Everything
Men Envy Children
They were not jesting when they named their album Everything.
Over a foundation of melodic melancholic pop, Men Envy Children throw in a little bit of rock and a little bit of rap.
This record marks the debut of a quartet which feature female vocalist Mify, previously of girl group Roomie, with Vince and Hanz on guitars and Kai on drums and they are clearly keen to show what they are capable of.
Happily, they also tackle more than the perennial subject of love in their lyrics.
One of the stronger tracks is My Dear Baby, a mid-tempo number lamenting the “dangerous, invasive, shattered” world a child has been born into.
When they do address love, the sultry This Is Not The Love I’m Looking For is a good way to go. It showcases Mify’s emotive pipes as she expresses longing, helplessness and regret over the course of this emotional roller- coaster ride.
On the closing track Goodbye, she sings: “This is not the end/But the start of the next destiny.”
For a new band, the best thing would be getting to release a next album. It is a prize that Men Envy Children have earned.
(ST)

Pawn Sacrifice
Edward Zwick
The story: Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire) is the great American hope of chess at a time when the Cold War with the Soviet Union is in full freeze. The prodigy faces off against reigning world champion Boris Spassky (Liev Schreiber) in Iceland in 1972, a heavily hyped match with high personal and political stakes. Can Fischer keep his increasingly eccentric behaviour in check, or will chess consume him?

The cerebral game of chess had its rock star in the 1960s and early 1970s – the firebrand grandmaster Bobby Fischer.
He was a prodigy from Brooklyn who loved mouthing off brash pronouncements which made for great headlines. Like a selfabsorbed rocker, he would also make all kinds of outrageous demands before he would play – even the purr of a recording camera was deemed to be too loud and distracting.
Maguire, who co-produced the film, is a compelling presence as the electrifying chess genius who could not wait to be No. 1 and then became increasingly psychologically fragile as that possibility drew nearer.
The tragedy was that Fischer ultimately crashed and burnt. The interesting thing is that director Edward Zwick (Blood Diamond, 2006) and scriptwriter Steven Knight (Eastern Promises, 2007) suggest chess is both his downfall and his salvation.
As a child of a Russian emigrant mother and an absent father, chess gave him focus, purpose and a sense of control.
When Fischer gets frustrated, his chess companion and perhaps lone friend, priest William Lombardy (a grounded Peter Sarsgaard), calms him down by rattling off chess moves.
At the same time, Lombardy also recognises that “the game is a rabbit hole that takes you very close to the edge”.
When the game becomes inextricably bound with Cold War politics, the rabbit hole opens up.
Fischer listens to rants on conspiracy theories and comes to believe that he is being bugged. In fairness, his Soviet opponent Spassky has similar suspicions.
Zwick captures that fraught era, whose climate encouraged paranoia, through the drama surrounding the games.
He also makes the historic matches come to life, such that even non-players will appreciate the gripping excitement and intellectual rigour to be found in the battle of wits that is chess.
(ST)

Lost In Hong Kong
Xu Zheng
The story: Xu Lai (Xu Zheng) never managed to kiss his college love Yang Yi (Du Juan). Years later, he marries another fellow student Cai Bo (Vicki Zhao Wei). Yang Yi, now a successful artist, invites him to her show in Hong Kong. He is determined to go, but first, he has to shake off Cai Bo’s wannabe film-maker brother Lala (Bao Bei’er), who is equally determined to make a documentary about Xu Lai.

