Message In A Bottle
JJ Lin
The lead single, Wei Da De Miao Xiao (Little Big Us), sounds like a sequel to JJ Lin’s big hit ballad, Bu Wei Shei Er Zuo De Ge (Twilight), off his previous album, From M.E. To Myself (2015). But not to worry, it is a sequel done right, capturing the moving grandeur of the earlier track without sounding like a retread.
Singapore’s Xiaohan wrote the lyrics and, as usual, she has a way with words, piquing one’s interest with the opening stanza: “A rose is surrounded by thorns, maybe it wishes for an embrace/Dolphins always have a smile on their face, maybe the ocean has washed their tears away, so no one knows”.
It is a song about the universal need for love and finding the courage to pursue it. Lin sings with yearning and a sparkle of hope: “Love is not a coincidence/Let us hold on to each other’s hands/Although we are minuscule/Never run away”.
He composed all of the album’s music and also penned the lyrics in the English version of the track, Until The Day, which is about the circular nature of life (“Lovers straying, seasons changing/Strangers to lovers/What comes around again”). Both work, though I find the Mandarin take more compelling.
The ballads make a greater impression here and Wo Ji Xu (Eagle’s Eye) is another standout number, with lyrics from frequent Mandopop king Jay Chou collaborator Vincent Fang. Lin sings about believing in oneself and rejecting so-called destiny: “I want to be carefree like an eagle, fly far away from fate on the ground”.
The Taipei-based Singaporean singer-songwriter has been on a roll in recent years, with Golden Melody Award wins for Best Male Vocalist for Stories Untold in 2014 and From M.E. To Myself in 2016. He suggests that his greatest challenge right now is himself as he seeks yet another breakthrough.
He asks in Chuan Yue (Stay): “Who breaks through, overcome who/If I don’t, if there’s no me/Who would surpass”.
The message is clear.
(ST)
Thursday, January 11, 2018
Story Thief
A-mei
On her last album, Amit 2 (2015), Taiwanese singer A-mei seethed and snarled. For example, she let it rip on Matriarchy: “Men proclaim themselves kings while women have to bear the weight of the world.”
As though in deliberate contrast, Story Thief is quieter and less confrontational. The singer is more concerned with matters of the heart and the pared-down arrangements place the focus on her voice and naked feelings. It is the ballads which shine here as she works with top collaborators such as Jay Chou and JJ Lin.
The opening title track, penned by Taiwanese singer-songwriter Eve Ai, has A-mei ruminating on a failed relationship: “When you left that day, I stopped telling stories/ Stopped weaving transitions, no need to fret about an ending.”
There is no chorus with an obvious hook here, but the melody sneaks up on you and the honesty of the emotions draws one in.
On the ballad A Bad Good Guy, with lyrics by Singapore’s Xiaohan, A-mei acknowledges: “Whose heart hasn’t been damaged, hasn’t been trapped/Grateful to have survived, that’s enough to be real/Not much innocence left in life/I’m willing to wait again for a bad good guy.”
Full Name, composed by Mandopop king Chou, narrates a poignant tale of unrequited love. A loss of intimacy is conveyed by a telling little detail: “When you mention me again, it’s already by my full name.”
This is the sound of someone a little rueful, a little older and wiser, and yet still clinging to hope.
A handful of tracks take a different tack, including the synth number Withdrawal, which presents another aspect of relationships – desperate desire: “Want to breathe you in deeply/Dig my nails into your flesh.”
Story Thief, it turns out, is a pop album for adults.
(ST)
A-mei
On her last album, Amit 2 (2015), Taiwanese singer A-mei seethed and snarled. For example, she let it rip on Matriarchy: “Men proclaim themselves kings while women have to bear the weight of the world.”
As though in deliberate contrast, Story Thief is quieter and less confrontational. The singer is more concerned with matters of the heart and the pared-down arrangements place the focus on her voice and naked feelings. It is the ballads which shine here as she works with top collaborators such as Jay Chou and JJ Lin.
The opening title track, penned by Taiwanese singer-songwriter Eve Ai, has A-mei ruminating on a failed relationship: “When you left that day, I stopped telling stories/ Stopped weaving transitions, no need to fret about an ending.”
There is no chorus with an obvious hook here, but the melody sneaks up on you and the honesty of the emotions draws one in.
On the ballad A Bad Good Guy, with lyrics by Singapore’s Xiaohan, A-mei acknowledges: “Whose heart hasn’t been damaged, hasn’t been trapped/Grateful to have survived, that’s enough to be real/Not much innocence left in life/I’m willing to wait again for a bad good guy.”
Full Name, composed by Mandopop king Chou, narrates a poignant tale of unrequited love. A loss of intimacy is conveyed by a telling little detail: “When you mention me again, it’s already by my full name.”
This is the sound of someone a little rueful, a little older and wiser, and yet still clinging to hope.
