didn’t realize what was missing until it was back.

This isn’t an album that will change minds, but I’ve already seen it be an album that gets people interested. Maybe one or two tracks are heard, and friends who never listened to Ayumi Hamasaki before, or swore her off after she fell out of more popular favor post-My Story, are suddenly asking me for information on the album, to share a few songs. I am more than happy to oblige (as I always am when it comes to Ayumi Hamasaki). This is an album for the casual fan to enjoy and rediscover, I believe, but it is also an album that the longtime fans can really sink our teeth into, from song meaning to composition decisions to pacing and visual canon.

Yes, visual canon. Ayumi has returned to work with ND Chow, who provides amazing photography for the booklet and photobook accompanying the album. This photo-journalistic, almost candid style was last seen with (miss)understood’s “On my Way/Off my Day” photobook. I can’t help but argue that it ties into the whole theme. Yes, she is wearing great outfits around London, but for the first time in a long time she doesn’t look like a pouty dress-up doll or an empty-eyed clothing model. She is a rock star, she is owning her photos, she is Ayumi Hamasaki.

Even the promotional videos are on a level above and beyond the last couple of years, employing themes and stories that inhabit the songs themselves rather than exist awkwardly on top of them.

As I said, this album isn’t going to be the one to change your mind if you are already bound and determined to dislike Ayumi Hamasaki. Nothing can do that. But Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus won’t let you go without a fight, if you take it for the full scope of what it is. Ayumi has emerged from a shell of predictability and half-hearted records, she has grown past the image given her by her previous photographer, she has allowed rock to control her decisions once more and it is a triumph for her. The lady is elegantly inviting us to share this album with her (even offering us tea!), but the unassuming presentation belies the equanimity between power and grace present from start to finish.

Of course I love it. There’s very little I can find to pick at. I can say that tracks like “meaning of Love” and “Last Links” don’t grab me at first, and I can complain that Ayumi really needs to incorporate drums into her songs more often again (compare My Story with Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus and you’ll see what I mean, there), but at the same time I can be happy assuming that those things were considered. And I can rest assured knowing that Ayumi is grown up, grown past it and above it all, isn’t afraid to act her age, and is ten thousand times more of a fierce superhero for it.

Credit to misa-chan, masa, and truehappiness for information and translations