Easy Listening is Maaya's first mini-album and contains about half the number of songs an average full album
would. Once again, there is variety of tracks on this cd. There some slow songs, some fast ones, etc. Fans
of Maaya's English singing will be happy to know that there are two English songs on Easy Listening.
Track 1, Inori, starts off the album with a soulful song
that has some faint background vocals. When I first heard this song, I was completely enchanted by it.
For some reason it reminds me of Watashi wa Okano Uekara Kabin wo
Nageru from Maaya's Lucy cd.
The second track, titled Blind Summer Fish, is an
upbeat song that also makes good use of background vocals. Maybe it's just me, but the Japanese
seem to like write a lot of songs using the word "fish".
Doreddo 39 seems a quite bit different from Maaya's previous
songs in that Kanno used a tribal beat for this track. I didn't enjoy this track that much at first, but it quickly
grew on me. The beat is quite catchy and makes me want to dance in my chair while listening to it.
Afternoon Repose is the first English song on this album.
After re-listening to this song, I thought to myself that it might as well be titled "Easy Listening".
Afternoon Repose is a light hearted song, something that I could imagine myself listening to on an
easy listening radio station (a Japanese station probably).
Track 5, Bitter Sweet, is the song I least enjoy. In some
ways I feel it's an experiment gone horribly wrong. Kanno used some deep bass instruments for this track,
perhaps in an attempt to capture the style of the R&B songs in the US. In any case, it's a decent song, but
nothing that great. It's one of Maaya's less stunning songs in my opinion.
The sixth track, Another Grey Day in the Big Blue World, is
the other English song. Unlike Afternoon Repose, this is moody song with a sad tone. This is my favorite
song on Easy Listening, although I can't quite place why. Maybe it's the lyrics themselves, or the beautiful
piano music. In any case, another great English song from Maaya.
Ah, the end so soon... Maaya finishes this album with a nice upbeat song titled
Birds. Many Maaya fans I've talked to like this track the most.
It's definitely a good song, but for some reason I don't like it as much as people. What I enjoy about this
song is where Maaya starts singing in English, "I... will...I will be there..."