China’s Xu Zheng saw his popularity rocket after the hit comedy Lost On Journey (2010). The follow-up, Lost In Thailand (2012), on which Xu took on directing duties for the first time, was an even bigger hit.
This latest instalment of the Lost series is on its way to blockbuster status as well, with an opening day of 208 million yuan (S$46.6 million).
It is a love letter to Hong Kong pop culture, from its movies to its music. The prolific crowd-pleasing director Wong Jing spoofs himself in a guest role and the script is littered with references to movies such as Days Of Being Wild (1990), Chungking Express (1994) and 2046 (2004).
Apart from letting audiences play spot-the-Wong-Kar-Wai-reference, the movie also puts viewers in the mood for Cantopop with a soundtrack which includes poignant Leslie Cheung ballads as well as Grasshopper’s up-tempo Passionate Samba.
The Hong Kong urban landscape gets a shout-out in a fun scene: Xu Lai and Lala raise a ruckus in a brothel and then get chased through a quintessentially Hong Kong apartment block where varied denizens live together cheek by jowl.
The madcap humour can be a bit hit-or-miss and Lala is mostly an annoying unwanted sidekick. But Xu has viewers rooting for him as the hapless and luckless Xu Lai – a bra designer despite his youthful artistic leanings and now the butt of jokes in his wife’s family.
Drama is mixed with comedy in the finale which presents a classic conundrum: Between your wife and your first love, who would you choose? The dilemma is played out on a huge pane of glass suspended high above ground and emotions run high as Xu, Cai and Yang try to maintain a precarious balance.
And how did they end up in such a situation in the first place? Well, there was a homicide which Lala had accidentally caught on tape while making his documentary and there are bad guys after that footage.
This might be a China movie, but it has the anything-goes energy of a Hong Kong flick.
(ST)

Li Jian 6th Album
Li Jian
Chinese singer-songwriter Li Jian continues to breathe life into lyrical mid-tempo tracks with his exquisite pipes, picking up where he left off with his breakout fifth album, Classic, which earned a clutch of nominations at last year’s Golden Melody Awards, including for Best Mandarin Album.
Many of the songs evoke the natural world such as Deep Sea Search, Beautiful As Dawn and Wind Blows At Dusk. The imagery is apt given that one can easily imagine his voice in such settings.
It can be as gentle as a sunbeam, as bright as a sparkling sea or it can take flight on a gust of wind. He croons on Disappearing Moonlight: “When I welcome the fragrance the spring wind brings/How I wish you could linger by my side.”
There are darker undercurrents as well. On Fog, he sings: “Your place is like the ocean/ Some struggle and sink to the bottom, never heard of again.”
That is a fate that seems unlikely to befall Li. He is touring China and maybe the wind will blow him to Singapore’s shores someday soon.
(ST)

Attack On Titan 2: End Of The World
Shinji Higuchi
The story: In part one, mankind’s last walled stronghold is breached by the mysterious, gigantic Titans who feed on humans. The home of Eren (Haruma Miura) and Armin (Kanata Hongo) is destroyed and their friend Mikasa (Kiko Mizuhara) is gone. Two years later, Eren and Armin join a mission to repair the hole in the wall. They meet the suave Captain Shikishima (Hiroki Hasegawa) and a changed Mikasa. They are able to take down Titans with ease by aiming for the back of the neck. At a critical juncture in a battle with the Titans, Eren is swallowed by one and transformed into a Titan himself. Part two picks up with Eren back in human form, bound and under interrogation. It also delivers some answers to key questions: Can the mission to plug the hole in the wall succeed? Where did the Titans come from? Why is Eren special? Based on the manga of the same name by Hajime Isayama.

Writer-illustrator Hajime Isayama’s vision in the epic manga Attack On Titan, which has been going strong since it started in 2009, is a dark and gruesome one. The live adaptation does not flinch in its depiction of this post- apocalyptic world.
What makes the Titans particularly horrifying is the fact that they are grotesquely human-like. Except that they lumber with the gait of the undead, grin maniacally, have no sexual organs and snack on people.
In a harrowing scene in part one, Eren struggles to save Armin from the cavernous mouth of a Titan, with its monstrous teeth and throbbing tongue, and ends up sliding down the gullet to its stomach.
The computer graphics are top-notch, conveying the dreadfulness of the creatures as well as the devastated landscape of this bleak world. Director Shinji Higuchi, a veteran special-effects supervisor who has also helmed films such as The Sinking Of Japan (2006), is clearly comfortable with working on a project of this scale.
Part 1 has been pilloried by fans for deviating from the source material. Nevertheless, it topped the box office in Japan when it opened on Aug 1. In Singapore, it has earned more than $820,000, becoming one of the biggest Japanese-language titles in recent years.
Often, a follow-up movie suffers from a lack of surprise as the direction it is headed is already signposted in the earlier instalment.
Impressively, Titan’s Part 2 still has some intriguing cards up its sleeve. The audience learns the grim truth behind the origins of the Titans and see Captain Shikishima turn unexpectedly from smooth saviour to seductive rebel. Even the mission to repair the wall is called into question, and Eren and his friends are forced to make some difficult decisions about whom to trust and what to do.
While it is titled End Of The World, the sinister final scene suggests that this might not be the end of the Attack On Titan films.
(ST)

