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When L’Arc~en~Ciel announced it would let fans vote for the track listing for its singles collections on Yahoo! Japan, the band broke music industry rules on many levels.

First, sales, not fans, are supposed to determine what appears on hits collections. Repacking old material is a time-honored technique in the music industry to bleed the proverbial turnip. If it sold well before, it will sell well again, ergo producing income for labels, publishers and maybe the band.

Second, fans don’t know better — at least in music criticism circles. A band’s best work may never be released as a single, and if a popular vote shuts out artistically worthy material, then it’s really a rigged race. Of course, music journalism arrogance dictates that critics — and no one else — knows what’s best, even for the band.

So, does Clicked Singles Best 13 really represent L’Arc~en~Ciel well? Yes and no.

L’Arc~en~Ciel is an incredibly flexible band, able to switch between rock genres at a drop of a hat.

One minute, they’re sentimental balladeers supported by oceans of strings, the next minute, they’re a stripped-down rock ensemble with grunge-y guitars.

With such a diverse output, it’s possible for the band to miss as many times as it hits. Clicked Singles Best 13 is not the collection for people who like the rougher moments in L’Arc~en~Ciel’s repetoire.

The disc’s voting constituency has determined that up-tempo, bouncy songs such as “flower”, “winter fall” and “Blurry Eyes” set the tenor for the rest of the disc.

“Lies and Truth,” a song that should have been recorded in the 70s but unfortunately wasn’t, epitomizes the worst of said consituency’s taste. Strings? A disco beat? Oy.

But are the fans totally wrong? Toward the end of Clicked Singles Best 13, they get a fair share right.

“Dive to Blue”, with its ringing Edge-like guitar riffs, shows Laruku personalizing U2’s The Unforgettable Fire. “Honey” is the grunge-meets-new wave hit Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins were too serious to write.

“Neo Universe” sports some of the best synthesizer work in a mainstream rock song ever, while “Heaven’s Drive” has the one of the greatest opening drum licks.

In other words, not every fan is going to be satisfied with the votes, especially when North American fans [hand raised] never got a chance to participate.

Critically? Clicked Singles Best 13 misses the boat. Many times.

How is it that absolutely nothing from heavenly and only one song from ray made it on the album, while one of the band’s weakest albums, ark, gets represented by four singles? The omission of “Snow Drop” is nearly criminal.

As a means of introducing the States to the band — Clicked Singles Best 13 is one of the first albums released on the new Sony Music Imports imprint — the album may not be dark enough for American rockers and too rock-like for pop audiences.

That, and “Lies and Truth” does nothing to establish L’Arc~en~Ciel’s credibility.

Clicked Singles Best 13 is gift for fans all over the world, but it’s a hard sell for folks yet to be swayed by the band’s incredible talent.

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For all intents and purposes, L’Arc~en~Ciel has recorded the same album over and over again. The Japanese quartet’s songwriting covers a spectrum from second-rate Bacharach-ian pop to full-out rockers in total Pearl Jam vein.

Real follows last year’s double offering of ark and ray, the latter album marking a creative pinnacle in the group’s discography.

So what does “Laruku” do for an encore?

At the start of Real, Hyde and company take the glossy sheen that’s marked most of the group’s usual production aesthetic and throw it in the dirt.

Tracks such as “bravery” and “The Nepenthes” sound like they could have been recorded in Pavement’s garage. Even the haunting “Finale” begins with phonographic record noise.

There are also hints that L’Arc~en~Ciel are attempting to get on the Nine Inch Nails gravy train, sporting big synthesizers on “Neo Universe” and “get out from the shell.”

By the time the album ends, L’Arc~en~Ciel returns to being some sort of Japanese amalgam of the Cure and U2, doing away with the synthesizers and the basement-garage sound. In short, doing what they do best.

Sounds like a really scattered album, and on some level it is. While it still doesn’t knock ray off its mantle, Real certainly sports some ear-catching moments. Even the songs that could have sounded really sappy — “Time Slip”, “bravery” — don’t.

It’s a L’Arc~en~Ciel album through and through, and it’s one that makes a fine addition to an already existing L’arc collection.

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Ever since Guns N’ Roses released Use Your Illusion I & II, artists out to prove their productivity have gone the route of recording two albums at once.

Bruce Springsteen did it with Human Touch and Lucky Town. So too does L’arc~en~Ciel with ark and ray.

After a drug scandal involving ex-drummer Sakura, L’arc~en~Ciel remained mum for the better part of 1997. In 1998 and 1999, the group went gangbusters with its new drummer Yukihiro, releasing a number of singles and three albums, two of which at the same time in 1999.

Historically, one album in double release fares better than the other. Lucky Town overshadowed Human Touch. Use Your Illusion II has more endurance than Use Your Illusion I. And ray has ark beat.

Whereas ray strips “Laruku” down to its most basic — save for an occassional synthesizer — ark is its glossy, over-produced reflection.

ark sports horns, strings and whole lot of synthesizers. The string arrangements on “Butterfly’s Sleep” and “Pieces [ark mix]” in particular sound too much like scores from bad Japanese dramas.

The songwriting veers from dramatic alternative rock (“Forbidden lover”) to bouncy Burt Bacarach pop (“Driver’s High”), even to quasi-Hawaiian (“Perfect Blue”). ray, on the other hand, is more or less a straight rock album.

Both albums bounce around stylistically, but ark suffers from hopping between a number of incongruent genres. In short, it possesses little of the clarity of its companion release.

There are some individually nice moments. “Heaven’s Drive” is the hardest rocker on the disc. “Cradle” has a nice post-New Wave feel.

But compared to the solid songwriting and focused performances of ray, ark sounds like an afterthought dressed up to be more than it really is.

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At the beginning of ray, L’arc~en~Ciel sound like a grungier Rolling Stones. By the end of ray, the group sounds like latter day U2.

Along the way, this Japanese rock group makes nods to the Smiths, the Alarm, the Fall, Unforgettable Fire-era U2 (again), Pearl Jam, Soundgarden (with a little Nine Inch Nails), and maybe even a sliver of James Brown.

In short, L’arc~en~Ciel does what you’d expect from a Japanese megacorporation — improve on a bunch of Western innovations.

A good number of Japanese rock bands make a slavish devotion to sounding like their idols. L’arc~en~Ciel does as well, but the distinctive musicianship of its members turns that imitation into something clearly unique.

Singer Hyde (pronounced “hai-do”) whines through his nose like the Japanese cousin of ex-Faith No More’s Mike Patton, but when he hits those falsetto notes, he transforms totally into Bono.

Guitarist Ken can transform himself into his guitar idols with a drop of a hat. From Keith Richards on one track, to Johnny Marrs on another, to Kim Thayill and Robin Finck on the next, Ken becomes a guitar diety his-bad-self.

The result is a strangely cohesive yet wonderfully divergent sound in which rock music’s vast legacy becomes a definitive, personal statement.

Listeners would be hard-pressed to find even an American group that does what L’arc~en~Ciel accomplishes so well on ray.