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)