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)