I like it a lot on first blush, and by and large I think I’ll keep liking it as I listen more. Strong start on the first album, it’s funky and fun, the songs feel tight. Easy to listen to pop-production that doesn’t feel boring or reductive, I could see myself liking it a lot. Second album keeps it up, third album changes up the vibe a little but stays strong, mostly just feels to me like a display of some range, I’m there for it.
Fourth album, Shi’s Journey (希遊記), is stellar. It made me start to second guess my stance on the first three albums— surely, if this is her work, I must have been under appreciating her earlier stuff, right? It’s only got songs I really really like, 100% of the songs hit. I would call it… not a perfect album, that’s not the right word. An unblemished album? In the sense that there are no real mistakes, nothing I would’ve wanted changed, nothing that stood out to me as obviously needing more attention. Like, I definitely don’t like it as much as, say, Conditions of a Punk (obviously not, that’s one of my absolute favorites, but still), but there are songs in Conditions of a Punk that I have some pretty distinct dissatisfactions with, songs that for whatever reason I feel blemish something otherwise incredibly clean. I might not like Shi’s Journey as much as some others, but I can’t deny that it is incredibly clean— it’s an unblemished album.
Whether Shi Shi grows on me and develops a deeper connection or not, I’m super impressed with the level of craft here, it’s awesome. After Shi’s Journey I don’t like it as much. It’s still good, just not as good. In particular the most current album as of time of writing, Boomerang, is not particularly impressive to me especially after hearing other stuff from her I like so much. It’s definitely my least favorite. It’s not bad, it’s just a hard shift into a style that I find so much less engaging. Bummer.
All things considered, I think I’m looking at a high A-. I suspect that at least two or three of these albums are gonna grow on me a lot, so I’m excited for that. But for now, A-
RELISTEN1: I was right! These albums have all grown on me already! I definitely like her more than I did at first, which is saying something, because I was pretty complementary from the get-go. The first three albums, upon relisten, were definitely better than I gave them credit for, just as predicted. Not loads better, necessarily. I might not call them amazing, I might not gush over them, but they’re very good, very solid. 女・人 Woman in particular has some songs and a general vibe and aesthetic that I find very appealing. The latest two albums, Where is SHI? and Boomerang, are also better than I gave them credit for, but the jump isn’t as big and it’s from a lower starting point. That is, I do think they’re pretty alright, but neither of them really hit the vibes that I liked most in the earlier stuff. At all. Which, again, is fine, but it’s a shame.
Altogether, I think the general solidifying and setting of my good feelings toward her are enough to bump up to a straight A. Gg Shi Shi
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