Dearest Bride

Rynn Lim

Malaysian singer-songwriter Rynn Lim is a groom-in-waiting, searching for his bride.

He looks dapper and pensive in the lyric booklet and on the lead track My Bride, he croons: “I shouldn’t treat you as my bride/How could there be a future to speak of/You’re just tired from walking/And need my shoulder to rest on, that’s all”.

By adding a gender twist, Lim gives us a different take on traditional yearning-to-be-a-bride numbers, such as Taiwanese singer Michelle Pan’s 1992 classic Matchmaker.

Speaking of different takes, he offers a cover version of the Minnan number Call My Name that is miles from the bombast of Eric Moo’s original, and still moving.

I’m not sure if this qualifies as a brand new album, though, as five tracks here were included in his previous, best-of collection: 100, Merry-go-round Of Love, 7 Days, Crime Scene and Gravity Of Love.

Though the album is bookended by more sombre tracks, Lim’s strength is actually in the playful and jaunty numbers.

Vanished is a song about the damaged environment that avoids being preachy, thanks to its light-hearted tune. The lyrics serve up an arresting image: “If we can last till we’re 60/Together, hand in hand/Build a snow globe in the desert”.

It’s enough to win you over.

Shine

Shine Huang

She’s cutesy. She’s peppy. And she’s all of 19.

True to the youthful demographic it’s targeted at, Taiwan’s Shine Huang’s debut album even includes a biodata section detailing her height (163cm), weight (42kg) and fear of flying insects: “Bugs are really disgusting!!!!!! Don’t come near me!!!!!! Including butterflies!!!!!!”

She punctuates as though she was forbidden to use exclamation marks in childhood.

Unfortunately, there is less to exclaim about when it comes to the CD’s content.

Musically, there have been some comparisons with her idol Jolin Tsai and there are a number of bouncy dance tracks here such as Electrocuted and the harder-edged Flowery World.

But Huang’s child-like vocals are too much to take song after song. After a few spins, I feel like I need a cup of strong black coffee to go with the sugar rush.

Dancing diva Tsai can rest easy, for now.

(ST)

Love Practice

Jessie Chiang

The album opens with the glossy R&B number, That Ain’t Love.

Is Taiwanese model-turned-singer Jessie Chiang’s album opener a riposte to superstar Jay Chou?

In the song, Chiang, who has been repeatedly linked to Chou, sings: “Let’s end things here, what do you say/Anyway, it’s only lies left that you can say.”

The added twist here is that the lyrics were penned by Huang Jun-lang, a frequent Chou collaborator.

Rumours of late have been about a break-up between Chiang and Chou, so perhaps Huang might be channelling some insider information.

Elsewhere, is the doe-eyed lass addressing herself on the ballad, Please Be A Little Braver?

The lyrics, in this case, are courtesy of Vincent Fang, Chou’s long-time musical partner: “Will you please be a little braver/Don’t want to hear any more sorrys/I’ll recover from my broken heart on my own.”

While she might be nursing a broken heart, the songs here do not come across as deeply felt.

The mood of the music is too light, cheery even, and her voice merely skims along, even when the lyrics are about hurt and pain.

At the same time, there is no denying that these bouncy numbers will get you grooving. Perhaps, one could think of the songs here as being defiantly resilient.

This might well be the strategy from the start. After all, living well is the best revenge.

Draw G’s First Breath

G.NA

Korea’s Cube Entertainment has girl group 4Minute and boyband Beast in its stable. The company is now branching out with solo female act G.NA, who used to be part of an unimaginatively named girl quintet, 5 Girls.

This debut EP is heavy on guest star power, featuring Beast’s Jun Hyung on the opening number, I’ll Back Off So You Can Live Better, and K-pop superstar Rain on the R&B duet Things I Want To Do If I Have A Lover.

It is the aptly named Supa Solo, though, which swaggers with attitude, and on which G.NA shines brightest.

More importantly, it sounds a little different from what is out there, and could help her to stand out in a K-pop market crowded with lookalikes and soundalikes.

(ST)

You Again

Andy Fickman

The bland generic title is actually a pretty good indication of what you can expect from the movie.

In high school, Marni (Kristen Bell) was pimply, wore braces and was tormented by popular cheerleader Joanna (Odette Yustman).

