New Year's Fresh

AMG Review of New Year's Fresh

Ian Martin
All Music Guide

In New Year's Fresh, eclectic Japanese singer Yukari Fresh starts out by recording her cats, then starts playing musical games with the looping waltz-time "3 Beats," before finally producing a quirky but more or less regularly structured pop song in "Radio Active Man." Like much of Yukari Fresh's work, New Year's Fresh relies heavily on these kinds of musical jokes, with tracks cluttered up with wacky sound effects and frequent juxtapositions of different musical styles, giving the album the sensation of channel surfing on a Saturday afternoon. Of the 14 tracks here, only about half feature vocals, but where Yukari's voice does appear it is cute and coquettish, although it is rarely given the opportunity of a workout on anything resembling a fully formed song -- which is a shame, because when the album settles down, as on the summery "Lost and Found" (tellingly the only track entirely written and produced by Yukari herself), it reveals a capacity for supreme loveliness. At only around half an hour in length, New Year's Fresh can't be accused of outstaying its welcome, and plenty of sweet melodies will bring unexpected smiles to listeners, but where an album like Plus-Tech Squeeze Box's Cartooom! made a virtue of its pinballing, cut-and-paste hyperactivity, New Year's Fresh lacks the guiding philosophy to hold all its ideas together.