Waiting
Olivia Ong

Hard To Put It Down
Tiger Huang

Feeling frazzled from the fast pace of urban living?
Slow down, take a deep breath and calm your nerves with local songbird Olivia Ong’s Waiting.
She serenades on the title track: “Accompany pure white to wait for a splash of red/Accompany sweetness to wait for sadness/Wait and you’ll know what you’re waiting for.”
Her soothing vocals are best suited for midtempo tracks and ballads, and The Pursuit Of Happiness and Love Enough are among the stronger offerings here.
The lone English track, Wonderland, picks up the pace and Ong has a hand in writing the lyrics and music here. It is not quite as wonderful, though, as the sunny Let It Rain off her last album, Romance (2011).
Taiwanese singer Tiger Huang’s latest album is also at its best when she sticks to the tried and tested.
She emotes with restraint on the title ballad and offers a touching promise: “Whether it’s rain, snow, wind or frost, when you need me, I’ll be by your side.”
Lover mixes it up with Mandarin, Cantonese and Minnan lyrics. Although it feels gimmicky at first, Huang has the vocal chops to pull it off.
Songs such as Still Lonely and Youth revisit familiar territory – the poignant persona of a single woman of a certain age that Huang fearlessly embraced on her comeback album Simple/Not Simple (2009).
It’s a hard-luck life, but there is a moving resilience in her husky voice and songs.
Brave Love is a fast-tempo number that works – that is, until it gets to the ill-advised, cliched English rap.
Huang awkwardly urges: “Come on everybody put your hands in the air/Put your hands together like you just don’t care.”
By all means, try something new, but leave the posturing to the party popsters.
(ST)