Years later, Marni is attractive, confident and successful at work. But she is aghast when she finds out that her brother’s bride-to-be is none other than her old nemesis.

What really gets her goat is the fact that the now saintly Joanna acts as though they have never even met. Cue unbelievable, and unfunny, situations as Marni tries ways and means to get everyone else to see the truth about Joanna.

On top of that, there is the fraught history between Marni’s mother (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Joanna’s aunt (Sigourney Weaver) but not even a swimming-pool catfight between Curtis and Weaver can keep this film afloat.

(ST)

The news that singer-songwriter Liang Wern Fook was awarded the Cultural Medallion last Tuesday came rather as a surprise. I had assumed the 46-year-old had already been the recipient of Singapore’s highest accolade for culture and the arts.

After all, he was the seminal figure in the xinyao Singapore folk movement which began in campuses and hit its peak in the 1980s. His influence rests on five albums released between 1986 and 1992, and songs he wrote for others. One of them, Lian Zhi Qi (Love’s Refuge) sung by Jiang Hu, topped the singles chart for an astounding 29 weeks in 1986.

Much that Liang wrote about were part and parcel of my growing up years as they revolved around school and friendship.

There is the classic Xi Shui Chang Liu (Friendship Forever) with its carefree harmonica and guitar opening: “When we were young, who didn’t have dreams/Without realising it, you revealed your heart’s ambitions to me.”

It was probably the first Liang song that I heard and I still have this one memory associated with it.

A group of us were hanging out after extra-curricular activity, as it was still known then, and we ended up near the Padang, singing songs on the steps of City Hall. Under a darkened sky, we sang: “Shooting stars fly by in the night, imagining the road ahead/The breeze listens to our countless aspirations.”

This is one of those moments you will always remember and hold on to because it is just so perfect, even if there were no shooting stars in sight that night. The future held so much hope and promise that one could almost taste and touch it then.

But he was no starry-eyed optimist. He looked further and imagined: “Many years later, we meet again/We all have tired smiles/I’ll ask my friend, when will you play for me again/Will it still be the same, will it still be the same?”

He did not sugar-coat the future to come and there was the weight of would-be nostalgia already mourning the loss of those youthful days.

His bittersweet songs made one smile and ache at the same time, and grateful that someone could put these thoughts to paper and then set the indelible words to unforgettable music.

Little wonder that in a 2003 poll by the Composers and Authors Society of Singapore (Compass), Friendship Forever topped the list of the 10 top xinyao songs. More impressively, he had six other songs in that honour roll.

He was, of course, not the only one writing about such themes. Ocean Butterflies’ xinyao boxsets show songs written and performed by the likes of Eric Moo, Roy Loi and Hong Shaoxuan. They reveal how dominant Liang was in the scene as every other song is written by him.

He stood out also for the depth and breadth of his works. In songs such as Tai Duo Tai Duo (Too Much Too Much) and Yi Bu Yi Bu Lai (One Step At A Time), he proved to be an astute and witty observer of society.

The latter was an inventive song to boot as he weaved into the track a traditional children’s ditty: “The sun goes down and comes up again the next day, can it climb up slower on Sunday/Flowers wilt and bloom again the next year, which company is going to drop the axe this year.”

So what if he did not have polished vocals? That boy-next-door voice made his songs only more accessible as they seemed to be the intimate musings of a close friend.

He was also generous and self-aware enough to know when to let others sing his songs, personal as they seem to be. Zhi Shi Jing Guo (Just Passing Through) is a clear-eyed love song about bad timing and it was sung by frequent collaborator Koh Nam Seng.

You could see how Liang grew with each album, broadening his outlook from personal relationships to national identity in Singapore Pie (1990) to Chinese and eastern identity in Go East (1992).

However, I remain partial to his earlier work, when as a thoughtful young man in his 20s, he gazed upon the ordinary and the everyday and came up with timeless music. His genuine passion for friends, for society and for life was so palpable and compelling.

In the liner notes to The Name Of Love (1988), he wrote: “There are no answers here, I still believe answers have to come from everyone searching for them together. There is no anger or rebellion here, I still believe in compassion more... If you could turn over every song here, on the back of each would be a single word – love.”

