As one of Taiwan’s early “alt-rock stars,” Faith Yang (楊乃文) injected a dose of sorely needed attitude into the Mando-pop world in the late 1990s. The part-time model drew in mainstream listeners with her pristine voice, and distinguished herself from other cut-and-paste pop stars with her jaded singing style and rock sensibility.
Yang's latest, Self-Selected (我自選 選自我), is an album of covers by Western rock artists and her first release since 2005.
The song choices jibe with the non-mainstream leanings associated with the start of Yang's singing career. She takes on art-rock classics like Lou Reed’s Perfect Day, interpreting the song with a dark romantic feel in a duet with Canto-pop star Eason Chen (陳奕迅).
British alt-rock bands appear to be a favorite of Yang's, as she covers songs by Blur, Coldplay, Radiohead and The Verve.
Her renditions offer a few novel twists, such as the electronica intro to Blur's Song 2 and ethereal female vocal choruses in Coldplay’s The Scientist.
But the album’s opening track, Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees, never takes off, despite admirable vocals by Yang. The backing band arrangement remains true to the spirit of the original but lacks imagination in the instrumentation, relying on stale synthesizer and guitar sounds for atmospheric mood.
Her rendition of Velvet Underground's After Hours is also a miss. The backing band overshoots by sounding too slick, and Yang’s phrasing overlooks the deceivingly innocent charm of the song.
Yang is at her best when she’s not rushed or overwhelmed by the song itself. On Maximilian Hecker's Miss Underwater and The Verve's The Drugs Don't Work, her delivery is sublime. She sounds both consoled by the song and consoling when she sings; you forget she’s singing a cover.
Judging from the album title, Yang wants to assure listeners that she remains very much the independent-minded artist. Sure enough, the songs of Self-Selected have indie-street cred and plenty of studio polish, but the overall vibe of the album comes across as self-indulgent.
Devoted fans will likely appreciate Yang sharing a glimpse of her musical favorites, but general rock audiences or those unfamiliar with her music might find this work unremarkable as a whole.
—DAVID CHEN
Power Station is back after a four-year hiatus as full of their usual power chords and life-affirming lyrics as ever. The pseudo-emo duo have lost what little hard-rocking credibility they ever had, something their distressed jeans and leather jackets can do nothing to disguise.
The opening track, Undying Heart (不死心還在), is a perfectly adequate power ballad, but its combination of strained earnestness and derivative orchestration doesn't really give the listener many surprises. The duo are certainly in good voice, but the rousing chorus about the “undying heart overturning the dictates of fate,” would be more at home in a self-help CD.
The title track, the second on the album, was written to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) and makes a perfectly adequate stab at combining some watered-down rap with the duo's signature guitar-driven melodies. It is a very professional effort of creating a musical tie-in, and shows that Power Station, who have created numerous theme tunes for television and film, not least for Cape No. 7 (海角七號), know what they are about in producing music to order.
The first two tracks, for all their inadequacies, at least have a certain oomph that stops the listener from actually falling asleep, but other tracks dip into the dangerous waters of soft rock and have many of the facile melodic features and empty lyrics that are often associated, by this reviewer at least, with the band Air Supply. The two tracks that the duo produced for the hit soap The Hospital (白色巨塔), with their combination of Broadway musical, soft rock and the meaningless incorporation of English lyrics into a Chinese song, were particularly annoying, and should be beneath the talents of a group that when it first formed made a real stab at creating a kind of rock ’n' roll ethos within the saccharine world of Mando-pop.
—IAN BARTHOLOMEW
There are hints of Ani DeFranco, Indigo Girls, Michelle Shocked, Joni Michell and even Tom Waits in this second album by The Dana Wylie Band, but though connections with musicians such as these keep floating by as you listen to the album, it is clear that Dana Wylie has a voice that is absolutely her own.
The Unruly Ones is by no means perfect, and Wylie sometimes struggles to fit all her thoughts and emotions into compositions that creak and strain under the burden. Always, when her train of ideas gets out of control, teetering on the brink of the facile or the ridiculous, she, with the aid of multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Hellard, guitarist Matthew Ord and double-bassist Nye Parson, manage to pull things back together, through self-assurance as much as through technical skill. Most of the tracks deal with relationships, but there is a curiosity about people, an introspection and a poetic sensibility that turns out many memorable lines and creates a sense of expectation.
The Seer sets off with the line “There is so little keeping you from greatness/Just the difference between tears and sweat … ,” which opens up a story filled with the tension between speculating about the past and hope for the future. For all its self-conscious wordplay, it remains thoughtful and immensely appealing even on replay.
Hinting at deeper stories is one of Wylie's strengths, and this is no more evident than on the country-tinged The Ballad of Jones and Dougie, which, despite a Nashville twang, remains very contemporary and urban.
Musically, Wylie and her band show an easy familiarity with numerous forms, switching effortlessly from piano lounge to jazz to country, sometimes in a single song, a quality announced in the opening track, Talent Crush.
The Unruly Ones shows a solid talent and unique voice, and while a little rough at the edges, this roughness is more often than not part of its appeal. There’s not too much keeping this ensemble from greatness.
—IAN BARTHOLOMEW
The listening is easy all the way through flautist Ling Nieh's (聶琳) debut album, Sparkling Smiles (微笑星球). But the cheerful disposition of her music sounds genuine and nuanced and has a cinematic feel that appeals to a childlike innocence.
Nieh, a trained flautist and graduate of the Berklee College of Music, composed and produced the album’s 10 tracks, which draw from a broad emotional palette.
The album begins with a sense of discovery in Songs of Whales (鯨魚在唱歌), which is not as straightforward and pedestrian as it sounds on first listen. Nieh uses sound effects such as guitar with heavy reverb and piano to create a sense of space, but she doesn’t hammer them into her listeners. Instead the emotional impact comes from a joyous melody performed on the flute and saxophone.
For Mr Dale (戴爾先生) is a bittersweet tune, delivered bossa nova style by Nieh’s impressive team of studio musicians. A pipa (琵琶), a lute common in traditional Chinese music, serves as one of the main voices of the song, and its fluid, plucked sound enhances the flute's soaring melodies.
The tango mood of Ariadna (天使熱愛的生活) is played out in the intertwining harmonies of the flute, cello, piano and double bass. The energy is intense and passionate, yet the song remains light and playful, thanks to the lilting rhythms conceived by Nieh.
Renowned acoustic guitarist Dong Yun-chang (董運昌) makes an appearance on the album’s title track, a wistful, bossa nova-tinged number.
It's no surprise to read in the liner notes that Nieh composes for film and television, as many of the songs in
this collection indeed play like soundtrack music.
This album won't resonate with listeners who prefer darkness in music, but there is a sophistication and emotional depth to Nieh's songs that make this worth a listen.
—DAVID CHEN
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