New S/mileage, Morning Musume and Buono!

The past week or so has been fairly exciting, with new music from three of the Hello! Project groups. (Well, there has also been a radio preview of C-ute's new single but it was too short to tell anything from really.)

First up is S/mileage's 'Suki yo, Junjou Hankouki'.

I have too admit, I loved this song as soon as I heard the concert rip. The 'Suki yo, suki yo, suki yo' part of the chorus is just too infectious! The costumes, that we saw way back, are somewhat unrelated to the song but, hey, they are a cute pointer towards the current Olympics. The choreography is actually pretty decent but I think S/mileage have always been fairly fortunate as far as routines go. Also, the main set seems, to me, what High King's 'Cinderella/Complex' should have been. The set is similar in terms of lighting and colour palette to that of 'C/C' but is much larger than that of the former, allowing the dance routine to flow and not seem overcrowded. The lighting of some of the close-ups is, in my opinion, a bit too wishy-washy but all in all I would say that this was a successful music video for a great little song. This also is the first single where I feel the 2nd generation members are placed on the same 'tier' so to speak, as Dawa and Kanyon. I also really appreciate this amount of spotlight on Rina. She is a lovely girl with a sweet voice and it's about time she got to rock some more solos!

Next is two new songs from the upcoming Morning Musume album '13 Colourful Character' that are also being used as audition songs.

First off, Reina's trousers are mightily distracting! Also, I noticed that Sayumi actually dances very well these days.   
The song, titled 'WHAT'S UP? Ai wa douna no yo~ is interesting and experimental. Just in this short clip we already have great synths, rap and speech like lines. It really is something. Opening song?
Part of me wants to know who that is on the chorus now that Ai 'chorus voice' Takahashi is no longer in the group. Whoever it is has done a fine job.
The dance has a sort of 'The Peace'-like move at the beginning and other parts remind me of a much more technically demanding 'Kiiroi Osora de BOOM BOOM BOOM'. I am really looking forward to seeing this one live.

The other song is 'Be Alive', a warming ballad. It is a very nice, while not being terribly innovative, song that really sings out 'Morning Musume'. The vocals actually sound fairly pleasant, especially considering that this is now a rather inexperienced group. Overall, I think this creates a rather good impression of the new Momusu.

Last but in no way least is Buono! with 'Never gonna stop!' from their upcoming mini-album 'Sherbet'.

I always like Buono songs but at times I thought some of them were just a bit too musically similar for my tastes, probably due to them being pigeonholed into the sort of pop/rock sound. Of course songs like 'Partenza let's go' were amazing breaths of fresh air and I think that while not going such an extreme again Buono has retained a certain variety this year with 'Hatsukoi Cider', 'DEEP MIND' and now 'Never gonna stop!' all being very differently styled and I really appreciate that.
This time they have gone with a very optimistic and bright style however the vocals and parts of the instrumental have a much heavier edge making this song very fun to listen to.
The music video is very sweet and I love how they included footage from the concert in France as it just shows how far Buono have come as a group and just how they are 'Never gonna stop!'.