?
Eason Chan

The Adventures Of Bernie The Schoolboy
Joanna Wang

Dream A New Dream
Selina Jen

Far too often, Hong Kong singer Eason Chan’s Mandarin releases have seemed like the poorer and less sophisticated cousins of his Cantonese albums.
It is hence a pleasant surprise to find that the elegantly titled ? is his most cohesive Mandarin effort to date, one which holds up well in any language.
There are highlights aplenty on this disc probing the mysteries of love and life.
See Through, written by Taiwanese singer-songwriter Shadya Lan, features incisive lyrics about human interaction paired with a bouncy piano melody.
Chan sings: “Everyone, is used to, meeting someone, to act all surface/Everyone, is not used to, seeing someone, to place sincerity first.”
Guilty, to which Singaporean Hanjin Tan contributes music and lyrics, is a love ballad with a morose protagonist: “I used to know that not sleeping, was bad for me/You were my sleeping pill” and “Every time I turn around, guilt is an executioner, destroying everything in my memory.”
There are also two Cantonese tracks and one English song, all interpreted by one of the most compelling voices in Chinese pop music today.
While Taiwan’s Joanna Wang also lays claim to a gorgeous set of pipes, she has not been too adventurous in her Mandarin releases.
That is not a criticism that can be levelled at her English concept album The Adventures Of Bernie The Schoolboy which delves into a richly imagined world of fantasy and whimsy.
The harpsichord features prominently in the instrumentation, and while it takes some getting used to, it helps in creating that fairy-tale mood and giving the disc a distinctive identity.
This is not some cheery rainbowcoloured tale, however, but one shot through with darkness and paranoia. The lyrics for The Bug go, “Now that we’ve bugged your phone/We hear even your dial tone/We hear your every word/You didn’t know could be heard.”
The EP from Selina Jen, one-third of Taiwan’s popular girl group S.H.E, has its share of darkness as well. She suffered third-degree burns in a filming accident in 2010 and the accompanying DVD has shots of her at the hospital and undergoing physiotherapy.
The ballad Everyone Who Loves Me, composed by local singer-songwriter JJ Lin with lyrics by Daryl Yao, touchingly conveys her gratitude to those who stood by her through those dark days: “Thank you everyone who loves me for accompanying me in the most nightmarish journey of my life.”
Jen wrote the lyrics for the track Dream and she yearns: “Like fish swimming leisurely in the sea, as natural as the deer running/If my world could be redone, these dreamscapes, will happen now.”
With her recent wedding to lawyer Richard Chang and return to music, one hopes that Jen’s nightmare is finally fading away.
(ST)