Confusion

Edison Chen

Disgraced singer-actor Edison Chen lays himself bare on this record – his first album since the sex photo scandal involving him and a bevy of female Hong Kong celebrities broke in January 2008.

For those who want to parse this for his take on the entire affair, he offers plenty of fodder.

In his hip-hop update on the doo-wop of Mr Sandman, he raps in Mandarin: “My name is Chen Guanxi, I’m just like you/I have pain and pressures, and have thought of giving up.”

Later, he goes on: “My life is like a circus show/Jumping around to get to the next stage, I’m like Super Mario.”

One of the most nakedly telling tracks is Man In The Mirror, in which Chen confronts himself: “I’m not perfect but neither am I completely evil/Or I won’t have times when I ponder/The things I’ve done before, I think I’ve seen enough/My experience lets me differentiate between right, wrong, good, evil.”

Admirably, there is little wallowing in self-pity and, against the odds, what strikes you is how defiantly joyous and playful the record sounds. On the brassy Cantonese number Reboot, he exhorts himself to “Upgrade, Reboot”.

The album also boasts contributions from Taiwanese rapper MC HotDog on tracks such as Where Are You, as well as Jay Chou, who wrote lyrics for I Can Fly.

Confusion is both a musically absorbing adventure and a fascinatingly personal document.

Add A Little Happiness

Yisa Yu

Less than a year after her debut album Blue Shorts was released, China’s Yisa Yu (left) is back with her follow-up. Despite the seeming haste, this is a better and more cohesive record than the first.

Yu has found her forte in ballads: not the showboating octave-scaling kind, but the quietly moving variety that gives her crystalline voice ample room to shine.

Prime examples here include Alleyway, Can’t Afford To Get Hurt, Already Nothing To Do With Him and the title track Add A Little Happiness.

Meanwhile, the Wu Bai-composed Don’t You Want Me Any More takes a detour into rock territory while another song, I, starts off slow and ends up jaunty. Her duet with Freya Lim, Listen To You, taken from the hit television series The Fierce Wife, is an uplifting number about friendship.

And her distinctive take on Fish Leong’s Quiet Summer, a version Yu performed at Rock Records’ 30th anniversary gigs, is another disc highlight.

Happiness is a consistently engaging album from start to end.

(ST)

West Is West

Ayub Khan-Din

The story: Fifteen-year-old Sajid (Aqib Khan) is bullied at school for being half-Pakistani. His father George Khan (Om Puri) decides that it is time Sajid learnt to be proud of his roots and takes the boy to Pakistan for a visit. Sajid’s English mother Ella (Linda Bassett) is worried about the trip because George still has a wife and family back in Pakistan.

In East Is East (1999), the clash between George’s strict Muslim upbringing and the more liberal Western values his children embraced took place in Salford, Lancashire in 1971.

Five years later, in this sequel, the stage is set for a reverse culture clash when George takes his youngest son back to George’s country of birth to give him a sense of his roots.

Actor-playwright Ayub Khan-Din drew on his own life in writing both films. Sajid is his alter-ego and newcomer Aqib Khan plays the role with spirit and charm.

At first, Sajid seems rather pitiful as someone who is unhappy at school and angry at home. But though initially resistant and defiant, he soon begins to blossom in Pakistan.

All the acting out by Sajid – skipping school, shoplifting – is a cry for attention as he needs a role model in his life. Naturally, he meets a quirky wise old man (Nadim Sawalha) who nudges him along in the right direction. He also strikes up a friendship with a local boy, Zaid the goatherd (Raj Bhansali).

Apart from Sajid’s coming-of-age, several other subplots are worked into the film, including Sajid’s brother Maneer’s (Emil Marwa) search for a bride and the tangled past to be sorted out between George and his two wives.

There is a touching scene between the two women – Ila Arun as Basheera, the wife who was left behind, and Linda Bassett as Ella, George’s second wife – as they seek to communicate their complicated emotions despite the language barrier.

