Rina Aiuchi – ORANGE★NIGHT November 10, 2009

Track Listing

1. ORANGE★NIGHT
2. CALL MY NAME
3. Dakishimete
4. ORANGE★NIGHT -instrumental-

1. ORANGE★NIGHT

Finally, after a while of not so good A-sides, we get an actually catchy one in ORANGE★NIGHT.  While it does retain the pop/rock sound that was back in “PLAYGIRL”, it’s actually more catchier and not as demanding in the vocals as previous songs were.  Rina’s vocals are still not perfect in the arrangement and seems too wrong here.  Still, it’s one of her best A-sides in a while.

2. CALL MY NAME

The first B-side of the single, CALL MY NAME is a ballad track, but with traces of rock and synth to add some style to it.  At first I ignored it because there wasn’t really anything special about it, but hearing it again, it’s actually a better track suited for Rina.  She doesn’t sound terribly out of place, nor as thin on “ORANGE★NIGHT”.  After a while though, the song becomes rather monotonous and unmemorable, but still is a good B-side.

3. Dakishimete

Sadly, the worst track has to be Dakishimete.  It seemed to strip even more instruments and left us with an R&B track.  It feels stretched out too long and doesn’t exactly move itself along as it should.  I’ll admit that Dakishimete probably is the best of Rina’s vocals on the single, but the arrangement is a huge borefest.

 

 

Rina’s 2nd single of the era is rather unimpressive on me.  ORANGE★NIGHT is pretty good, but her voice isn’t suited for this style of music and we’ve known that for quite a while.  CALL MY NAME and Dakishimete are poor tries at being worthy at being at the top of Rina’s ballads and fell flat.  I hope things change soon…