Yes (Normal Edition)(Japan Version)

Yes carries a very distinct style that seems to derive from the American South. While Mika doesn't stick strictly to blues or R&B, she employs a choir for background vocals for most of the album. She even tries her hand at gospel in All Hands Together (Track 5), which starts out with a mystifying scream that sounds like a high note she can't quite reach, leading to a full-out gospel sing-along. The song is actually quite fun, although the choir threatens to drown out Mika's comparatively sharp vocals. Cry No More (Track 4), a hybrid with an R&B melody and blues arrangement, is a more successful attempt at Southern-style music. The slower ballad-like pace allows Mika to slowly work up to the chorus, and she actually makes it until the very end when she falls short with the high notes.

Despite the attempt for a brand-new style, I was surprised to find that Yes is actually mostly written and produced by the same team behind Music. While I found composer Lori Fine's contributions in Music unfitting for what that album was trying to achieve, her style actually fits much better in Yes. This time, she contributes four tracks - the previously mentioned All Hands Together and the triple threat of Black & Blue (Track 7), Joy (Track 8), and The Dividing Line (Track 9). Black & Blue is actually an energetic follow-up to the sixth track, Dance with the Devil, featuring the same style of sunny rock-pop-with-an-attitude. Joy slows down the momentum with its bare piano arrangement that keeps Yes on the sunny side of things, despite Mika's subpar katakana-driven English pronunciation ("Sank kyu/Sank kyu/You bring me my joy"). The Dividing Line, a friendly mix of R&B and pop, is the highlight of Lori's contributions to the album thanks to the well-written melody.

One of the great things about Music was seeing Mika's ability to choose songs that, for the most part, seemed to fit her vocals. Slow melancholic ballad with a strange alternative twist is Mika's forte, and about half of Music captured that perfectly. As "Nana", I thought Mika captured the look, but not the vocals, of a punk rocker. Yes features a Mika who is branching out even further by trying to please her fans with a gentler sound while challenging herself with a fresh sound. However, Mika is mostly out of her league; her voice simply isn't strong enough for the genres she's trying for, especially when there are more powerful Japanese crooners out there like Misia and Ayaka who can take those songs on easily. As a result, most of the songs in Yes sound more like "Mika Nakashima takes on fill-in-the-blank genre" rather than comfortable interpretations of the genres.

Nevertheless, Mika does manage to comfortably fit into a few of the tracks. However, some of them happen to be the label-mandated pop ballads that Mika so desperately tries to escape in Yes. While opening track I Love You is a cover of the Yutaka Ozaki classic that fails to match the original, it works as a way to establish the sound of the album. The second track, Mienai Hoshi ("Invisible Stars"), also the theme song for hit drama Haken no Hinkaku, would have been a solid pop single if it didn't sound so similar to the 2002 hit Will. Still, Yes deserves more than just a gold star for effort, as it's a conscious attempt to maintain a balance between commercial J-pop and a fresh sound. Even if Mika's efforts are not wholly successful, the album still deserves recognition for its ambitions.

by Kevin Ma