Office
Johnnie To
The story: The idealistic Li Xiang (Wang Ziyi) and woman of mystery Qiqi (Lang Yueting) join a major company, Jones & Sunn, as it prepares to go public. The office is a place of conflicting interests and complicated relationships and the key players include dragon lady chief executive officer Zhang Wei (Sylvia Chang), smooth-talking executive David (Eason Chan) and dedicated worker Sophie (Tang Wei). Meanwhile, chairman He Zhongping (Chow Yun Fat) keeps a watchful eye in the background. The script was adapted by Chang from the 2009 stage play Design For Living, which she co-wrote.

The Intern
Nancy Meyers
The story: Jules (Anne Hathaway) is the founder and chief executive officer of fashion e-retailer About The Fit. The go-getter is coping with a rapidly growing company and juggling that with a husband and young daughter at home. She finds unexpected help from old-timer Ben (Robert De Niro), who is part of an inaugural senior internship programme.

A workplace musical is certainly something you do not see every day.
And kudos to versatile director Johnnie To and writer-actress Sylvia Chang for delivering a far from workmanlike Office.
Chang has streamlined the story from the original play, made some choice changes to the relationships among the characters and done away with the overly melodramatic ending. Li Xiang is still the obviously named neophyte – his moniker means “ideals” – and he is the audience’s entry into this world of complex interests.
As he seeks to survive in this competitive battlefield, will he eventually be corrupted as well? Will he follow in the footsteps of the older, disillusioned David?
David is a cautionary tale of reckless ambition and singer Eason Chan conveys both his slick charm and increasing desperation. When he makes use of Sophie to cover up for him, the tragedy is that he does so despite feeling something for her.
Perhaps Li will triumph at the workplace as Zhang Wei appears to have done by weighing every calculated move carefully. But she has paid a high price by putting her career ahead of everything else and the character portrayed by Chang is by turns steely and vulnerable.
Or maybe Li is merely a pawn who will ultimately be destroyed.
It is a bleak portrait that is leavened by the big song and dance numbers written by veterans such as singer-songwriter Lo Ta-yu and master lyricist Lin Xi.
The film is also visually appealing as the sets have been inspired by the theatrical origins of the production and one can well imagine the skeletal outlines of the office building and the commuter train being used on stage.
The Intern is also a movie set in the workplace, but it takes a completely different approach.
It sounds at first like a high- concept flick that is strictly for laughs: Robert De Niro, better known for his tough-guy persona, plays a senior citizen intern. Thankfully, it is more substantive than the similarly named The Internship (2013), in which Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson clowned about at Google.
But while it surfaces, among other things, the challenges women face at the workplace, writer- director Nancy Meyers handles everything with such a light touch that the drama ultimately feels more like a fantasy.
So it is up to the likeable cast to draw viewers into the film.
For once, De Niro has zero edge to him. Even in comedies such as Meet The Parents (2000), he played characters with a sense of menace. Here, he is all cuddly like a teddy bear you want to squeeze. He is the perfect senior citizen intern – has a wealth of experience, is good with people, can be always be counted on and has absolutely no problems with much younger people in authority. Every office should have one.
Anne Hathaway – how time flies – has gone from playing the newbie in The Devil Wears Prada (2006) to sitting on the other side of the table as the boss.
She is wrestling with guilt over juggling work and home, and wondering if she can have it all.
Too bad the resolution is so pat and tidy.
For all its stagey artificiality, Office is a far more gripping, if deeply cynical, portrayal of corporate life. And it works.
(ST)

