Love songs [CD+DVD / Jacket A ]

Pretty good album. It needed a little more variety for me. However, she sung quite beautifully on every track. It took me a little time to really get into this one though. And Ayu's new husband is in like half the PVs. Personally, I don't think he's attractive, but it doesn't really bother me. He seems like a nice person to me who treats Ayu right, and that's what matters in a relationship anyways. The cover's rather simple but pretty. The lyrics booklet inside has some GORGEOUS pictures of her. This album actually sorta reminds me of an "A BALLADS 2" type of thing from its songs. It's very enjoyable once you get into it. My favorite PV on here is "do it again". I didn't like the one for "Sweet Season". Was done real well and all. She really put a lot of work into it. Just not my personal sorta thing. Once things get better in Japan(please pray for & help them) I know we'll get some more wonderful songs from Ayu. I'd like an upbeat pop or rockish summer song this year. Anyways, good album to add to your CD collection.

I liked Ayu's album from two years ago, "Next Level," a great deal, chiefly because it had a second disc of songs, taken from live concerts, and a third disc of videos and "Making of" clips that included four videos that I consider the best of the Ayu PV's I've seen. This album has only two discs, a CD with 16 tracks and a DVD with 8 videos and 7 "Making of" clips, but it has better songs than I've heard on any Ayu album since the great albums she made roughly a decade ago. These songs have distinct melodies, eloquent but understated background instrumentals, and strong, dramatic vocal power of the kind that made me a fan of Ayu in the first place (think "A Song for XX" and "M"). Of the 16 tracks, three are short instrumental pieces with no lyrics, so we really only get 13 songs on the album. One of the best, "Seven Days War," is a live track from "Live at Yoyogi, October 11, 2010." My favorite on the album is "Love Song," the first track, which gives us the closest thing to old-school Ayu as anything I've heard from her in at least the last six years. I'm also partial to tracks 2, 3, 4, 7, 11 & 14. However, when I listen to the album (as I have multiple times since buying it), I always listen to and enjoy the whole album in one sitting. The videos are generally over-dramatic but there are a couple of elements that make them noteworthy. For one thing, five of the eight were shot in California, three of them on Hollywood studio backlots, including Universal Pictures, and at Los Angeles landmarks like the Bradbury Building. I actually found the videos more interesting after I'd watched the "Making of" clips and realized the wealth of locations used. Also, Ayu's now-husband, Manuel Schwarz, is an actor in three of the videos and we see her meeting him for the first time (supposedly) in a location shot from the "Virgin Road" 'Making of' clip. (They play a bride-and-groom who drive around the desert on a robbing-and-shooting spree until the cops close in.) The two seem to get closer as the shoot progresses through "Last Angel" and "Love Song." (All three videos are thematically connected.) At one point on location, Ayu complains that she's cold and Manny, as everyone calls him, wraps her in his jacket and pulls her to him, beating a poor female assistant to the punch. For the record, Schwarz, from Austria, looks like a bigger, handsomer version of Keanu Reeves.

A Ayu's best album since Guilty for me. Crossroad, love song, virgin road, november ... are a great songs. PV's are good. A great Ayu!!!