A Moving Sound refines its pan-Asian/world beat sound with Starshine, which was released earlier this month. Everything from African drumming to Chinese opera is thrown into the mix by this five-piece group, led by the husband-and-wife team of producer, singer and multi-instrumentalist Scott Prairie and vocalist and dancer Mia Hsieh (謝韻雅).
Overall the album feels darker and moodier than the group’s past two albums, but the songs are accessible and engaging — an approach that has earned the group widespread acclaim and a loyal following.
A droning, almost post-punk, bass groove drives the title track, which is inspired by the concept of incarnation and sets the album’s tone. The tune begins with the reedy sound of the satar (薩塔琴), a bowed lute associated with traditional Uighur music in western China, and builds up to a set of vocal acrobatics from Hsieh, whose voice soars and glides beautifully at the high range. An ominous-sounding Buddhist chant in the last third of the song sounds incongruous at first, but then fades smoothly into a swirl of melodies that has flavors of Central Asia.
Mixing and matching different ethnic music traditions often runs the risk of falling into cliche or creating a watered-down pastiche. But A Moving Sound’s music is fresh and original, particularly in songs like the festive Harvest Song, written by Hsieh and based on a traditional Taiwanese Aboriginal melody and lyrics. The satar and hand percussion lend a touch of exotica, but it’s Hsieh’s spirited vocal delivery and her backing singers that carry the song.
A Moving Sound offers a refreshing take on Chinese opera in the folk-rock-tinged Dynasty, with some eerie singing from Hsieh, as well as a joyous rendition of the Taiwanese folk tune Toh De Gong (Ode to the Earth God, 土地公柏). The album showcases solid performances from the band’s instrumentalists: Alex Wu (吳政君) on percussion and sax synthesizer; Lo Tang-Hsuan (羅堂軒) on erhu; and Hsieh Hua-chou (謝華洲), who plays guitar and the oud-like zhong ruan (中阮).
Fans of the group in particular will enjoy the accompanying DVD, which has footage from international performances, outtakes from photo shoots and interesting dance and vocal improvisations performed by Hsieh and Prairie. The liner notes provide each song’s backstory, which might ruin the mystery for some. Listen to the CD first and then read the notes later to learn about the mindscape of this one-of-a-kind group.
— DAVID CHEN
Joanna Wang (王若琳) quickly gained a following last year with her debut album Start From Here, and it’s not difficult to see why. This 21-year-old singer’s voice — rich, husky and pitch-perfect — locates her in jazz diva territory.
Though Wang is well suited to singing standards, she seems most comfortable with folk and pop rock. She wasted no time in following up her successful debut with a double CD set, Joanna and 王若琳 and The Adult Storybook. The two albums could be seen as two sides of the same coin.
The first clearly targets the mainstream with polished rock tunes and feel-good Americana-sounding ballads a la Norah Jones, perhaps the mold Sony Music fancies for Wang. Nonetheless, many of the songs — co-written with Roger Joseph Manning Jr and recorded with session musicians in Los Angeles — are top notch and tailored to Wang’s voice.
Her phrasing is masterful and at times hauntingly beautiful, whether singing in Mandarin or English. Wang deftly navigates the bossa nova beat of Tikiville, shows Mando-pop vocalists how a ballad should be done in One Idea (一種念頭) and gives a nod to The Beatles with My Love (我的愛). She taps into Taiwan’s affection for Don McLean’s Vincent with an admirable rendition of her own.
The singles-oriented, commercial vibe of Joanna and 王若琳 is balanced by The Adult Storybook, a concept album, which, despite its flaws, is more interesting and feels more personal. Wang handled all of the songwriting in this collection (written under the pen name New Tokyo Terror), which shows a spark of brilliance in the quirky rocker How I Feel About Businessmen and the beautiful indie-folk tune Palpitation.
Wang seems eager to prove that her chanteuse’s voice works outside of conventional pop. She comes up with more whimsical-sounding rockers like His Remedy, which sounds like Wilco when it started moving into art rock.