While the film loses some steam in the middle, the Pakistan in the 1970s evoked by the film is a colourful and entrancing distraction, even though the movie was shot in India. The original songs by Indian trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy add to the sense of time and place.

By the time the film starts to tie up all the loose ends, you have come to care for the large cast of characters, even the obstinate and bad-tempered George.

It is good news then that another chapter about the Khan family is being planned. The titles of the first two movies are taken from the Rudyard Kipling poem The Ballad Of East And West though it seems unlikely that they will name the third Never The Twain Shall Meet.

(ST)

Fish – The Love Library World Tour 2011

Singapore Indoor Stadium

Last Saturday

It was the perfect endorsement of her title as Queen of Love Songs.

During Malaysian singer Fish Leong’s concert, a fan went down on his knees and proposed to his girlfriend while his buddies held up placards to help him pop the question.

Safe to say that this was truly a most memorable concert for that couple as Leong later offered her congratulations as well. And it was pretty good for the rest of the 6,500-strong crowd, too.

It can be quite a challenge for a singer who is primarily known for her ballads to put on a three-hour-long show. More so because she is neither an energetic performer with sizzling dance moves nor a belter made for huge venues.

Cleverly, the creative folk behind the show kept it interesting with a darker segment: Leong wore an unlikely black leather outfit to venture into rock territory with tracks such as Swallow-tailed Butterfly. As she acknowledged: “I usually sing more gentle love songs and I wouldn’t wear such costumes.”

Even more unusual was the get-up she first appeared in. It was a cream-coloured sculpted confection of feathers that Leong jokingly referred to as her Angry Birds look. Throughout an entertaining and engaging show, the 33-year-old’s trademark warm and nasal tones were in full evidence, though the sound system had her coming across a little too echoey.

And then there were the songs themselves. Leong herself said that she was “lucky and fortunate” to have had such well-written tracks to sing. Cries of recognition greeted the opening strains of each song and fans would sing along with well-loved hits such as Courage, Adoration and Love Song.

Her take on the singer-descends-to- the-stands moment was thoughtful. She went around the hall on a small mobile elevated platform so she remained visible at all times even as it gave fans their chance to take close-up snapshots.

Given her steady output of about an album a year since she started out in 1999, only a small portion of her body of work could be covered. Unfortunately, my favourites such as the sweeping ball- ad Silk Road (2005) and the more recent Will You? (2010) did not make the cut.

Still, it was a treat to hear Grown Up Overnight from her 1999 debut album, bringing one back to when one first encountered that beautifully rich timbre. This was immediately followed by What Love Songs Didn’t Tell You (2010), the hit title track of her latest studio album.

The musical journey reflects Leong’s remarkable tale, of a self-professed timid girl with an unforgettable set of pipes who made her way to become Mandopop royalty.

(ST)

Compass Of Life

Dadado Huang

Think of this as the antithesis of K-pop. Instead of brash hooks propelled by thumping beats, we get gently strummed acoustic guitars. It’s Kings Of Convenience’s Quiet Is The New Loud mantra adapted for the Taiwanese folk scene.

Indie singer-songwriter Huang Jie (right) is after the authenticity of experience and emotion. The first track, My High School Classmates, begins: “Graduated from university, went into the army, as for the future, not really curious about it.”

The slacker vibe continues on What Day Is It Today: “On this breezy and sunny spring afternoon/Can we not think about consequences.”

From the title alone, Taipei Balaba looks like it might be a reworking of Dadadalada off his debut EP, Hard Days (2007), but it is a more sprightly and humorous take on a budding romance: “Babalabalabalabala give me childishness/Babalabalabala I’m giving you a toy for a present.”

His soothing, lulling voice goes hand in glove with the material and when he asks on Butterfly: “Do you like to listen to music like me/Do you wish to learn more about the world?”, you will find yourself nodding in assent.

