Here
Yoyo Sham
This has been a most eagerly awaited debut album. Hong Kong singer-songwriter Yoyo Sham had previously released two EPs – 2/2 (2012) and 4-6pm (2011). In particular, 2/2 was a beguiling affair and I could not wait to hear more.
She does not do run-of-the-mill, conventionally structured pop songs about love. Instead, you get a sense of the person from the unhurried yet quietly evocative tracks that sometimes meander in unexpected directions.
Her lightly husky pipes caress and cajole as she sings about living in the now on opening track Starting Tomorrow: “Actually, I’m swamped/Need to focus on spacing out/Feel the now/ Leave the future in the future.”
On the title track, she ponders: “Look at us walking along/Underfoot are the fallen leaves we’ve missed.”
Not so much carpe diem and seizing the day but, rather, just enjoying the little moments that come our way.
Elsewhere, she sings about light – on Glow, You And I and a devastating, slowed-down cover of the rock song Wings Of Light. Over a plaintive guitar and string arrangement, she does the near impossible and makes a Faye Wong song indelibly her own.
Also included are two Cantonese numbers – one a delicate Watercolour and the other, Bu Wang Wo Men Zhang Shan Shi Nian, a rumination on the passage of time.
Sham is equally at home in English and apart from her own compositions, she also covers the English number Twistable Turnable Man, from a tribute album to American children’s book author Shel Silverstein.
This offbeat choice could easily seem calculated but, somehow, it fits right in with her indie and citizen-of-the-world sensibility, along with the interludes titled Tokyo, Taipei and India.
Just take her advice and bask in the Here and now.
(ST)