Review Summary: The album lacks variety and the very basic songwriting just didn't catch my attention
Obligatory sentences for a first review on sput:
This is my first review! Not in general, but 1) on sput and 2) in English. Please feel free to correct me to improve this review’s quality.
This is also a first time in other aspects: I didn’t listen to Sonohara before and – something that makes this harder form me to review – I never listened to something in this style of music. I don’t even know how to properly classify this with genre labels to give you an idea what it sounds like, so I’ve got to give you a few sentences for that.
You see, this isn’t a classy, objectivity driven review of someone who can put aside their own opinion to let you decide for yourself whether or not you could like this. Look at this review as a longer sound off, a one sided discussion of my own opinion.
Sonohara strikes me as the project of someone who makes music for fun and mostly for themselves and I don’t want to dunk on someone or take away the fun in doing what they love. But I promised to write something about this; and when this review will be online, you will have seen my rating already – I’m not exactly blown away.
The foundation for every track here is programmed drums and a prominent bass. That’s cool. Drums and bass get the company of synths and – but not as often – vocals. While the former are perfectly fine and add some melody to the mix, the latter are quite poor. The whispered vocal in „Scarred“ are fine, but the singing in „Honestly“ just doesn’t add anything positive in my opinion. The tone is unpleasant (which can be justified by „being punk“), the melody just follows the instrumental melody (which is just boring, idk) and the lyrics are kind of cringy:
„But honestly, you’re just keeping me alive
And honestly, I just need you in my life
Or else I’ll die and fade right out
Maybe you used me for clout
So I’ll die and fade right out
Cause you just used me for clout.“
It’s not like there aren’t any ideas here. There are. Sonohara wrote some cool riffs and motives actually. The problem is the songwriting. Most songs have a very similar pace, they repeat the same riff over and over, but vary it here and there. Sonohara put some thought into the arrangements as well. It’s clear they have some experience doing this. Positive examples might be the opener, the closer and Torn To Shreds. For the most part though, the songs are still too repetitive for me to be enjoyable. The riffs often have a very similar rhythmic approach and attitude as well. The album feels cohesive, but samey.
Unfortunatly none of the tracks really made me want to come back to the album. The better songs are pretty consistent in quality and not terrible though. The album makes some decent, upbeat background noise in it’s best moments and I really don’t mean this as an insult.
Since I have reason to believe Sonohara will actually read this: keep it up. Don’t stop making music, keep working, keep writing and keep trying new things. This is a foundation you can improve upon.
So, to wrap this all up: The basic foundation is quite nice actually, but the album just lacks some variety for a runtime of almost 50 minutes. Also the songwriting is very basic and just didn’t catch my attention.
I'm gonna fix the spacing issue. My writing program actually does this a lot when I write in English, it's super annoying.