Cat And Mouse
By2
At the age of 23, Singaporean pop duo By2 are already music veterans.
Twins Miko and Yumi released their debut, 16 Underaged (2008), when they were, surprise, all of 16.
Cat And Mouse, their sixth album, does not mess much with the formula of dance tracks mixed with love ballads.
The good thing is that the icky jail-bait factor is now far behind them when one listens to something like the title track, an invitation to “play some cat and mouse”.
But do not think that they are ones to be toyed with. Instead, they purr: “I’m a wild kitty, the pick of the litter/I’m a wild kitty, keep your eyes on me.”
If You Love Me Say It Out Loud keeps the groove going and these dance tracks throb with energy and a sense of purpose.
Too bad the balance tilts towards the ballads here. These are less successful in part because the duo are not strong enough singers.
The light-hearted album closer How Do I Make Clear My Feelings Now suggests a different direction for the duo to try.
All they have to do is dial down the cutesy enunciation.
(ST)

Visions
Kevin Greutert
The story: After a traumatic car accident, Eveleigh (Isla Fisher) moves to wine country with her husband David (Anson Mount) for a fresh start. She starts hearing voices and seeing visions, but her husband brushes them off and wants her back on anti-depressants. Her only friend seems to be Sadie (Gillian Jacobs) from antenatal class.

The playbook for Blumhouse Productions, home of small-budget horror hits such as Insidious (2010) and The Purge (2013), is still going strong.
First, line up a cast of recognisable but not especially huge stars, many of them from television in this case.
There is Isla Fisher from Confessions Of A Shopaholic (2009), Gillian Jacobs from comedy Community (2009 to 2015), Anson Mount from period drama Hell On Wheels (2011 to present) and Jim Parsons from comedy The Big Bang Theory (2007 to 2015) as a somewhat creepy gynaecologist.
You get credible acting chops without breaking the bank in terms of the production budget.
The same goes for the director. Kevin Greutert is well-versed in the genre as he edited the first five films of the successful horror franchise Saw (2004 to 2008) and later directed Saw VI (2009) and Saw 3D: The Final Chapter (2010).
Next, work with a strong concept. Think of writer-director Oren Peli and the idea of the supernatural caught on surveillance in Paranormal Activity (2007) and writer-director James DeMonaco on legalising all crime for 12 hours in The Purge(both of which have gone on to become profitable franchises).
Similar to The Gift (2015), also from Blumhouse, Visions plays with the tropes and conventions of the horror genre, such as the mysterious whistling kettle sound, a hooded figure whose face cannot be seen and an eerie pool of water in the dead of night.
A nice twist at the end recasts everything that has gone on before in a different light.
It is not quite as gripping as The Gift, but Visions is still worth watching. Sometimes, it pays to play by the book.
(ST)

Sicario
Denis Villeneuve
The story: Kate (Emily Blunt) is an FBI agent conducting raids on suspicious American properties near the Mexican border. She agrees to be part of a joint task force to track down a big-time drug lord, believing she can help to accomplish something meaningful by doing so. But she keeps getting stonewalled by her superior Matt (Josh Brolin) and she is uneasy about the presence of the taciturn Alejandro (Benicio del Toro) on the team. The word sicario means hitman in Mexico.

French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve has a knack for making emotionally wrenching and riveting films.
Incendies (2010), in French and Arabic, was a mystery drama about a pair of siblings travelling to the Middle East and uncovering devastating family secrets.
Prisoners (2010), his English language debut, was an arresting thriller that kept viewers on the edge of their seats over the fate of two abducted little girls.
This time, it is the action that is explosive.
Sicario plunges right into the middle of a raid mission which ends up literally blowing up in the faces of the team.
Villeneuve then executes the extraction of a man close to the drug lord from Juarez, Mexico, back to American soil with terse precision. There are glimpses of dead bodies strung up on the underside of bridges, Mexican forces are seen in full riot-gear get-up and the staccato of gunfire can be heard. This is an urban war zone.
In contrast to the intensity of the action, Blunt’s Kate is a no-nonsense agent who keeps her emotions in check. She is also the moral compass of the scene and, as the film wades into a morass of complications, viewers look to her for direction.
Blunt’s (Edge Of Tomorrow, 2014) mix of naivete and desire to do the right thing is compelling and Brolin (No Country For Old Men, 2007) is suitably condescending as someone who knows far more than he is willing to let on.
Del Toro’s (Traffic, 2000) Alejandro is the intriguing wild card here.
Early on, he says ominously to Kate: “Nothing will make sense to your American ears. You will doubt what we do. But, in the end, it will make sense.”
Some pieces of the puzzle do come together eventually, but be warned, there is no light at the end of this particular tunnel of darkness.
(ST)