He did not vanish from the music scene after his series of albums. There was a foray into pop as a songwriter with hits such as Kit Chan’s Worried and Andy Lau’s Everytime I Wake Up, but he was now far less prolific.

The 1996 musical December Rains, restaged recently, suggested a new trajectory while 2007’s If There’re Seasons was a show built around his existing songs. He has said he wants to continue doing musicals as they combine his two loves, Chinese literature and music. The thought of new material to come is a cheering one.

While Seasons did not quite do his songs justice, it did give a new lease of life to some old classics.

And that really is the best thing about the Cultural Medallion award, that it will introduce a new generation of the young and the young-at-heart to be moved by Liang’s heartfelt poetry and music.

(ST)

Fighting With Bach

Nan Quan Mama

The shadow of mentor Jay Chou still looms large, even though this is Nan Quan Mama’s sixth album and they have shrunk from being a quartet to a duo.

Otaku’s Summer harks back to Chou’s Sunny Otaku. Another track River, Afternoon, I Passed By vaguely sounds like Sunny Otaku as well. At times, the vocals could even pass for the Mandopop superstar’s too.

The track Panda Man, meanwhile, is the theme song to the idol sci-fi TV series Pandamen, a project helmed by Chou.

The odd thing is that songwriting duties are largely split between the remaining two members, Devon and Yuhao.

Where Chou’s shadow dissipates, there are some nice moments. The gothic and dramatic Battling Bach is easily the most exciting thing here, with a piano riff, electronic beats and a guest tenor voice swirling in the mix.

Now that Nan Quan Mama are a duo, they will have to take care not to sound like newcomer male duo The Drifters – yet another Chou-backed musical venture.

It's My Time

Lin Yu-chun

It’s too much to expect a one-trick pony to run an entire race.

The roly-poly Taiwanese Lin Yu-chun, nicknamed Little Fatty, brought the house down when he sang the Whitney Houston version of I Will Always Love You on the popular One Million Star competition.

His vocal range is stupendous, it’s true, but an entire album of Englishlanguage material with slightly off diction is still gimmicky.

One can understand the comparisons to the previously dowdy Susan Boyle – neither of them sound like what you might imagine when you first see them. But these comparisons are unfair to Boyle, who has a surer grasp on the emotional phrasing of a song than Lin’s showboating mimicry, of tracks such as Mariah Carey’s Hero and Celine Dion’s My Love Will Go On.

The inclusion of Christina Aguilera’s rock number Fighter offers some respite from the onslaught of women power ballads, though he still seems to be parroting Aguilera rather than re-interpreting the song.

The lone original English track Under Your Wings offers some genuine emotion for a change, but the race has long been lost.

(ST)

The Child's Eye

The Pang Brothers

The story: Rainie (Rainie Yang) hopes that a trip to Bangkok will improve the rocky situation with her boyfriend Lok (a glum Shawn Yue). Two other couples join them. When protests break out, they are trapped in the city and are forced to put up at a dodgy, dingy hotel with a brusque owner (Lam Ka Tung). Strange things begin to happen, then Rainie’s friends start disappearing. She has only a little girl and her dog to rely on for help.

The movie goes to hell at the conclusion of the story. Too bad it does not do so earlier since its vision of the underworld is the most distinctive thing about this otherwise pedestrian horror thriller.

Directors and co-writers the Pang brothers imagine Hades as a smoky, smouldering inferno composed of the paper offerings of houses, cars and such that people dedicate to the deceased at traditional Chinese funerals.

It is a visually witty and different take on the netherworld but one that probably would have worked equally well in regular 2-D.

The Child’s Eye comes right on the heels of The Shock Labyrinth: House Of Horrors, the first Japanese life-action 3-D flick. But as Asian film-makers rush to embrace the technology, they also need to keep in mind that it is no longer such a novelty that any 3-D offering will automatically draw a crowd of curious moviegoers.

Already, some of the showcased 3-D sequences here – a bullet flying into the audience, a disembodied hand reaching out – feel lazy and cliched.

Such cheap thrills make the film seem stuck in theme park-attraction mode (remember Captain EO starring the late Michael Jackson at Disney theme parks?).

Part of the problem is that The Child’s Eye is very much a standard horror picture with too many familiar elements, from a chair moving ominously on its own to creepy-looking children.