But at times, it’s easy to be seduced by Wang’s voice, the slick studio musicians, the pleasing rock aesthetic, the beautifully illustrated storybook liner notes. On closer inspection, a few stories come across as obtuse and awkward (I Guess I’m Paranoid). Others don’t quite take off. Longing for Romance begins with a startling line, “He rolled off her body ’cause he was done, but she didn’t care how she felt then and there,” but fails to offer much depth in the portrait of the main character.
Wang is clearly exploring her talent in a compelling way, and both albums are worth listening to. It will be interesting to see whether the two creative paths of this CD set — commercial pop and more independently-driven songwriting — converge.
— DAVID CHEN
Although sounding more like a demo than a commercial release, Island Song (島歌) by Tang Hsu (湯旭), a newcomer to the singer-songwriter scene, may well tap into the current that swept the likes of Deserts Chang (張懸) to prominence.
Primarily a guitar and voice album, with a bit of piano and some simple orchestration on a number of tracks, Island Song has the stripped-down quality, a sense of serendipity and a certain strain of earnestness that are associated with urban folk artists like The Swell Season, which became a minor cult classic in Taiwan through the movie Once.
Nothing can rival the bold simplicity and kitschy cuteness of Chang’s Baby (寶貝), and many of Tang’s songs are infused with a similar spirit: saying simple things in simple words. Tang sings mostly about the everyday affections and moods of adolescent life, from evocative expressions of sorrow in the lilting rhythms of the South Seas-inflected title track to the surprisingly down-to-earth and unsentimental Thank You, Mum (媽、謝謝你). Both these tracks rely for their appeal on a strong expressive impulse that while clearly still derivative and tinged with cliche, is powerfully engaged with what is being said.
Occasionally, Tang ventures into pop music territory, with mixed results. The use of a drum machine in Crowd Games (擁擠的遊戲) is intrusive, but the track could easily be made to work with more sophisticated production. The big piano and voice ballad Our Future (我們的未來) has a cheap Mando-pop veneer, but is saved by its lyrics and, ironically, the unpolished quality of Tang’s voice.
Island Song is being marketed as a rough diamond, which may explain some of the rather shabby production values, but there is more to Tang than meets the eye.
—IAN BARTHOLOMEW
On Faith Map’s (信心地圖) release, it seemed an easy matter to dismiss this messy compilation of wannabe and youthful established artists singing under the umbrella label of New Artist Family (新藝人家族) as a gimmicky charity release that would rapidly disappear from the charts. There is no accounting for musical taste, and the album has held a spot in the right half of the Top 20 for 10 weeks since its debut. Perhaps this is a result of music lovers’ generosity. A proportion of the cover price goes to charity, a fact that the marketing for this album plays up heavily.
Faith Map’s sales were further boosted by two concerts last week, which reported 4,000 tickets sold and NT$6 million raised for the victims of Typhoon Morakot. While it is all well and good to see the pop music industry digging deep, it’s a shame that the music is so unutterably uninteresting.
All the right studio effects are there, but the total lack of structure in the selection of tracks accentuates the indifference of the individual contributors. The vague over-arching theme of following the path of faith to a better place, and generally believing in goodness, and love and such gooey sentiment is fine, but after listening to what the young artists have to offer, all that’s left is a feeling of despair.
Even the more experienced musicians don’t pass muster. FIR (飛兒樂團) member Acing (阿沁) — real name Real Huang (黃漢青) — turns up with the truly terrible I Need to Pray, which makes up for a lack of conviction with a big drum kit and cliched rock riffs when what was needed was a little more soul-searching.
Typhoon by Brit-pop band Transition is thrown in to add an international flavor, but sounds totally out of place. Then there’s the half-hearted rap number My Savior by Green Tea (綠茶). And on, and on.
There are some tolerable tracks, such as Niao Er’s (鳥兒) 17km of Coastline (十七公里海岸線) with its stripped-down cello, and a passionate duet by JJ & Sun (何耀珊/林俊傑) with elements of a Chinese orchestra, but these aren’t enough to buy the album for any reason other than charity.
—IAN BARTHOLOMEW
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