In My House intends to be a bluesman's J-pop album, but falls off the mark, because the two styles don't really go with each other -- with sunny J-pop, you never feel the blues. It's still more interesting than a generic Oricon entry, though, not the least because
Masayoshi Yamazaki avoids the most typical pitfall of Japanese commercial music -- monotony: the album has a lot to offer, from reggae of "Babylon No Juunin" to "Ronsamuraida," which tails
Deep Purple's "Speed King." For the most part,
In My House is quite mellow, but not in the Remioromen way of "play sweet all the time"; rather,
Yamazaki aspires to be the Japanese answer to
Chris Rea, or delves into '60 pop on the more upbeat numbers -- a perfectly logical move, considering how much
the Beatles and their hordes of followers valued the same sunny vibe as J-pop did a few decades later. But
Yamazaki never fully embraces either the retro pop or any other style he touches on this record, and this is actually the biggest flaw of the album -- it's just too unsure of its own identity: mood-wise, everything fits, but the music drifts between bluesy guitar leads and sugary pop bits without either catching a really powerful groove or shrouding the audience in "kawaii" background noises like a true J-pop album is supposed to.
In My House has examples of good retro blues, both fast and slow, and every now and then the album sounds tantalizingly close to
Crazy Ken Band, but in the long run,
Yamazaki trades hooks for melody, which is nice, but ultimately predictable. For the J-pop world,
In My House is still a standout, but its ambitions to go beyond the (admittedly) pretty stale genre conventions fall flat.