CD Reviews

Kang Kang (康康)

Don't Care Who You End Up With (管妳媽媽嫁給誰)

Sony

Love him or loath him, you have to hand it to foul-mouthed entertainer Kan Jin-rong (康晉榮), or Kang Kang (康康) as he's better known. Along with his one-time sidekick, the equally potty-mouthed Jacky Wu (吳宗憲), the pair not only brought laddish toilet humor to the masses but also got rich doing it.

Although better known for his crude humor rather than his musical prowess, Kang Kang has released a couple of albums over the past few years. Packed with cover versions of other people's tunes the records failed to capture the hearts and minds of the general public.

His latest album, however, is a far cry from his previous ventures and is, sad to say, pretty entertaining, albeit in a slightly unoriginal way. Sure it's not award-winning stuff, but there's something about the way Kang Kang mixes it up with everything from comedic and rudimentary hip-hop tunes to orchestrated piano driven ballads that work quite well.

Packed with an eclectic selection of sounds, Don't Care Who You End Up With (管妳媽媽嫁給誰) has been plugged as Kang Kang's "latest original work," but in reality it's very different. He may no longer be singing other people's tunes, but the all-round entertainer tries way too hard to sound like his peers.

The album opens with the Joy Topper-like Drain Your Glass (乾杯), this is followed by Kang Kang doing his best to impersonate Jay Chou (周杰倫) on the slow grinding track My Family (我的家庭) and then he gets all moody and mushy and the slow piano driven love song You're Not One Person (你是一個人), which sounds like anyone of a dozen Mando-stars.

Don't Care Who You End Up With is not without its highlights, however, and the album's title track on which Kang Kang mixes it up with a brass section and grinding nu-metal guitar makes for reasonably good listening.

Jay Chou (周杰倫)

November's Chopin (十一月的蕭邦)

Sony

Released to great fanfare on Tuesday, Jay Chou's (周杰倫) sixth and latest album November's Chopin (十一月的蕭邦) looked destined to become number one throughout Asia even before its release. On-line music retail outlets and music stores alike were inundated with pre-order requests a month ago when news was first leaked of the album's pending release.

Named after the renowned composer for the simple reason that, according to Chou, his songs "tend to lean towards the works of Chopin [rather] than Liszt," the album features 10 new tunes, a handful of previously released bonus tracks and, as is now the norm, a couple of music videos.

For the most part the album sees Taiwan's favorite musical son veering away from his tried-and-tested Mando-hip-hop format and is instead wooing fans with moody piano- and guitar-based ballads.

And it is these ballads that prove the highlights of the album. Here listeners get to hear Chou at his previously seldom heard best. One such tune is Nocturne (夜曲) on which Chou's vocalizes over a backdrop of easy-going guitar on a soulful number about the death of a girlfriend.

In addition to the moving ballads Chou still takes his time to croon his way through a couple of up-tempo classic Mando-pop melodies. These are, needless to say, pretty much on a par with the material that propelled Chou to superstardom four years ago and if you like Chou you'll like these.

While the crux of November Chopin may not be quite what the hordes of teenage girls who swoon whenever Chou appears on TV like, for the rest of us, who are either a little to old or too cynical to enjoy Mando-pop, Chou's latest album could be considered a breakthrough and one that should earn the already popular star even more fans.