Shiina Ringo - Shouso Strip (2000)

Since I posted Tokyo Jihen's Adult earlier, it only made sense to upload one of Ringo's solo albums. Once again allmusic fails me, so here are some reviews from Rate Your Music:

"A great pop/rock album, that's exciting, exuberant and very, very catchy. The powerful, emotionally-charged vocals are a treat, and the little experimental tweaks in the instrumentation keep things vibrant and interesting. The chorus of "ギブス" (aka "Gips") is so uplifting it should lift the roof off your house. Highly recommended." - tommo (4.5/5)

"First of all in order to describe this to you, I must digress that on my initial experience with Ringo I couldn't put my finger on which side of the pretentious, over produced pop, mish mash/genius obscure rock album line this thing fell on. So of course I listened to it non-stop for days, researched everything I could find out about her and this album and now I can safely say that this falls on the latter side of that line.

It's a crazy, shape shifting experience, full of great, sly, mysterious guitar lines very reminiscent of Jonny Greenwood [partially due to the fact that I believe the guitar player (her boyfriend at the time) uses a Roland Space Echo or a similiar effect]. One other impressive thing about Shoso Strip is that although it's a solo album, the focus is on the music and atmosphere as a whole and not solely on Ringo.My theory about the album is that she had gone to the U.K. during the release of O.K. Computer, which had to have an influence on her music, she returned to Japan, and came out with this gem. While a slight few of the pop laden tracks get a bit average the rest of the album makes up for them. And although Ringo's voice can be a little annoying when she does her Alanis Morisette impression, she can really emote, create some memorable melodies, and shift along to the intricate changes with ease. Sometimes she does sing in a style similiar to Fiona Apple as well. On top of all that, this album is so skillfully produced that it just flows so effortlessly through all the chaotic and beautiful changes, it almost requires multiple listens.I do have a gripe with some of the guitars on here which can be really genius, but on a few tracks they seem overly simple, with your basic four chord, perfect fifth rifffage...but I'm being a bit hypercritical. Ultimately this is pretty amazing and seriously near perfect, which means a lot coming from me because I really had little affinity for female vocalists until I heard this." - TheWestWind (4.5/5)

Get it here.