Customer Reviews

Strip Me?

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

ANNA TSUCHIYA, the model and actress who stars in the film "Shimotsuma Monogatari" (aka "Kamikaze Girls" in the US) has released her first full length solo album.

I was very much loving ANNA's first mini-album "Taste My Beat" released in 2005, so I have been waiting for a full length album to be released.

I expect that probably this ANNA TSUCHIYA album that will turn people on to her music.

You have the song "rose" which is used as the opening theme for the popular anime series "NANA" (as well as the song "zero") and also included is "Lovin' you", TSUCHIYA's theme song for the Japanese version of the film "SILENT HILL".

For those not familiar with TSUCHIYA's music, it's alternative rock.
Where the last album I felt had a style influenced by one of her favorite artists, Gwen Stefani but this time around, ANNA tries out different styles.

"strip me?" includes even more collaborations with musicians such as Joey Carbone, Gary Newby (of the Railroad Children), Motokatsu Miyagmi (of Mad Capsule Markets), Josh Freese (A Perfect Circle), Michael Ward (Avril Lavigne, the Wallflowers), Justin Meldel-Johnson (Beck, Macy Gray) and many more.

And like her previous album and work, ANNA TSUCHIYA writes the lyrics to her songs and nearly every song is in English.

All in all, every song on this album, I enjoyed. You get a great balance of music and despite ANNA not being able to speak fluent English, her vocals and songwriting skills in English is very well-done.

All in all, an awesome album that I highly recommend.

This is my first introduction to Anna Tsuchiya, and I was rather impressed. Most of the JPop I have listened to is mainly in Japanese with English sprinkled in. This album is mainly in English with some Japanes sprinkled in. The songs are fun and the cover she does of Cyndi Lauper's True Colors is inspired. I like the speeded up version, gives it some gumption.
I have read elsewhere that some people were upset that this debut has only 6 or 7 new songs. That the other 8 or 9 songs that are on the album are either singles released before or b-sides. I like the fact that they pulled all that she had put out to put on this album so for those of us who didn't have access to those initial singles and b-sides get them.

Here is the track listing for this debut. As with many JPop albums some titles are capitalized or put in lower cases for no apparent reason.
01 - zero
02 - rose
03 - NO WAY
04 - Lovin' you
05 - Under My Mask
06 - True Colors
07 - Gie me kiss & kiss
08 - Forever
09 - Interlude
10 - Change your life
11 - ecstasy
12 - Jane
13 - Grooving beating
14 - knock down
15 - SLAP THAT NAUGHTY BODY

Strip Me? Anna Tsuchiya's first full lenght album is a superb album filled with great songs but it does have one flaw and that is that any serious Anna fan will have already heard some of the album before it was ever released.

For example Rose, Lovin' You, Change your Life and Slap That Naughty Body were all released as either singles or b-sides before the albums release which means almost a 3rd of the album (one track is a short instrumental) isn't really new material.

But that aside Strip Me is still a great album and if I was new to Anna's music then I would have gladly given the album the full 5 stars so the 4 stars is really just me being picky.

Highlights.

Zero
No Way
Knock Down
Give Me Kiss & Kiss

Low Points

Interlude is a pretty pointless track but other then that nothing really stands out as being sub par.

Well worth buying.

If you have a good (or worse yet, a great) sound system, a fine appreciation of music, or value your hearing, PASS.

Anna Tsuchiya is a great performer (her live concerts ROCK!!!!!), she has a cool style (english and japanese combo), a talented voice, and decent music skills - which all should make for a wonderful CD.

But.....like way to many CD's these days, all that gets trashed in the mix. There is ONE (and ONLY one) dynamic range on this CD - it's set to about 9.5 (out of ten) and it just blares thru each and every song no matter how it was written or performed. Wrecks the ENTIRE listening experience. Perhaps if I didn't waste all that money on a high end sound system and just played it with a single speaker, mono clock/radio/cd player I might have enjoyed it better (probably not).

So, there's $31 bucks down the drain.