It sometimes feels as though Japanese pop culture is under siege. Be it music, TV dramas or movies, the Korean contingent of boybands, girl groups and perfectly groomed idols has edged ahead in the popularity sweepstakes.
Japanese fare is not about to roll over completely, though. When it comes to animation, the Land of the Rising Sun is still going strong.
I went through an anime phase in the early 2000s and then drifted away from it. After a recent return to its embrace, I am happy to report that the world of anime remains as wacky, moving and entertaining as before.
Titles that I watched back then included the inventive space western Cowboy Bebop (1998-1999) with its awesome jazz soundtrack, the battle for one man’s soul in the period actioner Rurouni Kenshin (1996-1998), the hilarious high-school comedy Azumanga Daioh (2002) and the sometimes head-scratching and
so-cool-it-didn’t-need-vowels sci-fi action series FLCL (2000-2001).
Studio Ghibli has international hits such as the fantasy adventure Spirited Away (2001) and the whimsically charming My Neighbour Totoro (1988), but there is much more to discover in anime films. The tip of the iceberg includes sci-fi techno-thriller Ghost In The Shell (1995) by Mamoru Oshii and the psychological thriller-horror flick Perfect Blue (1997) by Satoshi Kon, works which are far darker in tone than Ghibli’s family-friendly works.
My diet included the popular ninja series Naruto (2002-2007), although the supersized serving of 220 episodes proved to be too much to swallow. A single fight could stretch to more than 10 episodes and I gave up somewhere past the 100-episode mark.
For a long while after that, I lost touch with the medium.
But thanks to a long-haul flight on Japan Airlines, I rediscovered the myriad joys of anime.
I stumbled across a two-episode offering of Haikyu!!, Japanese for volleyball, and was soon hooked. Even without English subtitles, the show draws one in with its crisp animation, exciting ballplay and sharp characterisation.
Haikyu!! is a typical offering in the sports genre, but it is executed well. It has you rooting for the underdogs as pint-sized Hinata and his team aimed for glory on the courts. And when the ball finally lands with a thud in a crucial game that spans six episodes, I gasped out loud.
One reason for the high quality in anime is the large volume of titles produced. Just this spring alone, the gaming and anime blog Kotaku presented a guide to 50 new titles.
Mind you, that is merely for one season and not for the year. Animators have had tens of thousands of hours of content to hone their skills and it shows.
Very often, they draw on existing manga. Given there are at least 10,000 titles of manga compilations published in a year (as estimated by manga artist Dan Kanemitsu in a 2012 blog post), only the top titles get to be animated. The quality of the source material already gives anime a leg-up.
Live-action films based on manga continue to find big audiences. Post-apocalyptic title Attack On Titan (2015) has grossed more than $820,000 at the Singapore box office.
After the excitement of Haikyu!!, I decided to get into anime again, trawling the Web for recommendations on the best titles of last year. I settled on sports title Ping Pong The Animation, slice-of-life series Barakamon about a calligrapher, and set-in-hell comedy Hozuki’s Coolheadedness.
While Ping Pong and Haikyu!! both revolve around sports, they could not be more different. For starters, the animation in Ping Pong goes for a kind of ugly-realist style reminiscent of the rotoscoping done for the film Waking Life (2001). It also delves far more deeply into the psyches of the players. The ping pong games are depicted in an impressionistic manner as opposed to being the meat of the series.
Barakamon is in the slice-of-life genre and it offers gentle comedy and lessons in the tale of a calligrapher’s exile to a remote island – 23-year-old Handa’s friendship with the irrepressible six-year-old Naru is the heart and soul of this show.
Most unusual of the lot is Hozuki’s Coolheadedness, an episodic look at the challenges faced by the unflappable Hozuki, chief of staff to the head judge of hell. The landscapes of the netherworld are beautifully rendered and draw inspiration from ukiyo-e woodblock print illustrations. The gleeful theme song can also lay claim to the title of catchiest song ever written about hell. (Hell by the American band Squirrel Nut Zippers is a close second.)
There has always been more to anime than advertised-as- entertainment-kiddy fare such as Pokemon. There are shows of every genre, from the sublime to the ridiculous, to cater to every taste.
One title I will be steering clear of, though, is Naruto: Shippuden. It started in 2007 and has clocked 429 episodes. And it is not over yet.
(ST)