The upheaval in Bangkok at the beginning anchor the film in reality but, unfortunately, it does not have anything to do with what follows. The attempt at keeping things believable is later completely abandoned and the movie plunges into full-blown haunted house territory.

Also, the music score was rather intrusive and the most effective scene, sound-wise, was one which simply used the ambient sounds of a laundry room.

It is all rather disappointing given that the Pang brothers had previously helmed The Eye (2002), which was more successful at conjuring up a sustained atmosphere of dread and foreboding. It helped that Malaysian actress Angelica Lee was in the title role.

Taiwanese singer and idol drama star Rainie Yang comes off worse in the comparison between the two leads as she is unable to summon the same level of emotional intensity. She is more like the petulant cutie-pie in some, well, idol drama having a minor crisis that has been blown out of proportion.

That, though, might be more than enough to scare the living daylights out of some people.

(ST)

Genesis

Jeff Chang

The 43-year-old Jeff Chang faces essentially the same challenge with each new album: How can he make himself relevant again?

The Taiwanese singer has no problem filling concert venues on the strength of his past hits such as Don’t Worry About My Sadness and Love Tide. But he has not sounded current since the flirtation with electronica on the album Come Back (1999) – and that was 11 long years ago.

Since 1989, that pristine voice of his has been caressing ballads, his signature genre. The problem is that when the tunes are less than stellar, they easily run the risk of sounding like tired retreads.

White Moonlight (2004), for example, is one of his more moving efforts in recent years. Here, Frosted Sun, in title and tone, merely seems like a vain attempt to recapture that past glory.

The retro vibe of More Than Words is not a good idea, either, as it just ends up sounding dated, while The Power Of Happiness, a duet with local singer Olivia Ong, feels more like an opportunistic tie-up than an essential collaboration.

It is not that there is a dearth of decent material – check out Those Bygone Times and Back Where We Began – but, fairly or not, his releases simply do not generate much excitement now.

Sometimes, it could be something as banal as a matter of image and styling. So thank goodness that ill-advised mop of curls on Escape (2008) is gone so he won’t be scaring away potential fans before they even listen to the CD.

A Wonderful Journey

Ariel Lin

The journey begins promisingly enough with Fall In Love When The Flower Blooms. This likable, summery track doesn’t demand too much of either Taiwan idol drama star Ariel Lin or the listener and it breezes along amiably.

But too much of the scenery that follows is in the same vein, either sweet and disposable or sweet with a tinge of sadness. After a while, it all blends together.

Even though Lin flew out to London for the publicity shots, the follow-up to her debut Blissful Encounter – what is with the hyperbolic titles? – fails to head anywhere interesting.

Super Hot

Fahrenheit

Clad in matchy-matchy black and white ensembles on the oversized album cover, Aaron Yan, Wu Chun, Calvin Chen and Jiro Wang get their sexy on in the Taiwanese boyband’s fourth album.

The title dance track has them going: “Burning hot, if this temperature still makes people lonely/It’s too hot, might as well let us be naked, hot.”

The seduction continues on Sexy Girl: “Sexy girl, promise me, don’t be soft-hearted, please continue to harm me/Sexy girl, save me, without this kind of pain, I don’t think I can live.”

But while the tempo might have quickened, the excitement level for the listener stubbornly refuses to rise.

The sampling of the Minnan ditty Any Beer Bottles To Sell in Going On My Way does not quite work but at least they get some points for trying.

Too bad the other numbers generally leave me cold.

(ST)

Reign Of Assassins

Su Chao-pin

The story: The Black Stone is a group of highly skilled assassins led by the shadowy Wheel King (Wang Xueqi). After tracking down half of a mystical monk’s bodily remains, rumoured to contain the secret to becoming all-powerful, one of the killers, Drizzle (Kelly Lin), disappears. Years later, a woman, Zeng Jing (Michelle Yeoh), turns up in town and sets up a stall selling fabric. She catches the eye of a messenger, Jiang Asheng (Jung Woo Sung), but her secret past casts a shadow over their lives.

Everything new is old again. Reign Of Assassins is a period martial arts flick that takes a few recent ideas and gives them an antiquated makeover. Some of it is fun, such as watching a bank robbery in progress. We are so familiar with hold-ups from TV shows and crime thrillers that it is refreshing to see it take place with swords in olden China.