On album closer Me And You, he muses: “I honestly face all the happiness and unhappiness/To find the balance between reality and dreams.”

Huang might be an idealistic and child-like slacker adrift in the sometimes confusing cityscape of modern life but Compass points the way to a momentary respite.

Jam Wild Dreams

Jam Hsiao

Local composers and lyricists have been making their mark on the regional Mandopop scene for a while now. Still, it is quite unusual to see so many of them credited on an album by a non-home-grown singer.

On Taiwanese singer Jam Hsiao’s third album of original material, the credits list includes Hanjin Tan, Eric Ng, Xiaohan, Lee Shih Shiong, Lee Wai Shiong and Tanya Chua.

Chua’s Can Only Miss You is a sensitive ballad that has Hsiao emoting in his falsetto range while Xiaohan once again pens a set of thoughtful lyrics for Clone about the wish to create a stand-in for a person when his heart dies.

Between Lee Shih Shiong’s two contributions, I prefer the urbane R&B-flavoured A World With Continual Surprises to the bombastic prog-rock title track, Wild Dreams.

The bonus disc is all Hsiao as he sings his own compositions. For advertisement songs, they are surprisingly listenable. In particular, Legend Of The White Snake stands out for marrying traditional Chinese opera music with rock bravado, while Jasmine Love is sweetly intoxicating.

The question has never been whether Hsiao can sing. Rather, it has always been what he will choose to do with that richly evocative voice.

Judging from the range of the material on this album, he seems to want to be all things to all people.

It is a wild dream but with those pipes, he comes closer than almost anyone else in pulling it off.

(ST)

Wu Xia

Peter Chan

The story: Liu Jinxi (Donnie Yen) appears to be a simple papermaker living with his wife (Tang Wei) and two sons in a quiet village. His real identity is questioned when he, unarmed, kills two highly skilled brigands who try to rob a shop. Detective Xu Baijiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) investigates and discovers his connection to a powerful, shadowy figure known as The Master (Jimmy Wang Yu).

When director Peter Chan named this movie Wu Xia – which refers to the adventures of martial arts proponents and the category of movies dealing with such tales – it signalled his grand ambition to take on an entire genre that is as rich as it is well worn.

And he has turned in a work that is invigorating and exhilarating, undiminished by the fact that acclaimed auteurs such as Zhang Yimou and Lee Ang had in recent years left their marks on the genre with modern-day classics Hero (2002) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

While big names such as Donnie Yen and Takeshi Kaneshiro headline the film, it is the casting coup of Jimmy Wang Yu that elevates Wu Xia to a different level.

Wang was the biggest male star of the late 1960s and he was best known for playing the heroic pugilist in classics such as The One-Armed Swordsman (1967), a film that Chan pays homage to here.

The imposingly authoritative Wang brings a palpable sense of menace to the role of The Master and his final fight with Yen is both emotionally tense and physically intense.

Before the electrifying showdown, however, the film has to cover quite a bit of ground first. The first part of Wu Xia plays like a mix of Reign Of Assassins (2010) and Detective Dee And The Mystery Of The Phantom Flame (2010) by way of American rock band REM’s visually inventive Imitation Of Life video.

As Xu investigates the deaths of the robbers, the fluidly executed robbery sequence – props to Yen for the action choreography – is played back in fast-forward, rewind and slow-motion modes as the camera zooms in and out on small details.

Wu Xia has a strong sense of a specific time and place, as opposed to the more generic wuxia settings seen in recent gongfu movies such as 14 Blades (2010) and True Legend (2010).

It adds to the film’s emotional resonance to see villagers expressing their feelings in song and there are striking scenes of them hailing Liu’s heroic exploit and berating Xu when he goes too far in his investigation.

In another welcome surprise, Yen actually turns in a genuinely moving performance. Whereas his hooded eyes sometimes seemed to be masking boredom as he went through the motions in other action flicks, here they serve to hide a painful past which his character would rather forget.

