Half. Wan Fang's Little Theatre
Wan Fang

Anyway, I Believe
Shin

Those in Singapore probably know Taiwan’s Wan Fang as a singer. But she is also an accomplished actress. This release explores her dual identity. Happy Reading is the theme song of a play she has acted in, Happy Receipt Of The Letter. While it references specific characters, it is also self-contained enough to stand on its own as a short epistolary love story.
There is a poetic sensibility to the EP’s five songs, which works well with the spare arrangements and Wan’s thoughtful readings. The Same Existence from the play Merry Christmas juxtaposes opposites: “In the night, flying in search of the sun/In the day, waiting for night to fall.”
Who is a haunting ballad with the late singer- songwriter Koumis, who died tragically young in 2013 from illness. Life, love, death – it is all here in the space of an EP titled Half. As she asks intriguingly in the liner notes: How would you know that half is not the whole?
Such contemplation is not rocker Shin’s thing. On his sixth studio album, Anyway, I Believe, he cranks up the volume and tosses odd lyrics in the title track that make it sound like the theme song for a trashy B-grade flick: “When you take off your underwear, you are my everything.”
He also amps up the drama in a reworking of Su Rei’s pop-rock classic The Same Moonlight, but it does not quite feel like an improvement. The material works best when he takes it down a notch, as on the moody-broody ballad, It Would Be Great If You Were Still Here.
He growls, he screams, but I would rather just hear him sing.
(ST)