Search - Original Love :: Soul Liberation

The best of "main period" Original Love

David Goodwin | Westchester, NY United States | 02/13/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

""Soul Liberation" is former-P5-frontman Takao Tajima's third album with his solo project, "Original Love." If we're talking about the world of commercial viability, though, "Soul Liberation" is really the band's *second* album in what I like to think of as "main-period" Original Love: the slightly-MOR, smooth-jazz-rock-bossa period that extends from "Love Love Love" to 1996's "Desire," before things start to get a little weird with "Eleven Graffiti."



As bookended, Original Love makes a kind of music which is impossible to describe accurately, but is immediately identifiable once you've heard it. It's a slightly sleazy, slightly jazzy, slightly MOR, exuberent stylistic blend that remains surprisingly consistent across his catalog. It's on "Soul Liberation," though, that the formula works best. The AOR sensibility of "Love Love Love" gets pushed back a bit; instead, Tajima goes for something more akin to jazz fusion, with some delightful results. Standouts include the opener "Psychology" (perhaps the most fusion-y track on the album), the Prince-groove of "Scandal," the one unlikely rock track ("Love Circuit"), and the utterly incomprehensible (and hilariously be-titled) "Million Secrets of Jazz."



So why a four-star rating? Simply put, I'm clearly not the target audience for this sort of style; outside of the tracks I noted above, there's an awful lot of schlock. It's *enjoyable* MOR schlock, but it's schlock nonetheless. If you like smooth, super-emotive balladeering, you'll love this. My preferred Original Love period, though, comes as Tajima begins to experiment a bit more with his "formula." For that formula as its absolute best, check out "Soul Liberation.""