Not Alone

Yen-j

After losing out on the Golden Melody Best New Artiste award to Weibird Wei, Taiwanese singer-songwriter Yen-j has pipped him to the release of a sophomore album.

Yen-j rightly deserved a nomination for the fresh jazz-pop sounds of Thanks Your Greatness (2010). And the bouncy opener here Thanks For Your Inspiration initially suggests that Not Alone will be more of the same – both in name and music.

Unfortunately, lightning fails to strike twice. The inventiveness and playfulness that characterised his debut album seems to be less in evidence here.

Where he once wondered if he was ahead of the curve of mainstream Mandopop, he is now firmly ensconced in it on tracks such as Good Things and the duet with Rene Liu, No Melody Can Match To You.

While Love Is Curry from the first album had deliciously sampled the jazz standard Take The A Train, his take here on Charlie Parker’s classic bebop track Donna Lee is less satisfying.

Still, the album perks up towards the end and Take Your Willpower has flashes of that fiercely individualistic young man who broke out last year: “Want to hurt me? Want to scare me? Not that easily.”

Here’s hoping that Yen-j maintains that kind of courage when it comes to his music.

Answer

Hagen Troy

Local singer-songwriter Hagen Troy is the man behind hits such as Wonder In Madrid for Jolin Tsai and Love Has Always Been There for Rachel Liang.

He has a knack for easy-breezy radio-friendly compositions which Answer serves up on tracks such as As Long As You’re Happy. Meanwhile, Let Me Tell You and Puppet venture into dance-pop territory. The album is lyrically diverse as well, tackling everything from romantic relationships to the nature of lies to the greatness of mothers.

If you have questioned what is happening with the local music scene, this is one Answer worth checking out.

(ST)