2010 Elva Hsiao Wow World Tour
Singapore Indoor Stadium
Last Saturday
It was only towards the end that the show began to live up to its title.
Taiwanese popster Elva Hsiao came on for the encore in a saucy red wig, an eye visor a la The X-Men’s Cyclops and a jacket top that radiated laser beams for the energetic dance number, Wow.
The high-octane finale also featured Confession as well as one of her biggest hits, Love’s Theme Song. The 31-year-old urged the audience to stand up and “shake your booty with me” and warned: “If you sit too long, you’ll get a sore back.”
The crowd of close to 6,000 happily complied and the evening ended on a strong note.
How different things were two hours earlier.
Hsiao managed to make an arresting appearance as an upside-down diamond descended from the rigging and then opened up to reveal the singer inside, togged out in a glittery silver outfit and sporting a jet-black bob wig.
She launched into the fast numbers Tomorrow and Shining Love and tried to whip up the crowd but her fans remained glued to their seats.
Things were not quite clicking and chief among the problems was the audio. There was too much reverb in the mix and when it got loud, it sounded as if it was just on the edge of being distorted.
Maybe the reverb was needed to shore up her voice which went flat a couple of times and generally failed to impress, particularly on the ballads such as I Love You So Much.
Another distraction was the mystifying series of short fantasy videos about a little Caucasian girl in a magic playroom.
It was meant to tie in with the title of Hsiao’s last album Diamond Candy (2009), but it was too much to swallow fortune cookie nonsense along the lines of “However, beautiful candies lose their colours easily” portentously intoned by a narrator.
Tellingly, songs from her first few albums were well represented and for many of her fans, those remain firm favourites even though Hsiao has now chalked up 10 albums’ worth of material.
The track that everyone chorused along to for the mass singalong karaoke moment was the ballad The Most Familiar Stranger. That was from her 1999 self-titled debut and it sometimes seemed like she has never quite hit the heights she did back then.
As the evening progressed however, Hsiao became more comfortable and it showed in her singing.
She delivered The World That I Want with much conviction, maybe because the song is particularly close to her heart. It was released in mid-2006 at a frustrating time for her as the release of the new album kept getting delayed. Ironically, 1087 was widely seen as a disappointment when it finally came out.
Sometimes, timing can be everything.
If she had her way, she would have wanted her record to see the light of day much sooner. If I had mine, I would have wanted her to hit her stride at the concert much earlier.
(ST)