Jimmy Ye In Concert
Esplanade Concert Hall/
Last Saturday

Home-grown singer-songwriter Jimmy Ye was sweating bullets because of the General Election.
While the date of his gig had been fixed a year ago, he was left hanging for the longest time when there were rumours of Singapore heading to the polls with Sept 12 bandied about as the date.
“If today had been Polling Day...”, and he sprawled onto the stage to convey exactly how crushed he would have felt. He had, after all, waited 22 years for the chance to hold his own solo concert.
Ye made his debut as a Mandopop singer with Give Me Your Love in 1993 and released four more albums between then and 1998.
He chalked up hits such as Loving You Is Not For Others To See and My Heart Is Flustered and was a male idol singer to call Singapore’s own before the likes of JJ Lin and A-do came along.
Making his appearance as a bow-tied and bespectacled dapper gentleman in a grey three-piece suit, he said to the audience: “It’s been 17 years and you haven’t forgotten me and my music. I’m moved and grateful.”
The show opened with If We Fall In Love Again and Ye did a jazzy take on the ballad.
Despite the passage of years, he displayed a strong grasp of vocal techniques from vibrato to falsetto and he sounded as good as ever.
While there were some jitters, he smoothed things over with a dash of self-deprecating humour and some entertaining anecdotes.
Professing to be terrible in Mandarin and hence forgetful of lyrics, he announced that instead of sneaking peeks at the monitor, he would simply look at it openly.
While the election schedule had been a source of anxiety, the event also provided fodder for some interesting moments.
As it turned out, Ye has a song called Let You Decide which includes the line, “Let you decide/ Whether I’m free or enslaved”, and he dedicated it to the day of national reckoning.
The next number, I Keep Hearing You Say, was dedicated to the new government. He also joked about forming a new party with a less violent symbol – a music note as opposed to a bolt of lightning or a hammer.
While he had stopped releasing albums after 1998, arguably, he went on to scale greater heights as a composer.
A segment focusing on the hits he wrote for others included Jacky Cheung’s Wanna Go For A Walk With You, Jeff Chang’s Want To Love You Too Much, Jolin Tsai’s I Know You’re Very Sad and Leslie Cheung’s Left Right Hands, which Ye sang in its original Cantonese.
These are no less than the big guns of Chinese pop and his songs were their lead singles and no mere album fillers. Cheung once included that song in his setlist at the last minute when he realised its composer was at his concert.
Aside from his work in pop music, Ye also collaborated with xinyao pioneer Liang Wern Fook on the Mandarin musical December Rains.
The third run of it just ended recently, but the audience had a chance to revisit some of its songs when Liang and singer Hong Shaoxuan came on as guest stars.
The four-hour-long concert also saw Ye paying tribute to some of his favourite songwriters.
He took on John Legend’s All Of Me and Billy Joel’s And So It Goes as he tinkled the ivories, further showcasing his versatility as a musician.
He even wrote a new song, How Are You, including the Mandarin lyrics, specially for his fans.
From the standing ovation at the end, it was clear that Ye’s Music Party was a winner.
(ST)

10000 Hours
Cosmos People
What is 10,000 hours? Mathematically, it is just shy of 417 days – a little more than a year.
As the title of Taiwanese trio Cosmos People’s album, it suggests a contemplation on the passage of time, an intrinsic part of the cycle of life. On the title track, lead vocalist Hsiao Yu wonders: “How much time does it take for flat ground to form a mountain/How much time does it take for the coast to build a sandy beach.”
The idea of measurement is then extended to the emotional realm: “How does a love song measure the romance of when we first met.”
Elsewhere, the band wrestle with questions of identity and emotional apathy.
Against an upbeat, rousing tune, they sing of becoming numb on Rudderless: “I don’t feel anything towards wonderful things/When my heart is in pain, it’s hard to bear, the higher the expectations the greater the fall.”
The sentiments are sometimes dire, but the music remains engaging, from the whistling at the start of And You? to the brassy accents of Offline Friends; from the disco-tinged 15 Seconds Of Fame to the spare Minnan ballad Rainy Day.
Four albums on, Cosmos People are no longer playing dress-up as spacemen or detectives, even as they continue to play around with musical genres. This is the sound of a band growing up.
(ST)