A handful of tracks take a different tack, including the synth number Withdrawal, which presents another aspect of relationships – desperate desire: “Want to breathe you in deeply/Dig my nails into your flesh.”
Story Thief, it turns out, is a pop album for adults.
(ST)
Thursday, January 04, 2018
Call Me By Your Name
Luca Guadagnino
The story: In the early 1980s, academics who stay for a spell in the family home in northern Italy and help out his professor father are a summer ritual for Elio (Timothee Chalamet). When young Jewish-American scholar Oliver (Armie Hammer) walks through their door, he stirs up strong feelings of desire on the part of the precocious 17-year-old. Based on Andre Aciman’s 2007 novel of the same name.
Having read and loved the book, I was a little apprehensive about a big-screen adaptation. The Egyptian-born American writer Aciman crafts lyrical prose and much of it is in the form of interior monologues in Elio’s head. How would this translate to the big screen?
Drawing on a beautiful source text, Italian director Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love, 2010) has made a film that is its own kind of wonderful.
It is an adaptation that is loving and faithful, but not slavishly so. There is no voiceover, for example, but we still get glimpses into Elio’s head through the clever conversion of some of his thoughts into dialogue as well as scrawlings in a journal.
From the gorgeous setting of an idyllic northern Italian town to the casting to the choice of music, the film-maker gets the details just right in evoking a world that we become completely immersed in.
Chalamet slips under the skin of Elio to give a sensitively tuned performance as he swings from the heady rapture of sexual awakening and first love to being torn apart by doubt and insecurity. He flits so naturally from English to Italian to French that it comes as a jolt to find out that he is American, born and raised in Manhattan.
His star-making turn has landed him Best Actor nominations for the Golden Globe Awards and Screen Actors Guild Awards and wins from several critics associations. Nominations and wins have also been chalked up for best film, best director and best supporting actor for Hammer and Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays Elio’s father.
Hammer is well cast as the athletic academic with the movie star aura, the object of Elio’s desire. His Oliver has an easy confidence about him and also an innate sense of decency. He says to Elio at one point: “I want to be good, we haven’t done anything yet.”
Elio’s raging hormones are acknowledged – there is a scene involving him and a peach and he also sleeps with a girl from next door – but there is more than unbridled lust between him and Oliver. They talk about books, music and people and share a deeply intimate connection.
There is also a remarkable scene that takes place between Elio and his father, which Stuhlbarg handles with grace and gravitas. The professor talks to his son about love with the wisdom of one who has experienced it and the protective instinct of a parent who wants the best for his child.
Movies often make a big deal about the sex talk, but you rarely see one in which a teenager and his parents have a serious conversation about romantic love.
(ST)
Luca Guadagnino
The story: In the early 1980s, academics who stay for a spell in the family home in northern Italy and help out his professor father are a summer ritual for Elio (Timothee Chalamet). When young Jewish-American scholar Oliver (Armie Hammer) walks through their door, he stirs up strong feelings of desire on the part of the precocious 17-year-old. Based on Andre Aciman’s 2007 novel of the same name.
Having read and loved the book, I was a little apprehensive about a big-screen adaptation. The Egyptian-born American writer Aciman crafts lyrical prose and much of it is in the form of interior monologues in Elio’s head. How would this translate to the big screen?
Drawing on a beautiful source text, Italian director Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love, 2010) has made a film that is its own kind of wonderful.
It is an adaptation that is loving and faithful, but not slavishly so. There is no voiceover, for example, but we still get glimpses into Elio’s head through the clever conversion of some of his thoughts into dialogue as well as scrawlings in a journal.
From the gorgeous setting of an idyllic northern Italian town to the casting to the choice of music, the film-maker gets the details just right in evoking a world that we become completely immersed in.
Chalamet slips under the skin of Elio to give a sensitively tuned performance as he swings from the heady rapture of sexual awakening and first love to being torn apart by doubt and insecurity. He flits so naturally from English to Italian to French that it comes as a jolt to find out that he is American, born and raised in Manhattan.
His star-making turn has landed him Best Actor nominations for the Golden Globe Awards and Screen Actors Guild Awards and wins from several critics associations. Nominations and wins have also been chalked up for best film, best director and best supporting actor for Hammer and Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays Elio’s father.
Hammer is well cast as the athletic academic with the movie star aura, the object of Elio’s desire. His Oliver has an easy confidence about him and also an innate sense of decency. He says to Elio at one point: “I want to be good, we haven’t done anything yet.”
Elio’s raging hormones are acknowledged – there is a scene involving him and a peach and he also sleeps with a girl from next door – but there is more than unbridled lust between him and Oliver. They talk about books, music and people and share a deeply intimate connection.
There is also a remarkable scene that takes place between Elio and his father, which Stuhlbarg handles with grace and gravitas. The professor talks to his son about love with the wisdom of one who has experienced it and the protective instinct of a parent who wants the best for his child.
Movies often make a big deal about the sex talk, but you rarely see one in which a teenager and his parents have a serious conversation about romantic love.
(ST)
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