The Vegetarian Digitalian is finally here, throbbing through our poor fangirl bodies in the form of an inexplicably irresistible mass of geometrically arranged... leaves and fruit.
It's probably a testament to Arashi's staying selling power that this album can still sell well despite the LE cover looking like this:
The Arashi members, just so you know, were all perfectly aware of how similar sounding "Vegetarian" is with "Digitalian" in Japanglish. You can say that this graphic is no accident. No ho... Hah. But all vegetable jokes aside, this album is actually coming at a very special time. Not only is this their 15th anniversary, but
The Digitalian is also the successor to what is perhaps the most phenomenally polished and musically riveting Arashi album ever:
LOVE. There's certainly a lot to live up to, and after producing something as amazing as
LOVE, the standard for their music has certainly been raised, and I think fans will probably be less forgiving of sloppy music from now on.
And yes, I am a huge fan of
LOVE, but I am aware that not all people might share my enthusiasm for it, so consider yourselves warned that this post will contain some
LOVE/Digitalian comparisons and that everything written here is my own personal opinion, which has no musical or professional authority whatsoever.
Arashi is certainly trying their hardest with this new album. They're going for a "digital" theme, which manifests in a few heavily techno tracks, and a techno elements mixed into other genres here and there. They're doing something pretty new, and very very dynamic. In fact, if I had to describe this album in one word, it'd be
dynamic. Movement and action just permeate
The Digitalian, which makes it pretty different from LOVE, because LOVE was sleek, mature and had quite a smattering of weighty tracks like "Ai Wo Utaou" and "Yozora e no Tegami." It also showed off some beautifully tender Arashi sounds in tracks like "sugar and salt," "Sayounara no Ato de," "Tears." The Digitalian brings us something decidedly less ponderous. I'd say of the 17 tracks on this new album, only the 3rd and 16th ones, "Tell Me Why" and "Hope in the Darkness" qualifies as having the same subdued/weighty tones as the LOVE tracks mentioned above. The rest of the album is all about
action, from the
shake-your-shake-your-body "Zero-G" to the five-times exclamatory "Take Off!!!!!"
So without further ado, let's get into the specific songs.