The transformation works less well in some other cases. In the action series Nikita, no-hopers at the end of their tether are trained to be assassins. Here, murderous nymphomaniac Ye Zhanqing (an unconvincing Barbie Hsu) is saved from the gallows and taken under the Wheel King’s tutelage to replace Drizzle.

Plastic surgery? Criminals nowadays might go under the scalpel to change their features but that is nothing compared to the extraordinary Doctor Li, who manages to turn Kelly Lin, as Drizzle, into Michelle Yeoh (below), as the seemingly demure cloth-seller Zeng Jing. What is more unsettling, though, is that the 48-year-old Yeoh gets saddled with the voice of a sweet young girl in the Mandarin dub.

Apart from some familiar plot devices, there are also echoes of producer John Woo’s work in Reign, even though Taiwanese Su Chao-pin is credited as the director. The nip-tuck routine recalls Woo’s flamboyant Hollywood thriller Face/Off (1997) while the slo-mo swordfight and freeze frames bring to mind his penchant for showy action scenes.

Still, the fight scenes are tightly executed and Su keeps things interesting by giving the characters different signature weapons, from Zeng Jing’s flexible blade to the Wheel King’s sword which has a rotating wheel attached to it.

What Su also brings to the table is a script with a strong female protagonist underpinned by Buddhist precepts about forgiveness and letting go, both unusual for the martial arts genre as the recent spate of Donnie Yen flicks would attest to.

Yeoh brings a reserved dignity to the role and there is a homely sweetness to her relationship with Jung, recently seen in the Korean western The Good, The Bad And The Weird (2008). But it does not surpass her turn in Lee Ang’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), no matter what Woo claimed at the press conference in Singapore.

As for the remains of the monk, it is a MacGuffin that sets off the chain of events that unfolds but Su has a sly joke up his sleeve when we finally find out why the Wheel King has been searching for it all this time.

It feels a little like a missed opportunity, since a martial arts flick steeped in black humour would indeed have been something new.

(ST)

Limits

LaLa Hsu

The pixie-ish LaLa Hsu could easily have gone down the cutie-pie route but, thank goodness, the Taiwanese singer-songwriter has bigger ambitions, and the talent to match them.

Hsu’s 2009 debut album was well received and won her the best newcomer trophy at the Golden Melody Awards. The champion of the third season of One Million Star scored a KTV-friendly hit with Riding A White Horse, which mixed pop with Chinese opera, to surprisingly moving effect.

There is nothing quite as exciting as Riding A White Horse on this, her follow-up album.

Still, there are a couple of tracks that will grow on you here, including the ballads Limits and Acrophobia. On the latter, she sings sweetly: “You let the sky lose its distance/I let myself leave hesitation/Scaling love, bidding memory farewell/ I’m loving you”.

The unexpectedly elegiac Disco is another keeper. But, despite the album’s name, it does not feel as though Hsu is pushing herself to her limit.

Once In A Lifetime

sodagreen

Taiwanese rock band sodagreen’s latest live release raises a couple of questions.

Firstly, why didn’t their Daylight Fever tour come to Singapore? Secondly, after the group’s last two feted albums released last year, Daylight Of Spring and Summer/Fever, which kick-started their four-

album season-themed Project Vivaldi, what has happened to the autumn and winter instalments?

And since this is a concert recording offering, why not offer more songs, rather than a paltry selection of 11 songs?

There is a bonus of three new songs tacked on, though one of them, No Sleep, hardly counts, since it is merely the Mandarin version of a Minnan track on Summer/Fever. Thought of as an extended single, Once In A Lifetime comes up to their usual high standards. In that case, can we get the next fulllength album soon, please?

Solace

Jones Shi

After making his debut with Firelight five years ago, local singersongwriter Jones Shi fell off the Mandopop radar. He is now signed on to a new label and has released a threetrack EP to test the waters.

The catchy soft rock ballads here have been crafted to showcase his emotive and slightly gruff voice, with the Lee Shih Siong/Xiaohan-penned Imperfect Perfection being the most memorable. Missing out on five years in the industry can be hard on a musician’s career. Shi can find solace in the fact that this EP marks a promising return to the scene.

(ST)