Listen to this album and you’ll think there is hope for Mando-pop after all. Not that Tainan-native Crowd Lu (盧廣仲) aspires to be the next Jay Chou (周杰倫) or Wang Lee-hom (王力宏), at least for now. Lu’s debut album is chock-full of sunshine pop, beautifully conceived and executed, yet down-to-earth and full of surprises.
Aside from impressive songwriting skills and instrumental talent, the 23-year-old Lu sports a come-from-behind narrative that fuels his fire: while recovering in the hospital from a serious car accident, he resolved to learn the guitar. From there, he won a handful of college contests; his geek-chic charm and vocal skills earned him a following and at one point made him a YouTube star.
With the uplifting Good Morning, Beautiful Morning, replete with a bouncy rhythm and bright vocal harmonies, Lu ropes you in and doesn’t let up. He sounds like the nice brother helping his kid sister get ready for school when he utters in Taiwanese-accented Mandarin “Hey, get-up for breakfast — hurry up.” Pop hooks then hit you left and right, making the song’s cutesiness endearing instead of annoying. The song’s deceptively simple chorus, “Dui-a, Dui-a” (對啊, 對啊), looks silly on paper, but is infectious and fun to hear. Lu then throws in a wicked, lyrical guitar solo, and by the tempo change at the bridge, you’re almost sad the song is about to end.
The album keeps you engaged with variety: there’s pop, funk, rock and even a 20-second thrash metal interlude. And for all the indie attitude, Lu doesn’t shy from straightforward ballads. On the album’s title track, he cruises comfortably from a husky alto to a falsetto; his voice soars but he makes it seem effortless.
Lu keeps it real by driving most of the songs with guitar, which makes his feel-good pop sensibilities easier to swallow. But there is also a sense of honesty that comes through in his songs, something sorely lacking among Mando-pop artists today.
— David Chen
Matthew Lien made his name in Taiwan as an “eco-musician,” and the island continues to serve as his main source of artistic inspiration. With Adventures in the Hakka Heartland, Lien turns his attention to Hakka folk music in Taiwan.
The album was born out of a program on Hakka TV that Lien co-hosted with singer-songwriter Hsieh Yu-wei (謝宇威). The two spent six months traveling to Hakka communities in the countryside to meet and record singers and musicians who performed traditional music. In between location visits, Lien took the field recordings and returned to his studio to add backing instrumentation to the performances.
The result is a time-lapsed collaboration: you’ll hear folk artist performances, mostly vocal, but with editing, backing instrumentation and studio polish from Lien. Many of the songs are medleys that combine performances from one location that “tells the story” of a community. The Four Mountain Kings is based on Lien’s trip to Chutung (竹東) in Hsinchu County, a site renowned for its Hakka Mountain Song singing competition. The song features two different generations of singers — a group of four elderly men and a class of elementary school students.
Within each track, the mood often changes as new performers appear. Ambient synthesizers and a Native American flute solemnly introduce a solitary voice in Among Rows of Tea, which grows into a chorus of Hakka and Atayal singers from a village in Ilan County. The sound becomes more sentimental with a vocal performance from a Hakka tea farmer.
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