L/R is a fairly middling anime that lightly spoofs the British spy genre while also trying to be a somewhat serious story in its own right. And you can't do a British spy story without appropriate music. Unfortunately, the music on this album doesn't quite get the job done.

This album, as you may note by the "Vocal Side" in the title, is a collection of vocal songs from the show. Interestingly, all of the songs but one are performed in English. This would usually be a great thing, but the difference between these songs and, say, those on a Yoko Kanno album, is that Ms. Kanno can pick singers that actually sing English well. That is not the case on this album. Most of the singers have pretty thick accents, and are not that easy to understand. This lessens my ability to enjoy the album significantly.

The general style of songs here are a "poppy" rock and R&B, with some jazzy notes thrown in. The music itself is perfectly enjoyable if you like your R&B a little stylistically loose, but I have a hard time getting past the vocals. The first track, The Law of Perfect Pride, gets my point across well. Listen to the sample track, and you'll note that the musicians do a good job with the music, it has a good rhythm to it, and it's a fun tune. You can't really understand what the singer is saying, though. You can almost pick it out, but it will probably slip right by you, frustratingly. Most of the album is just like that.

There are three exceptions to this. Track 8, Ange, is sung in Japanese by the actress who plays the character of Noel in the show, and she is backed up by a number of "children" from the show. This song is important within the show (which I thought was a nice touch), and is a perfectly pleasant vocal piece. The closing theme, Wishing Moment, sung by the same actress, is also in Japanese. The other exception is the last track, Go Where No One's Gone Before, which is the opening theme to the show. The entire song is present here, and it is a wonderful, fun little song. The song is sung by Billy Preston, a R&B and Gospel singer who gained popularity in the '70s and appears to still be going strong (according to the iTunes store, anyway). Unfortunately, this track seems to have been recorded specifically for L/R, so you're going to have to pick up a copy of this album in order to get your hands on it.

In the end, there just isn't enough good music on this album for me to recommend it to anybody, at least at full price. The Billy Preston song is great, but too much of the rest of the album is annoying due to the heavy accents the singers have. If you can snag it on sale, though, then it might be worth a look.