WeiBird (韋禮安)
Wei Li-an Debut Eponymous Original Album
(韋禮安首張同名全創作專輯)
Linfair Records
www.weibird.com
It took TV talent show Happy Sunday (快樂星期天) champion William Wei (韋禮安), aka WeiBird, three years to release his debut album after winning the series. The result, Wei Li-an Debut Eponymous Original Album (韋禮安首張同名全創作專輯), brims with a rare folk-rock elegance that establishes Wei as one of the most polished singer-songwriters of his generation.
On the anthemic Story (故事), a homage to Maroon 5’s This Love, Wei builds a paean of youthful romantic yearning with his sun-kissed vocals and tingling guitar chords. “In this story, the ending is not the most important thing,” he philosophizes.
With Reason (理由), Wei flirts with rhythmic jazz and gets it down pat. With credible ad-libbing and jamming motifs in the background, he croons about idiotic procrastination with irreverent wit and musical verve.
In the contagious Sunflower in a Cloudy Day (陰天的向日葵), Wei achieves a melodic catchiness reminiscent of the works of Taiwan’s indie queen Cheer Chen (陳綺貞). The track begins with a calm, lulling guitar melody and builds into a climactic piano chorus.
On More Perfect (完美一點), the theme song to China’s romantic comedy Sophie’s Revenge (非常完美), Wei crafts a Mando-pop-meets-lounge-jazz gem with laid-back vocals and soothing melody.
Wei updates Good Weather (好天氣) and Waiting Slowly (慢慢等), tracks from his EP that was released last year, and arranges them with more emotional urgency and maturer vocals.
The album holds together as a coherent folk-rock album with occasional nods to jazz. Neither a powerhouse nor a virtuosic singer, Wei’s warm vocal timbre is appropriately complemented by songs that wax poetic on romantic infatuation and life’s joys.
Though he’s a charismatic singer who has garnered significant attention through his appearances on a TV talent show, Wei opted to use an illustration rather than a close-up of his photogenic face on the album cover. Perhaps the intention was to encourage audiences to pay attention to the music rather than his good looks. But with an album this entrancing, that isn’t an issue.
— ANDREW C.C. HUANG
Pietro Valente Quartet Tales From the Far East
Self-released
www.pietrovalete.com
An Italian embarks on a journey through East Asia and tells the stories of his travels using what was originally an American idiom — this is jazz drummer Pietro Valente’s debut release Tales From the Far East.
The 27-year-old native of Padua, in northern Italy, composed eight tracks inspired by a nine-month trip to Thailand, China, India and Taiwan. He lived in Taichung in 2007 and 2008 and was active in the jazz scene in China and Taiwan.
On appearances alone, the album theme comes across as a little cliche, with song titles that sound like outdated TV travel show sound bites (Red Light in Bangkok and The Spirit of India). Then there’s the cover design, adorned with fortune cookie typefaces and a Chinese dragon emblazoned on the CD. Tourists might find it cute.
For the most part, though, the music is worth the trip. Valente is a talented drummer with a larger-than-usual presence in a small jazz ensemble. He catches your attention like a rock drummer would, but not because he can get loud.
Always on the move, Valente chases tone and color, extracting every drop of sound he can from the drum kit, whether it’s thunderous rolls from the floor toms or cymbal splashes that sizzle and simmer. The drums are busy, but rarely overbearing. The pensive opening track Di Mare in Male is a nice example of Valente’s keen awareness of mood and atmosphere.
He’s backed by a highly competent quartet — a pianist, bassist and tenor saxophonist — and together they weave familiar Chinese melodies with modern jazz on Shanghai Today and Wide Breath in Beijing, an interpretation of the Chinese folk song Jasmine Flower (茉莉花).
These tunes give a sense of genuine appreciation for the delicate, elegant side of traditional Chinese music, but Valente sounds most at home on the very funky Muswing, a tribute to kids playing on the streets in India.
In his eagerness to give us a snapshot of his journeys, Valente sometimes overdoes it. In Shanghai Today he inserts sampled recordings of ambulance sirens and honking horns, which robs the imagination (the tenor saxophone does a fine job on its own). It’s songs like the buoyant, bossa nova-tinged Last Mango in Taiwan that leave a lasting impression.
— DAVID CHEN
Boyz & Girl
Boyz & Girl
Self-released
boyzandgirl.blogspot.com
A noisy fog lingers throughout Boyz & Girl’s self-titled debut, and never lifts. That’s part of the beauty of this shoegazer rock album, which is full of otherworldly dreamscapes conjured up by reverb effects, a barrage of guitars and synthesizers and post-punk songcraft.
