Album Reviews
For the record, my dad and I bought three original music cds in a single trip to Odyssey Makati. We spent what could have been a month's worth of baon even with the apparent fiscal crisis. But it's Christmas anyway, so it keeps my guilt feeling away. Here are the cds and my personal review of each in a rundown:
Seal Best 1991-2004
As the album title suggests, this is a compilation of Seal's greatest hits within the thirteen years of his musical life. I am actually not a fan of his. I never cared about his music, and I only knew one Seal song: Kiss From A Rose. But because my dad plays the tracks nonstop, I'm beginning to reconsider.
Seal is indeed The Voice. He has an impressive and powerful voice which magnifies the emotions embedded in his songs. Like most black singers I know, he sends his hits to the top even without the publicity/advertisement. Because he has The Voice that could do wonders, he makes it to the top even just through the people's word of mouth.
The album Seal Best 1991-2004 is a two-disc package of R&B hits, with the second disc all in acoustic format. So far, I've enjoyed Kiss From A Rose (original and acoustic versions), Killer, and Walk On By. His other songs are indeed new to me, but they have the same soulful substance anyway. Not bad for your 500 pesos.
Kitchie Nadal
Kitchie's self-titled album is almost in everybody's Christmas wishlist. Why wouldn't it? Her album's a great bargain for any Pinoy Pop Rock fan like me. She has fourteen songs in it - mostly hit makers. Her songs Breathe, Same Ground, Huwag na Huwag Mong Sasabihin, and Run are my personal favorites. Her album cover too, is so cool! I was thinking I could pattern my next blog template from her album layout.
One thing about her album: it highlights her honest talent. She wrote 80% of the songs in her pile, she plays the guitar, she sings effortlessly (i couldn't pick up where she gets her voice), and she did the lay-outing and designing of her album cover! All that plus her really beautiful face! Oooh...I really love Kitchie! No wonder she's gone this far within a few years in the industry.
More on the vocal aspect...she sounded a lot like a foreign artist. Much like Natalie Imbruglia, Jewel, and the Cranberries' female vocalist. Her accent was crisp and so her words came clear. And in all her songs, she knew how to stir the listener's sleeping emotions. Bravissimo...really.
Lea Salonga The Christmas Album
However for the first time, a Lea Salonga album disappointed me. Not because of her voice (that will never happen)...but because of the tracks in it. The Christmas Album does not contain the all the songs in her concert repertoire. In fact, it was just a republished version of her 2000 Christmas Album. Because I was such in a hurry the night we bought it, I was not able to check the cover in full detail.
The album, it turns out, is a 12-track collection of purely Christmas songs - Pasko Na, Sinta Ko, Sana Ngayong Pasko, Even Santa Fell in Love, The Christmas Song, etc. (except for one: The Gift, which she did in duet with Michael K. Lee). It does not include the duets she with Ogie Alcasid, Christian Bautista, Erik Santos, and her husband Robert Chien at her concert. Now I wonder if I'd still listen to the cd as much as I do now, once the Christmas season is over.
But I'm still guilt-free as of now. It's a Lea album anyway. Her The Gift version is already stand alone track, and I wouldn't exchange it for another version ever. It is the perfect antidote for Piolo Pascual's earlier version. Lea just seems to bring back the song's meaning that Piolo took away.And yeah...her version of Twelve Days of Christmas with The Company and MPO is truly a Christmas treat.