For a film-maker known for his sensitive dramas such as Comrades: Almost A Love Story (1996), Chan fittingly offers more than just sterling action and serves up musings on the nature of law, justice and humanity.

As Xu digs deeper into Liu’s background, he ponders whether it is worthwhile to pursue justice at all costs: “Is the law more important than humanity?”

Wu Xia is a cinematic treat that engages the eye, the heart and the mind.

(ST)

Win Win

Thomas McCarthy

The story: Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) is a middle-aged family man struggling to keep it all together. His legal practice is barely surviving, he has bills to pay and the high school wrestling team he is coaching is stuck on a losing streak. Through some questionable manoeuvring, he begins to collect monthly cheques for looking after an older client, Leo (Burt Young). Then out of the blue, Leo’s grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer) turns up.

A Paul Giamatti casting is cinematic shorthand for a very specific type of role: someone to whom life has not been quite kind, but while he might be down from a couple of hard knocks, he is certainly not out. The way he plays it with a quirky, comic edge, he has you rooting for his underdog persona.

He is fondly remembered for his turn as a wine-loving failed writer in Sideways (2004) and Win Win seems at first to offer a study of a familiar character. One of the pleasures of the film is that it does not quite go where you think it is headed.

The set-up points us towards a mid-life crisis for Mike but imperceptibly, and in a completely natural manner, the film shifts into a drama about wrestling.

Writer-director Thomas McCarthy had previously helmed the acclaimed dramas The Visitor (2008) and The Station Agent (2003), both about lonely men forging emotional connections. He is again in fine form here as he approaches the cliche-ridden sports film, well, sideways.

Win Win is the likeable, low-key, indie version of something like, say, The Blind Side (2009), where an unlikely athlete triumphs against the odds.

When Kyle first turns up in the movie as a troubled runaway kid, he appears to be a typical sullen movie teenager and the scrawny and tattooed boy’s unexpected blossoming on the wrestling mat is a delight to watch.

Newcomer Shaffer was himself a successful high-school wrestler and that probably adds to the authenticity of his portrayal.

More importantly, it is a performance without guile or artifice.

The supporting cast is strong as well, particularly Bobby Cannavale (from TV’s Third Watch and Will & Grace) and Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development) as Mike’s bickering fellow coaches.

More plot turns lie in the movie: Kyle’s mother gets out of rehab and shows up, threatening to upset Mike’s win-win situation with regard to both the guardianship of her father and Kyle’s winning ways.

By that point, we have come to care about the fates of the various characters in McCarthy’s deeply humanist drama, which is really about whether one man will do the right thing.

(ST)

Ocean Butterflies 25th Anniversary Concert Compilation

Various artists

What better way to tell the story of a record label than through its music?

Home-grown Ocean Butterflies marked a quarter of a century in existence with a big bash concert at The Max Pavilion on June 25, and has now released a commemorative album.

The title is somewhat misleading as the songs collected here are not from the gig but are mostly the original studio versions.

The heavily nostalgic Disc One points to the label’s xinyao or Singapore folk roots, and the opening strains of Liu Ruizheng’s Tracks In The Desert will immediately transport you back to the genre’s 1980s heyday.

The compilation format also harks back to the company’s first releases such as The Earliest Dream.

If you need more help travelling back in time, check out the photographs of those bygone days in the commemorative magazine, which is sold bundled with the discs only at CD- Rama.

Disc Two marks the label’s ventures into pop territory with the inclusion of the now-defunct 2Girls’ Da Sao (Cleaning), Joi Chua’s Kan Jian (See) and By2’s World Of Adults.

The label’s big guns are easily identifiable as they are represented by at least two songs and include xinyao pioneer Liang Wern Fook as well as regional successes Kit Chan, A-do and JJ Lin.

The Straws trio, who co-founded Ocean Butterflies, also get two numbers here.

