Hula Girls (Dig) [Import] [PR]

Jake Shimabukuro （Hitchhike Records）

CD
発売日：2007年9月18日(火)

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曲目リスト ※試聴はAmazonでどうぞ。

On the Road
Walking Down Rainhill
The Dance
Touch
Hawaiian Eyes
Opening Day
Hula Girl
Heartbeat
Heartbeat
Touch
Hula Girl
Local Boys
Walking Down Rainhill
Wish On My Star
Graduation
Hula Girl

レビュー (Amazon)
The ukulele isn't supposed to sound like this. Jake Shimabukuro has been defying uke expectations for years now, playing everything from heavy metal to pastoral reveries. The strictures of film composing afford him little opportunity to stretch out, although the opening track certainly promises that, with a breezy jazz-fusion romp that recalls Bela Fleck without the bluegrass aroma. Hula Girls is a film about a Japanese mining town in the mid '60s in which some girls decide to take up hula dancing. Other than the opening "On the Road," Shimabukuro sticks mostly to variations on wistful and romantic, with occasional lapses into the sentimental, but always succeeds in taking the ukulele beyond exotic novelty, especially when it sounds like an electric guitar. "Hula Girl" as sung by Jennifer Perri is forgettable middle-of-the-road pop, but an instrumental take by Shimabukuro taps the plaintive side of the song. He also reveals a gift for arrangement with a cute guitar-and-ukulele duet on "Heartbeat" that also appears in a poignant minimalist version for solo piano. Hula Girls doesn't quite hold up as an album, especially with some buoyant '50s-style Hawaiian pop songs sung by the vocal trio Na Leo Pilimehana, including "Hawaiian Eyes" and "Local Boys." Hula Girls is a strong soundtrack, but just a pleasant album. --John Diliberto