Bad Man

Li I-chun

2 Be Different

Cindy Yen

Back in the early 1990s, Taiwan’s Li I-chun was peddling ballads about being unlucky in love. It seems like her romantic fortunes have not improved.

The songstress wails on Adding Hail To Snow: “My love can no longer come true/Can’t wait for the ends of time/If I weren’t soft-hearted time and again/I wouldn’t have been left forlorn time and again.”

On the Minnan number Half Of Man Is Woman, she begins by lamenting: “Not willing to see your wanton soul/Destroy your precious youth.”

The arrangements are also determinedly retro. This only makes the attempt to drag the album into the present by including a rap on I Don’t Believe jarring. The album is best taken in small doses or when a session of wallowing is called for.

While Li has stuck to doing what she does best, newcomer Cindy Yen is still floundering about in search of an identity.

After the clean-cut girl-next-door image on her 2009 debut failed to take hold, the singer-songwriter has been made over with a sexier look and a more dance-oriented sound.

Her vocals have not improved much, though, and she still sounds too shrill at times. And horrors, she goes cutesy on the cringingly bad track, Innocent Ground.

Yen also needs to realise that scream- singing will not help a ballad such as Shatter The Sadness. Shattering eardrums will not win her any new fans.

(ST)