Spiran Icon Throws Her Heart into Music


Luca (SP)  This is truly an exciting time for Spira.  A reawakening of sorts is taking place with the shackles of Yevon being shed, and mere years later, culture is flourishing.  I am enjoying covering the reemerging music scene, and the subject of my article today is the reason for the Spiran reawakening itself.  After settling down and starting a family, Yuna has restarted her musical career with her first complete album, Confessions of a Traitor, a witty nod to her status during her epic journey to slay Sin.  

The best way to listen to this album is to treat each song as its individual entity, rather than try to develop a scope of the album as a whole.  The album is diverse, but it lacks direction.  On the flip side, however, Yuna opens up as a music artist, transforming herself into much more than a vanilla gimmicky artist that you saw a couple of years before.  If you wanted to put the album into a specific category, it would have to be alternative, with an emphasis on alternative.  Yuna and her band, The Gullwings, branch out into many differing genres, sometimes more than one to a song, and somehow make it work.  

My Friends is a song about all of Yuna's guardians on her pilgrimage, and if you listen closely during the song, you can hear backing vocals from every single living member of the journey, a nice dedicating touch.  Making a much-requested appearance in the album is the live recording of 1000 Words that she performed a couple of years back in the midst of Spiran unrest.  She has a few heart-pouring belters such as Wounded and Dreaming, as well as a heart-felt song dedicated to her husband, Tidus, which is titled Beaches of Besaid.  Yuna even layers some rhythm and flow to contrast with her deep, sometimes growling ballads, both of which come off as needing more work but serve as a very nice and surprising touch.  

The biggest masterpiece of CoaT, however, is Goodbye.  The song is a fusion rock/blues song and is very quiet and subdued, but it provides the perfect bedrock for Yuna to open up wells of resentment that dig much deeper inside than you would think and explain her final Fuck You to the corrupt statehood that was Yevon.  

Listening to the album as a whole, CoaT feels kind of empty.  However, listening to each song on its own, every song is definitely worth having in your collection.  It's a brilliant debut for Yuna, and hopefully with time and experience, she can refine her direction.  Confessions of a Traitor is one of the better albums coming out this year, and it would be wise to pick it up.