JJ Lin Timeline: Genesis World Tour
Singapore Indoor Stadium / Last Saturday
Family was the theme of singer- songwriter JJ Lin’s homecoming concert here.
The Taipei-based Mandopop star shared a sweet moment on stage with his mother during the encore as they sang Japanese Rose In My Palm. He did not neglect the other members of his family, who were surprised by an invitation to go on stage as well.
He sang Jonathan Lee’s poignant Hills with his father and performed with his elder brother Eugene, Fly Back In Time, a track recorded for the album Stories Untold (2013).
The Lin siblings had performed together at JJ’s last concert here in 2013 but this time round, even his parents were roped in.
“Don’t blame me for being partial on my Singapore stop,” he said to the sold-out crowd of 8,000 fans.
Another treat he had in store was inviting actor Chen Tianwen as his mystery guest star. And the song they sang? The cheesy viral hit Unbelievable, of course, complete with Chen holding a head of broccoli as he serenaded the audience.
There was an SG50 moment when Lin sang the Dick Lee-composed Our Singapore, the English theme song of this year’s National Day celebrations.
Being on home ground was an emotional experience for him. Thanking his fans for their support since his debut album Music Voyager (2003), he embraced them as family as well. Some female fans repeatedly yelled out “lao gong” (hubby) throughout the night. His mother quipped after her number: “Daughters-in-law, how’s that?”
Lin also broached the topic of marriage. He said: “When I see my friends getting married and having children, I wonder when it’ll be my turn.”
In one of the concert’s most touching moments, just before he performed the ballad Someday, about his grandparents, he said: “I believe grandma is here as well.” His grandmother had died from liver cancer in the midst of his concerts in Taipei last July.
She would have been proud of his show. This was the 37th stop of his current world tour and the concert was like a well-oiled machine.
The movable concentric circles of rigging provided effective lighting and were part of the dramatic staging. The T-shaped stage extended into the audience and the fans around it got to see their idol up close.
Lin was in fine form vocally and musically over the three-hour-long gig. He played the keyboard, guitar, drums and beatboxed and crooned his crowd-pleasing hits and rocked out to the faster-paced numbers.
Listening to Genesis, the title track of his latest album, it is clear that he still has ambitions as a songwriter and singer. He mixes R&B and dubstep with aplomb and throws in rap and soaring falsetto to winning effect.
Whichever direction he takes on his next album, there will be 8,000 fans cheering him on. After all, that is what family does.
(ST)

Thanks Giving
Yen-j
With its fresh jazz-pop sound, Taiwanese singer-songwriter Yen-j’s (right) 2010 debut Thank You For Your Greatness is still my favourite among his albums, which subsequently drifted towards the middle of the road – less jazz and more pop.
Thankfully, there are sparks of that original playful inventiveness once more on his fifth album Thanks Giving.
The piano-backed Nothing Is Impossible would not sound out of place on Greatness.
A child-like sense of joy and wonder suffuses the opening track Coin-Eating Tiger (co-written with a mysterious Assistant A), which deftly uses humorous imagery about a coin-eating tiger machine (a phrase which refers to a slot machine) and the repetition of the lines “So love is like fireworks” and “So dreams are like planes”.
Also making an impression is his buoyant duet Lightly with Taiwan- born, California-bred newcomer Peace, whose lightly husky vocals remind me of Kimberley Chen. She is definitely one to look out for.
I am less enamoured of his other love songs though. Tracks such as You Are My Everything suggest that he is a stronger writer than he is a singer, while Tacit Understanding flirts with being cutesy.
Still, it is nice to see him reaching for “something real” as he spells out on the track Something, even if it can sometimes be “Something empty/Something lost inside of me”.
And there is nothing middling about that at all.
(ST)