|
KAGRRA ONE MAN : AUGA ANNIVERSARY Date : 3 March 2002 Venue : Shibuya On Air West The On Air West, though it is across the street from the On Air East, bears almost no resemblance to its neighbor. It's a lot smaller, the vending tables are outside in front of the convenience store, and it just doesn't have the same atmosphere, largely due to the lack of space. Kagrra, however, as usual, put on a tight, well-chereographed show. They even played their new single forthcoming on 04/06, and the acoustic version of Sakura that is the bonus track on their album of the same title. I say well-choreographed because Isshi dances and sings perfectly, which you think would be a benefit. This is actually a big problem, in my opinion. Isshi becomes the center of attention, and things start to take on the air of being too well-rehearsed. There's no real spontaneity, and you start to know what to expect before it happens. This glaring focus on the singer ("Pierrot Syndrome" may be a good term for it) really causes the show to be not very memorable. For example, none of the other band members said a single word during the whole show. Yet at the same time, Isshi doesn't banter much with the audience outside of what the band's putting out, and the standard "natsukashii" stuff that all the bands use as filler when they've got nothing else to say. Kagrra's main stumbling block to becoming more well-known, or even getting a major label deal is their style. Musically they're solid, they perform flawlessly, but it's to the point where if you've been to one of their shows, you've just about seen everything. The only changes are slight variances in the set list. Today being the 1 year anniversary of Sakura's release (and I think it was also the Doll's Festival), they added the acoustic version of the song (or more properly, half of it) to the set list. The last song is always an audience singalong to the same song. They're good musicians, and Isshi has a really impressive vocal range, but their shows are very standard, and everything revolves around Isshi. This is not to say that Isshi doesn't captivate your attention. He's always moving, and drawing attention to himself. He behaves a lot like Izam does on stage in terms of his overall behavior. Isshi doesn't do anything strange, but his facial expressions and so forth really seem Izam-ish, which may be a good thing, because Shazna was a good band to see live. Unfortunately, since Isshi's singing style doesn't vary a lot with some of their songs, if he's only standing there for some dramatic effect, the show can get boring fast, because there's nothing exciting holding your attention to the stage. He does get the audience involved with all his little dances for the songs, but they're always the same, to the point where the fans know what he's going to do before it happens. Their costumes aren't terribly interesting either. A kimono is a kimono, no matter what color it is. There's only so much you can do with it. I think the biggest departure in style for them was Isshi coming out after a costume change, in basically a bare midriff kimono upper half. Then, at the end of the show, they all came out in their new T-shirts, which aren't terribly exciting, but they aren't kimono, so the audience was doing their little pretend "Oh no, what have you done you blasphemers!" sort of thing. Kagrra's new single, Yume izure chi, is different from the previous stuff they've done. It's a slightly less melodic sort of rock, and Isshi sings in a lower key. It was definitely one of the high points of the show, since it was new and different. The acoustic version of Sakura wasn't bad, but as they did it with the regular version, it got a little too long. I was actually somewhat hopeful that Kagrra might get more popular as a band, because they are talented, but their stage show, while unique, really lacks variety, which is going to absolutely kill them in the long run--even their hardcore fans will get bored with them. There are aspects of their live show which are good, but they're balanced out by a lot of not so good things. They're definitely worth seeing once, but seeing them twice is another matter entirely. Report by, Halley 02/03/04 |