Ara Kimbo (胡德夫)
Sky High Mountain Blues (大武山藍調)
Arrival Music (有風音樂)
Puyuma Aboriginal singer Hu De-fu (胡德夫), or “Kimbo” as he is commonly known, has finally released his second album in a career spanning more than 30 years. Now going by his Aboriginal name, Ara Kimbo, the 60-year-old sounds re-energized on Sky High Mountain Blues (大武山藍調), a grand production in many respects.
Backed by a new record label, Arrival Music (有風音樂), Kimbo traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, and hired top-shelf studio musicians to record Sky High’s eleven tracks, a mix of rock and gospel covers and new versions of his own classic tunes. This album plays like a polished retrospective, though it does suggest new possibilities for the beloved singer.
Die-hard fans won’t hear Meilidao (美麗島, Formosa), the song by the late Lee Shuang-tze (李雙澤) that Kimbo made famous and got him blacklisted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government in the late 1970s, when it became associated with pro-democracy activism.
But Kimbo’s affinity for the music of the 1960s and 1970s remains evident in his choice of songs for this new album, which include covers of Don McLean’s Oh My What a Shame and Blind Faith’s Can’t Find My Way Home. Kimbo, who has a commanding tenor voice, offers a spirited performance on these songs, but the renditions probably won’t impress the average fan of Western rock because of his accented English.
It’s Taiwanese listeners of Kimbo’s generation who are most likely to appreciate these songs, as they harken back to the singer’s early days in the 1970s, when he cemented his position as the “Father of Taiwanese Folk” (台灣民歌之父) while performing on the Taipei coffeehouse circuit. Kimbo also acknowledges his long-standing appreciation for American gospel by singing standards like Were You There? and Put Your Hand in the Hand.
The best songs on Sky High by far, though, are Kimbo’s originals and his performances of traditional Aboriginal songs. He revamped the lyrics to his popular Standing on My Land, which has become Drifting on My Land (帶著血管的漂流木). It’s songs like this on which his backing studio musicians from Nashville shine. Their tight and driving blues-rock arrangement fits perfectly with the song’s soaring and mournful melody, credited to the late Amis singer Difang (郭英男).
Kimbo has long fancied himself as a singer of “Aboriginal blues,” and he makes the connection between his roots and American blues feel very natural on Sky High Mountain Blues, the title track. The backing musicians play a slow but swinging minor blues groove (think Bob Dylan’s current sound), and once again, they save the day. Their tight and smooth groove allows Kimbo to belt out the lyrics, sung in his native Puyuma language, with gusto. Without a doubt, this track is one of Kimbo’s finest recorded performances to date.
There are a few other noteworthy moments on Sky High: Kimbo offers a nice rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah (it’s well suited to his voice, and the best cover song on the album), and there’s Power in Me (內在的力量), the official anthem for the 2009 Taipei Deaflympics that he co-penned with theater director Stan Lai (賴聲川). The latter song includes guest vocal appearances by Chang Hui-mei (張惠妹), aka A-mei (阿妹), and Paiwan Aboriginal singer Matzka (瑪斯卡).
Despite the high production values and excellent performances all around, Sky High suffers a bit from a lack of focus with its smattering of rock covers, Aboriginal folk and pop numbers. Kimbo’s work with Nashville musicians shows the most promise on his original material and Aboriginal traditionals, and it’s too bad he didn’t pursue this direction fully.
It’s clear that Arrival Music, a company keen to represent unique, cream-of-the-crop Taiwanese performers, views Kimbo as a singer with broad appeal, and rightly so. But at this point in his storied career, perhaps it’s time for the venerable singer to take a few more artistic risks.
— David Chen
Cicada
Pieces (散落的時光)
White Wabbit Records (小白兔唱片)
Cicada is described as a chamber music ensemble that appeals to fans of post-rock, and it’s easy to see why. The quartet’s music is grounded by ambient moods and deliberate, steady rhythms.
Pieces (散落的時光), the group’s first full-length album, won’t guide listeners to a state of navel-gazing and head-nodding as if they were standing in front of a band armed with electric and bass guitars, drums and a palette of electronic effects. But the sounds of this quartet do inspire a similar kind of introspection.
The main instrumentation — piano, cello and violin — sets the album’s solitary and melancholy tone. An acoustic guitar adds a folk-rock dimension to the quartet’s sound, as Bambi Chiang (江睿哲) either picks simple, looping melodic lines or strums lush-sounding chords. Sunshine Smile begins with a tense mood, blossoms into composed exuberance and sounds like it would be a fitting backing track for a singer in the vein of Tori Amos or Sarah McLachlan.
Pianist Jesy Chiang (江致潔), who composed and arranged the album’s nine tracks, avoids the bombast common in post-rock (songs that begin quietly and build to predictably noisy, distortion-filled jams). She creates drama with shifting counterpoint melodies between the cello, piano and violin, which weave together seamlessly on rousing tracks like Breakaway.
As an ensemble, Cicada displays good chemistry among its members, with especially notable performances from the lead voices, cellist Wan-ing Lin (林宛縈) and violinist Anne Chang (張靖英).
While the music is beautifully done, as a whole album, Pieces clings too tightly to a singular, impressionistic mood. Only after listening to it several times did I start to feel an emotional connection to the songs and overall theme. At first, the album sounded flat and dull — everything sounded the same, despite the evocative titles given to the tracks (Happily Ever After?, Lake’s End, Encrypted Desire). It was if I were listening to a soundtrack to a film I had neither seen nor cared about.
In this way, Cicada’s music is a lot like post-rock. Pieces creates a somewhat insular world where emotions are given a contained space to rise and, occasionally, soar. For some listeners, the album will feel like an immediately inviting escape. Others will have to decide whether they want to make the effort to enter the band’s world.
— David Chen
Tanya Chua (蔡健雅)
Sing It Out of Love (說到愛)
AsiaMuse
After a highly acclaimed world tour, two-time Golden Melody Award-winning female singer Tanya Chua (蔡健雅) last month released an English-language and a Mandarin album. On the latter, titled Sing It Out of Love (說到愛), Chua augments her signature pop sound with a more folksy approach.
But while the style has changed, the topics have not. The Mando-pop princess continues to pontificate on the various blessings and ramifications of love. Having written and produced all 10 tracks on this album, she broadens her scope somewhat by singing about family.
Album highlights includes the title track, an acoustic, piano-driven pop tribute to Chua’s father, who passed away earlier this year, and Letting Go, on which Chua bids goodbye to a bygone love and sings about moving on with her life.
Although none of the tracks here comes near the catchiness of her early hits, such as Abyss (無底洞) and Reminiscence (思念), Chua shows off her skills as a gifted songstress.
Chua has ascended the peak of her career and has become as close to a pop star as her persona allows. Yet, on Sing It Out of Love she chose to return to basics by embracing a stripped-down sound.
Fans who miss Chua’s former style might hope that she emerges from grief to find a balance between her new folksy sound and her celebrated pop groove.
— Andrew C.C. Huang
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