The album is worth a listen straight through from beginning to end. It opens with Ghost Parade, an aptly titled number saturated with sustaining fuzz and high-pitched squeals, artfully wielded by guitarist and vocalist Jon Du (杜澤威), one of the group’s three “Boyz.”
The “girl,” guitarist and vocalist Ban Ban (斑斑), aka Bambam Lin (林以樂), surprises as the emotional center of the band. She has a high-pitched, childlike voice that was cute and charming with her previous indie-pop band Freckles (雀斑).
With Boyz & Girl, she sounds eerie and spooked, like a kid trapped in a nightmare. In the dark rocker Watch Out! Aikly Is Dead, her whip-cream airy timbre gets drenched in reverb and wrapped in a gauze of distortion. Her soaring cries fuel the song’s exhilarating pace.
Things really start to blossom on Cannot Touch, a slow-motion sequence built on a hypnotic rhythm played on drums that sounds like it was recorded in a deep cavern. There are no guitars, just ambient synthesizers that shadow Ban Ban, as she whispers and sighs a singsong melody. The ethereal mood brings to mind M. Ward’s more recent albums.
The synth orchestration continues in the spacey instrumental Passengers, which then gets foiled by Kiss Me Blindly, a grimy, garage/blues-rock romp. Here the album takes a surprising but rewarding turn — Ban Ban’s sassy, spot-on delivery is a sudden breath of fresh air, and relieves some of the tension from the previous songs.
Boyz & Girl’s noisy soundscape grows to be more inviting, and the emotional space feels warmer in the later tracks. On a side note, a lot of the lyrics are barely audible without repeated listening, or they’re simply buried in the mix. But the mood and atmosphere are pitch-perfect.
— DAVID CHEN
Bearbabes (熊寶貝樂團)
Year After Year (年年)
Himalaya Records
bearbabes.com.tw
“I love summer,” croons Bearbabes’ female lead singer and bassist “Cookie” on the opening track of Year After Year (年年), which cries out to be played during an oceanside drive with the windows rolled down.
It’s also well-suited for a stroll on a scorching city pavement. The Bearbabes, a trio that has been around since 2000, play everything from slowcore rock to upbeat power-pop that is radiant but far from saccharine.
This second album, said Cookie in an interview printed in the band’s promotional material, is about “loss.” On the radio-friendly Rockable, it hurts so good, especially when she hits those yodeling notes during the choruses.
Cookie turns on the charm with her honey-smooth voice on Firefly (螢火), a beautiful piano lullaby, but she’s no Mando-pop prude. She drops the F-bomb without flinching on Sick N’ Tired, the band’s only song written entirely in English and a great alt-country-flavored tune with spacey pop choruses.
Guitarist Wei Jun (魏駿) has the band scorching on A City Without December (沒有12月的城市), matched by top-notch drumming from Chen Tai-yuan (陳泰元), who also plays with another indie-rock trio, Windmill (風籟坊).
Dig deeper into Year After Year, and the band’s cohesiveness and maturity as musicians only becomes more apparent. In Dear Stranger (親愛陌生人), they venture into psychedelic pop territory without getting too carried away. Monster (怪物) is a dreamy, slow-burning number that is one of the better examples of Taiwanese indie rock.
— DAVID CHEN
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William Liu (劉家君) moved to Kaohsiung from Nantou to live with his boyfriend Reg Hong (洪嘉佑). “In Nantou, people do not support gay rights at all and never even talk about it. Living here made me optimistic and made me realize how much I can express myself,” Liu tells the Taipei Times. Hong and his friend Cony Hsieh (謝昀希) are both active in several LGBT groups and organizations in Kaohsiung. They were among the people behind the city’s 16th Pride event in November last year, which gathered over 35,000 people. Along with others, they clearly see Kaohsiung as the nexus of LGBT rights.
In the American west, “it is said, water flows upwards towards money,” wrote Marc Reisner in one of the most compelling books on public policy ever written, Cadillac Desert. As Americans failed to overcome the West’s water scarcity with hard work and private capital, the Federal government came to the rescue. As Reisner describes: “the American West quietly became the first and most durable example of the modern welfare state.” In Taiwan, the money toward which water flows upwards is the high tech industry, particularly the chip powerhouse Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電). Typically articles on TSMC’s water demand
Every now and then, even hardcore hikers like to sleep in, leave the heavy gear at home and just enjoy a relaxed half-day stroll in the mountains: no cold, no steep uphills, no pressure to walk a certain distance in a day. In the winter, the mild climate and lower elevations of the forests in Taiwan’s far south offer a number of easy escapes like this. A prime example is the river above Mudan Reservoir (牡丹水庫): with shallow water, gentle current, abundant wildlife and a complete lack of tourists, this walk is accessible to nearly everyone but still feels quite remote.
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