Utada
Exodus

THE REVIEW

I had the opportunity to verify, with 'Ultra Blue' by Hikaru Utada, that jpop is truly a genre. It doesn't just mean "Japanese pop": it has its own characteristics, and for this reason, one must approach it with an open mind if they are used to listening to Western music.
But this is not the case. Here it's not about Hikaru Utada, but Utada: the person is the same, the project is different. This artist's American debut, who is an unparalleled star in her homeland, is an album that manages to be at the same time background music, profound music, and frivolous dance music. It's practically the perfect album.

Only you don't realize this immediately. Because the greatness of 'Exodus', excellently produced and crafted in both sound and lyrics, emerges slowly. And the beauty is that Utada is exquisitely catchy. After all, this is an album primarily dance, with a Western flair. It stands up to all the critics who liberally use the word "cunning" when it's, instead, about the pleasure of indulging the ear. This twenty-four-year-old multitasker also uses her voice with certain mastery. She writes everything and works on the production (when needed, she gets help from, for example, Timbaland in the beautiful " Exodus '04") and churns out twelve little gems (plus the intro and an apt intermezzo) ranging from the pounding "Devil Inside" to a trip-hop-like "Hotel Lobby", to those "Wonder 'bout" and "Let Me Give You My Love" that seem to want to assemble songs with a soulful heart to the danceable atmospheres that permeate the album. She reaches maximum lightheartedness in the refrain of "Easy Breezy" (You're easy breezy and I'm Japaneesy... I challenge anyone not to hum it in a loop). It drives without pause, through drums that obsess; it relaxes, suggests.

An album so danceable, yet whose best moments, without taking anything away from the rest (actually adding something), are the sweetest ones: the already mentioned "Exodus '04", "Animato" (enchanting in its band-like rhythm), "Kremlin Dusk" (disarming, sincere, touching in its vocalizes, perfect in the moments it seems to gallop) and the concluding, emotional "About Me", in which Utada unveils herself to the person she loves.

A wonderful universe of overlapping feelings, capable of satisfying both the most refined audience and the more mainstream one. It's a pity that the Americans didn't understand it enough.