Glay

Glay are the leaders of the J-rock tribe, having sold a number of discs that, were they in the Western hemisphere, would have made them omnipresent guests of Californian halls of fame and rock encyclopedias. This means two things: first, they can't possibly play anything new and/or unexpected, especially 20 years deep into their career, and second, they are better at what they do than anyone else. Love Is Beautiful is shining proof of that. It is 14 tracks of typical J-rock fare, where Glay are as keen to use a hard rock riff as some big strings (there are actually a lot of those) or a punky chorus, but only as song arrangements, never really settling for any other style beside frantic guitar pop. But Glay's bag of tricks is by no means limited to sheer playing speed, with even the tracks that are meant to be filler ("American Innovation") wielding power of the "goddamn listen to me" kind. Besides, while Love Is Beautiful isn't the most dynamic album in history, it does invoke a variety of moods, from sentimental to upbeat to some goofiness (again, quite effective here). So the grand total is that Glay have a very strong release on their hands, the only problem being that they overexerted their power: the record could've been trimmed 15 minutes and still remained a bomb. But that's probably a sign of courtesy towards the Japanese audience who is obliged to shell out ridiculous amounts of money for CDs -- and this care scores some more overall points for Glay, even if at the cost of dragging the album down a bit. ~ Alexey Eremenko, All Music Guide