Review Summary: Reinvention that doesn't kill the talent.
There comes a time in an artist's career where they either feel the need or have to reinvent themselves, whether to stay relevant or if its because they no longer want to make the style of music they formerly made. This has been done by several different artists to varying degrees of success of failure, but no artist has done this quite as well as Japanese singer Nana Kitade on her fourth full-length solo effort
Violet Blaze, which follows her returning from her eight-year hiatus from her solo work and departing the rock sound she had carried for the past 12 years, both with her previous pop punk solo work and with her bands The Teenage Kissers (which veered into harder territory) and the short-lived Loveless, and boldly switching into full-blown pop territory not unlike what Gwen Stefani did in 2004.
While many fans of Kitade's pop punk/hard rock work may be a bit skeptical of her trying something that seems so far out of her comfort zone, she has accomplished this transition exceptionally well; she very much understands how the new genre of choice is another ballgame, but she also manages to keep the greatest asset of her solo pop punk work: its just plain fun. Kitade never really took herself too seriously as a solo artist (especially during her sophmore effort
I Scream), which is what truly allows everything to shine through here. The production work is understandably very clear, processed and sounding great, and her voice has improved drastically compared to even her debut effort
-18- eighteen, which arguably had her best vocal work prior to this album's release. By far the stand-out tracks here are "Saddest Song", one of the most emotional tracks in her entire discography, and "Nasty Radio", which captures the energy of her previous work and puts it into her new sound the greatest out of all the other tracks on the album.
Violet Blaze, in the end, is perhaps the most solid addition to Kitade's arsenal in years—a very refreshing change of sound that manages to keep virtually all her previous fans while also capturing a new generation of fans that will undoubtedly follow her through her next journeys, because there's definitely even more good to come.
