About her new album, "Duty"

1.starting over
2.Duty
3.vogue　
4.End of the World
5.SCAR
6.Far away
7.SURREAL
8.AUDIENCE
9.SEASONS
10.teddy bear
11.Key ~eternal tie ver.~
12.girlish

Third album from Jpop superstar, Hamasaki Ayumi. If you were to say that "A Song for XX" is Jpop, "LOVEppears" is techno, then I would say that Duty's theme is rock.

Actually, that's probably not the best label for this album as it's not exactly rock but there is a strong influence of rock in a lot of the songs, with even ballads like Scar, Seasons and Key getting a dose of electric guitars. The album begins with starting over and is an intro-track. Her 3 latest singles, "Vogue", "Far Away" and "Seasons" are here as well as "Surreal" which was released the same day as this album. "Far Away" is the only song on this album that is reminiscent of LOVEppears stuff. While the other albums had fast-paced beats, this CD is mainly slow/medium songs. The title track, "Duty" has an R&Bish influence to it, End of the World, Surreal and Audience are fast-paced rockish songs. "teddy bear" is the softest song in the album which only has piano as its music. The last song, "girlish" finishes things up with a medium paced pop-rock song.

The verdict? I like it. I've been listening to this album over and over and I'm not bored of it as I was when I first did that for LOVEppears. It's not as repetitive as the techno stuff, her singing has definite improved since A Song for XX. And I like the mix of styles (and the more rockish influence) on this set. I do have a little complaint though.. There's only 12 tracks, which is a small number compared to her previous two albums. At 51 minutes, it could have easily had 20 more minutes of music like the others, but I guess I'm probably spoiled by them. I would have also liked to see maybe one more techno-type song on here to add to the variety. But as it is, I enjoy it a great deal. If, however, you only liked Ayumi's techno/jpop stuff, you may not enjoy this as much because it's less flashy. But out of the three albums, I probably enjoy this one the most even though I may like individual songs of the other two more than individual songs here. So if you don't mind a shift in style, you will enjoy this Ayu-CD as much as I did.