The latest record from Italian-Japanese singer-songwriter Angela Aki is everything its title, Answer, suggests. With the album, she gives us her views and answers to the questions of life, love and music. Aki broke into the mainstream Japanese pop music scene with her wonderfully soothing debut Home in 2006.
In Answer, she continues with her breezy tunes, but gets a little more personal and sentimental. Lead single Letter to My 15-Year-Old Self is Aki's reply to a letter she wrote at that age asking questions about life. The melody is contagious and the singing passionate. But the abrupt change in mood when the hand-clap-filled bridge comes in disrupts the flow.
The singer's J-pop cover of Bob Dylan's Knockin' on Heaven's Door transforms the classic into a hip, infectious, sing-along number. The title song is a jaunty, mid-tempo track that, alongside Final Destination, would form part of a perfect road-trip compilation.
Aki tries her hand at a jazzy mood in Our Story, but it's the reggae vibe of Reflection that really shows her musical talents.
The highlight is the 10-minute experimental piece Requiem, in which Aki shows the full range of her talents.
