Review Summary: A legendary 80's JPop-rock album from one of the most groundbreaking bands in the genre.
Throughout the 80's, females in JPop all had pretty much the same role: to sing and dance around to upbeat songs that were written by some middle aged guy. The same rings true today, especially for the giant idol groups (from the likes of the early days of Onyanko Club, to one of the most recent groups, Momoiro Clover Z). However, in the mid 1980's, some pop rock bands were starting to surface with cutesy vocalists who actually WROTE their own material. One of the earlier examples of this was the band, Rebecca. Rebecca formed in 1984 with the aforementioned vocalist, Nokko, and were instantly a hit. Their first full length album, "Rebecca IV ~Maybe Tomorrow~", topped the charts, and was the third best selling album of the following year. Critically speaking, however, the material was a little less than satisfactory, since the majority of the contents in the album were good, just not quite astonishing. However, the critical and commercial success aligned in 1987 when the group released their third full length album, "Poison", which followed a much more serious tone in comparison to their earlier, more "playful" days. The maturity of the album, combined with the catchiness of the majority of the tracks, makes "Poison" a shoe-in for being one of the finest Japanese pop rock albums of that time.
The album opens up with "Poison Mind", which follows a mysterious, poppy style. Believe it or not, this was one of the darker sounding tracks of the pop rock scene at the time, especially when compared to some of the other female-fronted acts of the time, like Personz. A nicely done track, and the walking-esqued bass line and the shrieking and wailing of Nokko's signature vocals makes the track a nice lead-in to the mostly mysterious-sounding album. Up comes "Moon", which is a pretty phenomenal track in that it combines the mysteriousness of "Poison Mind" and tones it down to a nice, slick sound. A terrific track, which essentially pits dark, haunting melodies against a highly mainstream new wave esqued sound, making the track a tremendous one. "Manatsu no Ame" is a downtempo track with tremendous melodies. The sheer gravitating melodic elements embedded within the track makes it superb, and continues the golden spree of the album. "Tension Living with Muscle" is a more mainstream friendly track, which has quirky sound effects and a riding style which channels the style of new wave perfectly. A damn good track, but nothing quite as solid as what has come out so far. "Dead Sleep" is as grim of a track as it sounds, which has astonishing levels of atmosphere. Pretty much a relaxing, dark ambient interlude.
The album then kicks back up with "Killing Me with Your Voice", which is another mainstream friendly track, akin to "Tension Living with Muscle". However, "Killing Me with Your Voice" follows the mysterious, gloomy, yet pop friendly, pattern of the earlier tracks. A rather simple track, but a strangely satisfying one, due to the amount of melodic overtones within the track itself. "Nervous But Glamorous" is one of the album's brightest moments, and has a nice lurking style to it, along with an addictive song progression. A splendid splash of pop brilliance that has a mainstream sound to it, but stays true to the album's haunting sound. "Cherry Shuffle" is one of the most upbeat tracks on the album, and comes out like a sore thumb in some ways, due to its... well, overly cheery style. A fair track, but lacks the serious elements that have been working superbly within the album. "Trouble of Love" is a smartly done poppy ballad-like track, laced together with a nice 808-styled rhythm, and with various orchestrated bits thrown in for tremendous measure. Thankfully, the track effectively re-centers the album's attention to a more serious note, and thus brings the album back to its well-deserved high ranking. The final track, "Olive", then slowly comes on, which is a nice, danceable track, juggling the mystery of the album with, yet another, mainstream sound, creating a foggy result, which, at this point, begins to grow stale. But the horns within the track, among the frantic keyboards, saves the track's potential. A decent track, but doesn't quite work well enough to wrap the album up. Still a good track, though.
In short, "Poison" is a surprisingly mature album from one of the earliest examples of female-fronted Japanese pop rock, Rebecca. A tremendously addictive album which follows a mysterious styling, mildly dark overtones and mainstream friendly elements gushing all over the place. A one of a kind album, and is as much of a historical album as it is a unique, mysterious, hypnotic experience. A superb job, indeed.
