Eternity [Eternity ∞ - Debut Album]

Tracklisting
1) Wonderful World
2) Love
3) Vanity
4) I Will
5) Worth It All
6) Change The World
7) How Far
8) Damn
9) No Apologies
10) Only Human
11) So Deep
12) You Smile
13) Hello Goodbye (Japanese Bonus Track)
14) Broken Lullaby (Japanese Bonus Track)
15) Turn It Up (iTunes Japan Bonus Track)

Eternity is the debut album from the duo Eternity ∞, who are currently signed under the Avex Casa label. It is made up of Jade Villalon, the most popular Sweetbox vocalist since its conception, and GEO, the producer, who also worked with Jade through both Sweetbox and her solo career as Jade Valerie. The album sees the return of the Pop meets Classical nature that was the trademark of Sweetbox in its earlier years, as every track on this album samples a classical piece of music. The album has managed to reach #30 on the Daily Oricon charts. It was released on the 3rd of June, 2009.

It’s been a while since Jade first went solo by now, and all we’ve had from her is one full-length album and a mini-album. Well, now she’s back, and under a new moniker to boot. I think the main question here is: How well does this album hold up to her previous material? Classical and Pop don’t really seem like the easiest genres to mix and match, but let’s see how they did.

To start with, I can easily think of one word to describe the majority of this album: Bubblegum. It is a VERY Bright, and VERY happy album, especially in the early segments. It also has a very distinct synth-pop sound to it at times (Vanity and Change The World are the best examples of this, although Only Human has that slightly darker semi-trance sound to it, as well), which wasn’t exactly prevalent in the past. So, the album has a lot going on. There are also many serious songs on this album, though, and it portrays more than just the visage that life is good. And really, that’s the message this album really seems to be trying to convey. Add that onto the legacy it has to follow up, and it’s going to have to do a lot to live up to its name.

It’s not always a masterpiece. It flows well through the usage of the classical sound that ties each song together, but honestly, there are times when this album sounds VERY generic. This isn’t always a bad thing: Wonderful World, the album opener, is one of the generic songs that manages to sound catchy at the same time, so you can kind of forgive it for that. Hello Goodbye could also be an example of this. It’s very similar to many past Sweetbox songs, so if you’re a follow, it should be very familiar to you by this point, so it doesn’t pull it off as flawlessly. Then again, this could be said for many of the songs on the album if you look at it closely.

Of course, sometimes the pop meets classical mixture is just laughably bad or awkward. The best example of this would be Turn It Up. It’s not exactly BAD, but… It’s much more baroque than the rest of the album, and the way Jade is singing sounds as if she’s trying to convey an attitude that just clashes horribly with the music, and hearing her say things like “Do you want it like this?” and “You’ve never heard it like this” in the chorus just make the clash even worse. It hasn’t got the best lyrics ever, either, so it’s easy to see why it was made a bonus track. So Deep follows a similar issue, but that’s mainly due to Jade’s badly vocodered vocals, so she just sounds awkward when it comes to the chorus.

Of course, the album does use the conveyance of attitude in a beneficial way at certain times. Namely, Vanity and Damn. Vanity is basically a stab at egotistical ways of thinking, and a bashing of self-obsession, while Damn is more about putting people behind you, or not being able to, as the case may be. And there are the cheesier moments that come off rather well, too: I Will, the song about weddings and uncertainty is the largest focus here, though Love and the aforementioned Wonderful World aren’t far behind. With songs like me, it actually doesn’t surprise me that they have this whole wedding-friendly thing going around.

Album Score
A

Favorite Tracks
1) Vanity
2) Wonderful World
3) I Will
4) Worth It All
5) Change The World

This was definitely better than Jade’s solo attempts with Out of the Box and Bittersweet Symphony, but I can’t really say that it beats her old Sweetbox material. It was a nice stab at getting back into the crossover genre, but the album has a few downfalls that make it less enjoyable. The majority of the album WAS enjoyable, and there are only two songs I can really say I hate, but comparing it to older material makes it seem just that much weaker. I am looking forward to what they’ll do next, though, because they did some fantastic things with those classical pieces!

http://img5.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=screenshotdca.jpg

Another Feature

So, this was ORIGINALLY going to come onto Vitamin Drop as a special review, but I thought… What the hell? I may as well do it as a real thing.

So, does anyone remember that Sweetbox special review I did? If so, you should already have some idea of who the “masterminds” behind Eternity ∞ (also informally known as Eternity8, or Eternity Infinity if you want to get technical) are. Eternity8 is a new unit (signed under Avex Casa) that features vocals from Jade Villalon (Obviously pictured above) and the production of GEO (Badly pictured above, probably). It’s very different from the final Sweetbox album that featured Jade, as they’ve gone back to their original ideal for Sweetbox: EVERY track features a sample from a classical piece of music. It’s also a lot more bubblegum than what Sweetbox has done recently, featuring many upbeat cute songs while still having their fair share of darker tracks at the same time. What does stick, though, is the fact that their music is completely in English, despite being a Japanese band for all intents and purposes. (I don’t even know if Jade knows Japanese…) For those curious (and for my own reference when I get to the review), here’s the tracklisting with all 14 tracks and what classical pieces they sampled. They do re-use them a lot though:

Tracklist:
01. Wonderful World (Canon in D Major by Pachelbel)
02. Love (Canon in D Major by Pachelbel)
03. Vanity (First Piano Concerto by Tchaikovsky)
04. I Will (Spring from The Four Seasons by Vivaldi)
05. Worth It All (Nessun Dorma from Turandot by Puccini)
06. Change The World (Exodus by Ernest Gold)
07. How Far (Solveig’s Song by Grieg)
08. Damn (Adagio in G Minor by Albinoni)
09. No Apologies (Sarabande [Keyboard Suite in D Minor”> by Handel)
10. Only Human (Morning Mood by Grieg)
11. So Deep (Tristesse (Étude Op.10 No.3 in E Major by Chopin)
12. You Smile (Canon in D Major by Pachelbel)
13. Hello Goodbye (Gran Partita by Mozart)**
14. Broken Lullaby (The Gymnopédies by Éric Satie)**

(** = Japanese Bonus Track)

(Credit for the tracklisting goes to Sweetbox Nation and the Eternity8 thread there for the tracklisting/links. SORRY FOR FORGETTING TO CREDIT YOU!!! Also, the picture (and cover) does come up there, but I found it somewhere else beforehand. Take it as you will. CREDIT TO THEM FOR IT ANYWAY~)

If the copy and paste worked correctly, you should be able to access previews of the last five tracks. There are previews of the first four, but I’ll look for those later. Anyway, I’ll be beginning with the first album from this pair, aptly titled Eternity ∞. They’re SUPPOSED to be releasing “Love” as a digi-single, but I’m not too sure about what’s happening there. We’ll have to wait and see.

(Also, I’m going to try and write a bit more about the artists I’m featuring now from this time on, as well as including a few preview videos or tracks.)