Perfect Life

Yoga Lin

Taiwanese singer Yoga Lin’s last album Senses Around (2009) was an impressive concept album that pointed to his growth and ambition as a musician.

Perfect Life, the third record from the champ of the singing contest One Million Star in 2007, is yet another winner.

The 23-year-old works with a wide range of composers and lyricists. Yet, Perfect Life feels cohesive, even as it offers something to pique one’s interest and hold one’s attention throughout.

The opening title track teams American songwriter Roger Joseph Manning Jr with Hong Kong lyricist Lin Xi and the result is a joyful jolt of pop: “Such a perfect life/How can you bear not to live it well/How can you bear not to be happy.”

Wake Up, composed by Li Shih-i, has lyrics by Wyman Wong which slip in a reference to the hit sci-fi film Inception (2010): “Don’t care how bad these crazy times are/Just want to stay at level six of my subconscious.”

While Senses Around had the beautifully aching ballad that was Heartbreak, it is Freedom that will move you here: “Only you understand that I’m like a caged wild animal/Yearning for freedom among skyscrapers.”

While I used to think that Lin had a rather mannered way of singing, it seems less and less an affectation than his way of emotionally connecting with a song. Take his reading of the Chen Hsiao-hsia-penned Good Night, which comes on like an oasis of calm every time it is played on the radio. It is a soothing balm which ends the album on a lilting note of hope.

The tacked-on Fly My Way is rightly termed a bonus track as the theme song for an online game does not fit into the overall scheme.

I am not a fan of lazy covers albums, but an accompanying disc of added material is generous and welcome. After displaying impeccable taste in collaborators on the album, Lin also gets to show his eclectic taste in music on the bonus disc by taking on tracks from Blur’s Song 2 to Buddy Holly’s Everyday to Mavis Fan’s Darling.

Life might not be perfect, but music can sometimes make it seem so.

Break Time

U-Kiss

Attention, K-pop fans: This is the fourth EP and last on which we have the original seven members of Korean boyband U-Kiss. Alexander and Ki Bum have left but, already, their shoes have been filled on the group’s new EP after this disc, Bran New Kiss.

The change in line-up is unlikely to make any difference to their dance-

floor-friendly sound, in any case. Here, they tell you to Shut Up, Light It Up and to Rock Ya Body.

Surrender to the beat and move your feet, and marvel at how apt the album title turned out to be.

(ST)