When Chou Huei (周蕙) released her first album a decade ago, she was widely tipped to become one of the four lesser “Queens of Heaven” (四小天后) of the Chinese-language music scene along with Jolin Tsai (蔡依林), Stefanie Sun (孫燕姿) and Elva Hsiao (蕭亞軒). Her place has since been taken by Fish Leong (梁靜茹) (see Feb. 18 Taipei Times review).
Her most recent album, a self-titled release with a particularly first-person outlook, does not bode well for an upturn for her career. Chou is a talented singer with a voice that can take on many colors, and it is a testament to her vocal skills that one can actually sit through the first two tracks on the album — the first a particularly ill-advised duet with martial arts star and wannabe crooner Jackie Chan (成龍), the second a track titled Chou Huei. Surely having a self-titled song on a self-titled album is just a little too self-referential even for the notoriously narcissistic world of Mando-pop. “Every cell of my body is going wild/come enjoy the music with me, yeah ...” Nuff said. Though if you ignore the lyrics, this is actually quite a nice bubblegum number.
The orchestration of Chou Huei is overall of a very high standard, with plenty of unexpected little departures, such as the striped down Keeping Faith (守約) with a simple piano accompaniment, or the clever mix of electronica and plucked guitar in Complicated. Even her most conventional Mando-pop ballads, such as My Protector (守護者), have a degree of controlled elegance that can be quite appealing in contrast to the overblown sentimentality of the genre as a whole.
Chou Huei moves along the well-beaten path of the Mando-pop mainstream, with occasional digressions along the way to keep things interesting. Only one track, Night Moves (夜動), is an absolute dud, when she strikes out into atmospheric Cocteau Twins territory and gets utterly lost.
— IAN BARTHOLOMEW
Pop A-mit (阿密特) into the CD player and the first thing that greets you is a barrage of Metallica-like wall of drums and guitars. A-mei is rocking out big time, and while Open the Door, See the Mountain (開門見山) is not completely convincing as a heavy metal outcry that romance is dead and you should just take what you can get, it has the virtue of novelty for Taiwan’s first lady of song.
Fortunately, although A-mei (張惠妹) is no Chrissie Hynde or Debbie Harry, she has the performing chops to carry off these forays into angst and cynicism in Black Eats Black (黑吃黑) and Animal Sentimentality After Falling in Love (相愛後動物感傷), even if the bad girl persona is as much of a pose as the ridiculous images of her in a black sequined cat suit that adorn the liner notes.
The mood of alienation and anomie even seeps into more conventional ballads, such as power pop piece Divided Self (分生) and works particularly well in the heavy rock Taiwanese anthem Come If You Dare? (好膽你就來), which is good fun, even if owing a huge debt to Wu Bai (伍佰). The title track A-mit, sung in the Bunun Aboriginal language, is also something of a novelty and will doubtless be hugely appealing to the pseudo metal/punk musical ethos that many Aboriginal boys aspire to. While musically it looks back to the days of massive drums and feedback-drenched base, the mixture with traditional singing styles and lyrics that tackle the homesickness off youths cut of from the lives of their local communities gives this track considerable interest.
Then there are songs like OK, which is redolent of the frenetic earnestness of Simple Plan, but without the sophistication. But then, A-Mei makes it pretty plain in this concept album that she is letting out her inner wild thing, and it ends with Rainbow, one of the mellowest tracks on the album, where she sings: “When I find out where happiness is/help me on with my makeup/join my silliness, laugh at my fears.” A-mei, or A-mit, as she is on this album, certainly gives us a few laughs in this venture into previously uncharted territory.
—IAN BARTHOLOMEW
Nearly a decade ago, Peggy Hsu (許哲珮)ade a splash in the pop scene with a hit debut album, Balloon (汽球), which earned her the best newcomer accolade at the Golden Melody Awards, in addition to similar awards in China and Singapore.
Hsu’s cutesy, honeyed voice and immaculate song arrangements appeal to Mando-pop fans, but she sticks to the edge of the mainstream with her concept-driven songwriting.
The 28-year-old singer-songwriter’s latest album, Fine (美好的), is an ode to the sweetness of childhood and “the finer things” in life. While the topic isn’t exactly groundbreaking, Hsu, for the most part, deals with her subjects with sensitivity and nuance.
The album starts with the musings of a boy who dreams up an imaginary friend portrayed in the jazzy Di Di Di (滴滴滴). After the friend appears, their world grows more surreal. Fish swim around them and cotton candy “turns into clouds.”
But Hsu doesn’t let the imaginary world serve as a mere mindless escape. Hints of the real world creep in: the boy tells his friend “we’ll stamp out those terrible people’s tempers” and pleads “after a while, please don’t leave me.”
Hsu’s keen arrangement skills and flawless vocal delivery will draw appreciation from pop mavens. There’s her fluid phrasing in Fell in Love With a Circus Ringleader (愛上馬戲團團長), which has an arrangement drawing from acid-jazz and J-pop, and the slick bossa nova grooves and beautiful harmonies of Sunlight Lover (日光戀人).
The title track, a gentle acoustic number with a cello and jazz harmonica accompaniment, waxes sentimental about a lover. While the lyrics seem to dwell in platitudes, Hsu delivers the song with sincerity and depth.
Overall, the album has a pristine and innocent charm. Hsu, who had the starring role in the popular children’s theater show Lil’ Flora (小花), conveys a strong sense of confidence in connecting with her listeners.
— DAVID CHEN
First they were ke-ai (可愛), now they’re bad boy rockers. Five years ago as The Daymakers, this trio of expats from Ilan, made female audience members giggle and swoon with their loud 1970s zoot suits and cutesy Chinese lyrics.
Once the gimmick wore thin, the band members switched instruments (from bass, drums and guitar to two guitars and drums) and their pop-punk sound turned into raw garage rock.
Get Your Kicks!, a 7-inch vinyl record that comes with a CD-R of MP3s, is a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am affair that shows The Deadly Vibes at their best.
Vocalist and guitarist Jason Copps whines and whoops through Man I Love That Rock N’ Roll with abandon. On Get Your Kicks, brash guitars twang along with a Mississippi Hill Country blues groove played at a punk tempo.
Like The Daymakers, The Vibes are good at sticking to a simple theme in their repertoire, even at the risk of parody. Use It or Lose It almost gets campy with lyrics like “use it like a bad girl should … do it like your mama said you never should.” But at the end, it’s hard not to give in to the song’s catchy chorus hooks.
You Really Got Me Goin’ purrs like a drag race theme, with its slick and tight rhythm changes. The title of the EP’s final track, Good to Be Bad, could neatly sum up the band’s motto, if it had one.
Get Your Kicks! is full of rousing rock, but The Vibes aren’t trying to give you goose bumps. They want to see sweat on the dance floor.
—DAVID CHEN
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