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发信人: Skye (只有X), 信区: Rock
标 题: X Dahlia
发信站: 荔园晨风BBS站 (Sat Oct 26 11:52:10 2002), 站内信件
X Japan
Album Dahlia
Year 1996
Tracks 10
Rating 4? of 5
by Andrew Thompson
This is one of my favorite albums from X Japan, and also their last. The
only downside to this album is that a large portion of it is ballads.
Taken individually, however, there aren't really any bad songs.
1. Dahlia
The title track, and one of the best on the album too. It starts out
as your average heavy metal X song. But further into the song it
transforms itself into a ballad, yet still with a hard rock beat.
Throughout the rest of the song it juggles between the two styles, as
well as traveling through a couple different keys. The change of keys is
wonderful, the smoothness and unnoticeablility of the key changes is
reminiscent of Bach. You don't even notice that the song ends in a
different key than in begins. About half way through the song (which
is 8 minutes long) it changes to a kind of dark and depressing mood with
some really virtuosic drumming, then goes right into a guitar solo.
Towards the end there's a total mood swing with acoustic guitars,
strings and piano with the vocals doing the gorgeous chorus theme
slightly slower. Towards the end of that there's a spoken voice saying
some english words (the first letters of which spell "DAHLIA"). After an
immediate mood swing back to the previous style, there is a repeat of
the chorus, followed by an absolutely beautiful strings instrumental
solo, leading into the end of the piece with a return to X's traditional
heavy metal style which they started out with.(In case you didn't know,
a Dahlia is a kind of flower)
2. Scars
Quite different from X's usual style, mainly because the music was
written by Hide. It has a hard, driving beat and haunting vocals. The
guitar parts are pretty simple, basically just playing the tonic and
fifth of the chord, which is pretty stylistic of Hide. It has some
really nice solos in it, and in a few places takes on a kind of
pseudo-jazz feel. One of the things that makes it have such a hard
feel to it is that they tune down to D for this one (a whole step
lower than standard tuning), where as they usually tune to Eb (half step
lower than standard). It's a nice change from the lush flowing beauty
of Dahlia, but isn't quite as interesting.
3. Longing ~Togireta Melody~
Quite a gorgeous ballad. The chorus comes in shortly after a minute,
which I think is a bit too early for a 7 minute ballad. This song uses
all members, although it's kind of a break for the guitars. Short of
solos, the meat of the song is carried by strings. Yoshiki and Heath too
have simpler parts than normal (usual in ballads). The highlight of the
song is Toshi, whose voice isn't as scratchy as it is in some ballads.
The beauty of the melody and the lyrics makes up for everything else it
lacks, though. (Togireta means "paused" or "interrupted")
4. Rusty Nail
Starts out with an interesting synthesized arpeggiated theme. This is
another song that's almost a ballad, but not quite. It has a harder beat
and more violent sounding guitars, but it also has a smooth lush melody
and string accompaniment. The timing on this song is just right so that
you never get bored listening to it. The first time I heard it I was
expecting something heavier like Scars die to the name. While the name
doesn't seem quite fitting to me, it's still a great song.
5. White Poem I
This is something I've never heard out of X before. It's creepy and
yet somewhat calm. I get the idea that this is pretty much Yoshiki's
brainchild, as it's all strings, piano, drums, Yoshiki talking, and
Toshi. I really like the eerie beauty of this song, yet it's somewhat
repetitive, which is its only downside.
6. Crucify my Love
The second all-out ballad on the CD. Unlike Longing, however, it has
no guitars in it, which gives it more of a smooth, soft feel. It's all
strings, piano, and voice. The lyrics and melody are very sad and the
lack of guitars makes it stand out on the album. It's rather short for a
ballad, about four and a half minutes, although that's about the
right time for the material used. If this were a longer song with more
variety, it could've been one of their best, although it's still quite
good as it is.
7. Tears
One of the saddest X songs ever. It was written by Yoshiki for his
father, who committed suicide. It was later co-dedicated to Hide after
he did the same thing. It starts out with just strings, piano, and
voice. The countermelody in the strings accompanies the vocal line
very nicely. Once the guitars and drums come in, the melody (now in
English) becomes more powerful and heart-wrenching. One thing that
sets this apart from most songs about death is that, although it's in
a minor key, uses mostly major chords, giving it a yearning and yet
somehow hopeful mood. It's not dark and depressing, it's light and
depressing. This is one song where it's not hard to find yourself crying
along. The song is 10 minutes long, although a little less than half of
that is just strings (although there's a spoken poem, which I can't
understand all of since it's not written in the lyrics), as well as
having quite a long fade out. Definitely one of the songs I look forward
to on this album.
8. Wriggle
A short instrumental piece (you can't call it a song since it has no
vocals). It's more traditional X style, although it reminds me alot of
some of Hide's work. It was written by Heath and Pata, which is why it's
not quite like most X songs. It's short and not very interesting.
9. Drain
One of the better songs on the album. Written by Hide, the lyrics are
99% in English. It's a song about madness and insanity, a nice return to
their previous style after a barrage of ballads. This also appears on
Zilch as What's Up Mr. Jones. The two versions are musically similar,
but I prefer the X Japan version's lyrics. A very nice song, although it
could stand to be a bit longer.
10. Forever Love
Kind of a mixture between Crucify my Love and Tears. The opening is a
testament to how good of a vocalist Toshi is (even though he doesn't
have that great of a voice). Any vocalist will tell you it's hard to
start out acapello and stay perfectly in tune. More amazingly is that in
concert he never gets a starting pitch. This has very pretty lyrics,
although the melody can get a bit old after a while. This album mix is
all strings, and there is a nice violin and cello duet interlude,
although the violinist is a bit out of tune in some spots. In addition,
towards the end you can tell where Toshi's voice track was spliced, but
all in all a very nice song.
All in all this is quite a nice cross section of X's styles, even though
it is somewhat weighted on the side of the ballads. This was the
final step in X's evolution soundwise. It's much smoother and fuller
sound than their earlier works, which tended to be grainier and a bit
thin in places. Definitely one of my favorites and one I recommend to
everyone.
--
一生只爱X！
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