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Well, and alot of the mixing and studio work is not good. That's just the truth.
1) The processing on Timmy's bg vocals is not great about half the time you hear him, and they very nearly ruin Return Road. They didn't multi-track him enough or add enough reverb or something. In BRILLANTE he sounded epic & operatic but in Return Road he sounds synthesized and cheesy.
2) The sound effects in ESM are distracting. I understand the thought behind them - in moderation they could have added to the song in a clever way, but they were overdone and mixed too loud. They sound cartoony, and not in an effective way.
HOWEVER. If you look at the lyrics - I mean REALLY look at them - she's talking about alcoholism, post-traumatic stress, loneliness, the meaninglessness of the more outwardly fun aspects of her life. It's a great examination of the shallow versus the deep, and the fact that even though Ayu has come to terms with her past self, there is still a sharp division between the product Hamasaki Ayumi and the person Ayu, and she's not sure "Hamasaki Ayumi" isn't winning - the shallow Hamasaki Ayumi persona is getting bigger, and she's not sure where the product ends and the real person "ayu" begins. You can hear this in songs like "Letter" and "Tell me why" where it sounds like she's singing to herself.
And most of the arrangement choices on the album have a point - NaNaNa is a clear tribute to Keiko after Ayu almost lost her to that hemorrhage, for example. More honest songs have more real, non-synth instruments (call, Letter, reminds me); songs that are more sarcastic & whose lyrics deliberately hide pain have more shiny & colorful arrangements (Party Queen, Shake It <3); the songs that are saddest are more often in a minor key (reminds me, Tell me why).
And then there's the very end of the "how beautiful you are" PV, which is part of the whole thing. She seems like this angel who's guiding everyone, but at the end she's fighting against the same wind they are.
Aside from that video, most of the visual parts of the "Party Queen" product don't really work that well. The original SUPER AYU shoot being used for the booklet was a better choice thematically than the original shots - which ended up in the final SUPER AYU book - but because they weren't taken SPECIFICALLY for the album, they don't QUITE do the job. Ayu chose the photos to depict the messy, lonely, empty room after a party the night before - lamps are turned over, there's booze on the table with breakfast. She was hoping to show a self-destructive pattern in that booklet but the photos were taken with a more sexy, fun, kinda trashy attitude in mind, not a tragic one. So her facial expressions don't contribute to the real theme of the album. The PVs are the same way - we only see fun, from the outside. The tragic consequences aren't emphasized enough, if they're shown at all.
So musically, for the most part, yeah I think the album is great. I just think the visuals made it hard to understand what she was doing.
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