METAFIVE’s long-anticipated debut album arrived last month, and it took me a while to decide what I think about it. Given the supergroup’s scarily impressive lineup -Leo Imai, ex-Denki Groove Yoshinori Sunahara, Cornelius, and Towa Tei, brought together by YMO’s fomer drummer/vocalist Yukihiro Takahashi with Tomohiko Gondo to round it all up- the album did generate a mass of expectation with it. META unfortunately fails to meet this expectation, but obviously not because it lacks star power. On the contrary, the album is loaded with so much talent that it fails to neatly bind everything into a cohesive product.
One listen through META and you’ll pick up on how very eclectic it is. If you take out and listen to any combination of two songs from it without any prior knowledge of the album, it will be hard to imagine that they belong in the same album. The album lacks some sort of omnipresent element that connects every song inside of it. Usually, the singer’s vocal would be it, but Leo Imai and Yukihiro Takahashi each takes their turn singing different songs in the album. High octane songs like “Don’t Move”, powered by Imai’s seemingly unending vigor, progresses quite awkwardly into songs with Takahashi’s hallmark soft vocal in “Luv U Tokio”. Quite the similar goof happened on the latter part of the album where the new wave-inspired “Disaster Baby” collapses to funky “Radio (META Version)”; it’s just hard to add them up. It’s quite a shame, since “Maisie’s Avenue” where the two vocals were used distinctively side-by-side -Imai’s as the lead, Takahashi’s appears as the sweet backing- sounds really pleasing to the ears and could be the hallmark sound of the album.
Some of META’s tracks like “Anodyne” and “Albore” feels a bit bloated, with all the bits and pieces of sounds every member seems very eager to contribute. The best songs in the album are the ones where one and exactly one member of METAFIVE is allowed the steering wheels. Tracks like the electronic “Luv U Tokio” -that is obviously driven by Towa Tei- or the bouncy “Gravetrippin” register easily on the mind because they have enough restraint to keep the track in a single direction. On the other hand, “Split Spirit (META version)” requires a lot more than one listen to get.
META remains a collection of awesome songs and ideas, but it passes more as a live recording of 6 talented musicians just jamming and having fun rather than a proper album. It’s hard to imagine that this fact went unnoticed by any of METAFIVE’s crew though; it’s more likely that the album itself was meant more as a creative output of theirs instead of a commercial product. Takahashi originally brought the band together as a live act, probably their best mode of operation -hell, even two of the three PV they put up is a live recording version; imagining the band playing the super maximally-produced tracks inside META live makes me giddy-up inside.
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