The collection is a rich and diverse offering. But even this selection is a mere taste of what the record company has put out over the years.

Dive right in.

Reform

Jane Zhang

This is a big, bright, glossy pop album from China’s Jane Zhang. The dubious sartorial choice of a bodysuit for her cover shot aside, it is a move in the right direction.

It is certainly more engaging than her fourth record Believe In Jane (2010), which was over-long and too generic in parts.

Things get off to a stomping start as she declares on My Looks: “My time, is now on stage, come on”. Crazy For Love is slick R&B, while the Adia-penned Love Just Love is a definite highlight even with its echoes of Rihanna.

Zhang is equally at home with ballads such as If It’s Wrong Then Let It Be Wrong. And she is confident enough of her vocal abilities to not over-sing.

On the album-closing title track, she pronounces: “I say I want to change, so I’ll change, If you see a flaw, you should build it over.”

Can’t go wrong with that attitude.

(ST)

A Beautiful Life

Andrew Lau

The story: Outgoing Li Peiru (Shu Qi) works as a property agent in Beijing. She and shy copper Fang Zhendong (Liu Ye) meet at a karaoke joint one night when she throws up on him after one too many drinks. Thus begins a tangled relationship set against the backdrop of an economic downturn, a terminal illness and more boozing.

There needs to be a moratorium on Shu Qi acting drunk. She was drunk in Hou Hsiao- Hsien’s Millennium Mambo (2001) and drunk again in Feng Xiaogang’s If You Are The One (2008).

Is there some clause in her contract that stipulates she needs to get all boozy and tipsy in every other film?

The character of Peiru seems at first to be a retread of If You Are The One’s hard-drinking and deeply unhappy Xiaoxiao. It is as if the investors wanted a version of that huge box-office hit with a more traditionally good-looking leading man in the form of Liu Ye as opposed to the bald and older Ge You.

And one with more scenarios of Shu Qi inebriated. Director Andrew Lau pretty much lets her run amok in one drunken scene after another as she flails about and rails about how unhappy she is.

Perhaps Lau, who is best known for the Infernal Affairs trilogy (2002-2003), should stick to thrillers and keep away from romantic dramas.

Forget subtlety as the opposites- attract angle is worked to death here. She is outgoing and brash and having an affair with her boss; he is shy and straight as an arrow and chastely alone after his wife left him. She lives in a cold and alienating modern high-rise apartment; he lives in a hutong or narrow alley, with its rustic down-to-earth charm.

True, Peiru does have reasons to be unhappy but the way her problems are revealed does not make her sympathetic, merely wearying.

Liu, who has done good work in superior movies such as Lan Yu (2001) and City Of Life And Death (2009), does his darnedest to emote but is wasted in this muddled melodrama.

It is hard to work out the attraction between the two leads when Peiru is nice to Zhendong only when she needs something from him and the only thing he can articulate is that he likes hearing her call his name.

Then again, he has something of a messiah complex and Peiru needs plenty of rescuing, so maybe they are right for each other after all.

He is devoted to taking care of his somewhat simple-minded brother Zhencong (former Olympic diving champion Tian Liang) and it is the latter’s romance with a mute girl that is the more moving tale here.

There is an abrupt switch from unconvincing romance to manipulative tearjerker in the last 30 minutes of the film.

And the ridiculous ending leaves Life with an aftertaste that is anything but beautiful.

(ST)

I Love You, John

Sandee Chan

Taiwan’s Sandee Chan has tackled weighty topics before. The song Too Late examined death, while her last album’s title track, If There Is One Thing That Is Important, wrestled with the question of what fans are looking for. For her existential pains, she walked away with the Golden Melody Award for Best Mandarin Female Singer in 2009.

This time around, the singer-songwriter-producer-arranger lightens up and serves up electronic pop. Her declaration of intent can be found on the track Youth: “Music, let’s play”.

