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CD Reviews: Taiwan

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Hug of Love: Farewell to 18 (愛的抱抱：告別18歲)



Yaoyao (瑤瑤)

Seed Music

Observing the entertainment world has never been this much fun. Yaoyao (瑤瑤) — real name Kuo Shu-yao

(郭書瑤) — the curvaceous babe who shot to fame overnight thanks to an advertisement for Kill Online

(殺Online) in which she shouted “Sha hen da! (殺很大!)” while straddling an undulating exercise machine, breasts swaying, has parlayed her sex kitten status into a record contract. Seed Music is looking to milk even more NT dollars out of this year’s “It” Girl, and Yaoyao is out to prove that she has real talent.

Hug of Love: Farewell to 18 (愛的抱抱：告別18歲) comes with a 52-page book of cheesecake photographs and debuted at No. 1 on the major charts last week. Surprisingly, the music is not a disaster. Yaoyao delivers a polished, albeit calculated entertainment product on this EP, which has wisely been edited down to three songs and one remix.

Title track Hug of Love is a campy but contagious dance number that revels in its disco-era ethos with kitschy synthesizer riffs. Trading on Yaoyao’s pseudo-pornographic persona, this hip-shaker features plenty of female moaning and groaning. With lyrics like “the hug of love melts the troubles,” she blithely trumpets the kind of simplistic adolescent romantic love envisioned by her otaku (宅男) fanbase. To raise the fun quotient, the track ends with the eye-raising English phrase “that’s right.”

In the EP’s two slow-tempo Mando-pop ballads, Giving You Up (放棄你), penned by singer-songwriter Kenji Wu (吳克群), and Not Enough Time to Say Goodbye (來不及再見), Yaoyao sheds her childlike squeak and sings convincingly about unrequited love in a firm, emotive voice. With a simple piano accompaniment, she croons “giving you up is like giving myself up” and warbles “the day you left, I didn’t have enough time to say goodbye.” Granted, Yaoyao doesn’t have much of a high register. With her limited vocal range, she nevertheless conveys the fleeting joy and pain of love with subtle emotional coloring and phrasing.

All in all, this album is a slickly packaged guilty pleasure that’s reminiscent of the Spice Girls — not bad for a woman whose previous claim to fame was being a “big-breasted bodacious baby face” (童顏巨乳).

— ANDREW C.C. HUANG, CONTRIBUTING REPORTER



Summer Fever (夏•狂熱)



Sodagreen (蘇打綠)

Universal

With last year’s Incomparable Beauty (無與倫比的美麗), Sodagreen (蘇打綠) firmly established itself in the pop mainstream with one of the most innovative albums of the year. This has been followed, perhaps a little too quickly, with Summer Fever (夏•狂熱). The new album was produced in the UK to much fanfare and is technically proficient, with no shortage of clever riffs and skillful shifts between a vast array styles. But it lacks sparkle.

Brit-pop sounds and a jazzy Broadway mood stand out as themes throughout Summer Fever, and lead singer Wu Ching-feng (吳青峰) throws himself into the music with a kind of frantic desperation. One of the album’s best songs, Cicada Thoughts (蟬想), is a solid, guitar-led rocker with poetic themes of tainted love and regret, On this track, Wu’s voice does a good job of evoking the sweet agony of remembrance of love past. Other songs, such as the opener Claps Falling (掌聲落下) and Private Garden (御花園), show off the band’s versatility with different stylistic departures. Unfortunately, throughout the album there seems to be a consistent push to put a hard edge on the sound, and this comes off as artificial and affected. The track Peter and the Wolf, for example, tries to mix bubblegum pop and Talking Heads, and ends up becoming utterly schizophrenic.

One gets the feeling that the band wants to be taken seriously, and that this trying too hard has made them slightly unhinged. The inclusion of very some peculiar, if not exactly illiterate, English verses about Dionysian pain and ecstasy scattered throughout the album certainly does not help.

— ANDREW C.C. HUANG, CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Sizhukong (絲竹空)



Paper Eagle (紙鳶)

www.sizhukong.com

The old is new again for Sizhukong (絲竹空), a troupe devoted to recasting traditional Chinese music in a jazz setting. Their second release, Paper Eagle (紙鳶), brings together ancient-sounding melodies and modern grooves.

If China and Brazil were neighbors, this would be music you hear at the border. On the title track, congas and bongos provide light, buoyant rhythms. Chinese flutes, the erhu and the zhongruan (中阮) serve as voices for a slightly wistful yet joyful bossa nova melody. Rainbow Dress Rhapsody rides a samba groove and contains a boisterous and funky interlude featuring the noisy cymbals and bells used in beiguan (北管) music.

The fusion ethos has always played a large role in the work of bandleader, pianist and composer Peng Yu-wen (彭郁雯), a Berklee College of Music graduate. She was a founding member of Metamorphosis, a group known for arranging Taiwanese folk songs in modern jazz styles, including Latin jazz, be-bop and post-bop.

One of Peng’s more interesting compositions is I Remember Formosa (想起思想起), which according to the liner is about “homesickness.” It has a dreamy, impressionistic feel, drawing inspiration from the classic Hengchun folk song Remembering (想起思) and a Chinese melody from the 3rd century. Peng remarks how surprising it is to find how “an ancient song could sound so modern,” and rightly so.

Sizhukong also offers an abstract treatment of Remembering, which will feel like a stretch to those familiar with folk legend Chen Da’s (陳達) version. Chinese flutes are the prominent voices in this short track.

A sense of folk romanticism about Taiwan runs through much of the album. The coastal town of Lugang (鹿港) inspires Deer Harbor, an uplifting piece written by bassist Martijn Vanbuel. Marketplace is an ode to the night market, with subtle grooves provided by South African percussionist and singer Mogauwane Mahloelo. He also adds an interesting vocal touch to the group’s rendition of Hakka Mountain Song.

Sizhukong does an impressive job of drawing out the more accessible elements of classical Chinese music. While this may displease the more traditionally minded, it offers a refreshing new sound for jazz fans.

— DAVID CHEN, STAFF REPORTER

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