Hence, the title track chugs along on synthesizer riffs as Chan purrs playfully: “What’s up John/John’s very strange/Is it really John/John it is/Or don’t you want John/Oh it’s probably John.”

It is pop with a wink and a nudge from someone who once declared I Have Never Been A Humorous Girl.

She free-associates on Lullaby: “Baby pink, Baby blue, Baby grand, playing your lullaby.” She juxtaposes gym workouts and relationships on Calisthenics For Two with its refrain of “I love you, two of us exercising four limbs”.

Another theme running through the album is music itself.

Chan asks on Beautiful Life: “How do you sing the chorus of a beautiful life so that it sounds moving and thoughtful?” While on Youth, she pleads: “Music, please please quickly save me, please please teach me to rock, please please give me soul”.

Happily, her own albums are part of the answer.

Sticky

Cyndi Wang

Has Taiwan’s Cyndi Wang gotten less annoying or have I just grown accustomed to her voice?

The album might be Sticky but the cutie-pie is at her least cloying here.

The singer-actress wrote Stick To You, a slice of light-hearted pop about a nascent relationship which ends on an unexpectedly snarky note.

She also dishes out helpings of bouncy dance pop, with the retrolicious Rock Girl being the most fun.

Wang does a passable job with the radio-friendly ballads such as Don’t Cry and Love Is Empty. But it stops short of being deeply felt, even when she sings on the latter: “When dreams and reality collide/I realise love has become empty/As if a blackhole/Has swallowed love whole.” Not that it will matter to those who simply want to drown in her liquid Bambi eyes.

Sense Of Security

Red Flower

The debut album from Red Flower mixes a pop-rock sensibility with musings mostly about love.

Apart from engaging, energetic numbers such as A Sense Of Security, Love Second Time Round and High High High, the material sometimes suffers from a lack of distinctiveness.

If this Taiwanese band are to bloom, they will need more songs such as Moonlight, which sounds sinuous and at once retro and modern – and unlike anything else on the disc.

(ST)

Japanese Singer

Ken Hirai

The title may be prosaic, the record is anything but.

The smooth vocal stylings of Japanese singer-songwriter Ken Hirai cover quite a bit of ground on his eighth studio album.

R&B is a self-deprecating exploration of his identity: “R&B, I’m Japanese, but I love it/Although my dance moves aren’t fantastic/R&B, I’m Japanese, but I love it/Although my English ain’t that great.”

Loving You is a retro-sounding ballad that was the theme song for the Japanese-Korean remake of the romance Ghost.

Hirai goes slinky on Candy, complete with falsetto flair: “Love me love me love me love me, you see me sticking out my tongue/Coming coming coming coming I’m your cherry, a little erotic, intense, painful, jealous.” It is pure ear candy even if a snatch of melody is pilfered from Hikaru Utada’s Wait & See: Risk.

Since his third record The Changing Same (2000) topped the Oricon album chart, he has been a regular fixture on the J-pop music scene.

Be it something uplifting, romantic or sexy, as Hirai proclaims on the opening track, he just wants to “sing sing sing forever”.

Love Presents

Linda Liao

Taiwan’s Linda Liao has gone from presenting songs on the weekly countdown show on MTV Chinese to appearing on the charts in her own right.

Seven years after the release of her second album I Support You, she is having another go at a singing career.

Love Oh Love has a mid-tempo groove that does not overtax her so-so vocals while the English lyrics blithely rhyme fly, cry, try.

At least there is a welcome display of spunkiness on tracks such as Crown Prince Imperial Concubine, Starring Role and LP, a duet in which she and Malaysian singer-songwriter Penny Tai trade advice and encouragement on relationships.

Perhaps the Arys Chien-composed I Will Work Hard offers a glimpse into how she feels about music at this juncture: “I know it’s not easy, but I will work hard/Compose my heart, venture bravely on alone.”

(ST)