Innocent
Mavis Fan & 100%

Night Cat
Della Ding Dang

Loneliness
Evan Yo

Welcome back, Mavis Fan.
It has been almost five years since her last album Is There Another Way?, and on her latest offering she shows up with a head of platinum blonde hair and a new band 100%.
It is hard to believe that the indie queen was once the Little Witch Of Music warbling cutesy tracks such as Health Song and Toothbrushing Song.
You wonder if the singer-songwriter is making an oblique reference to that juvenile past when she sings "A different me/Does not want to make the same mistakes" on opener Ghost Hits The Wall.
This adventurous and playful outing is stylistically diverse and includes the groovy genre-busting jazz-rock-hip-hop hybrid, Who Cares What Kind Of Music It Is.
Lyrically, Fan plays with contrasts on numbers such as Inside Outside ("Even though he’s wearing a suit on the outside/Maybe he’s thinking of surfing on the inside") and Understand ("I am very happy/Because I know what pain is").
Even on less successful tracks such as Where Do I Want To Go, you could never mistake her work for cookie-cutter pop. Mercifully, the atmospheric duet included here, Dark Is The Night, is miles away from the saccharine fare cluttering the airwaves.
While the two duets – Fireworks with Mayday’s Ashin and Suddenly Want To Love You with Wakin Chau – on Ding Dang’s third album Night Cat might be a little above-average, they also feel rather obligatory.
The standout track is the ballad Why Do You Lie, which plays to the big-voiced singer’s strengths as she belts out: "You keep asking if my heart is really here/Asking how I can lose love with no regrets/Why are my tears rolling down."
At the same time, the lace and leather gloves get-up point to a sexier and edgier sensibility and she delivers it on songs such as Night Cat, a cheesily entertaining dance number complete with Ding Dang mewing.
She might be rocking out and exploring her inner animal but Evan Yo has ditched the rock persona he adopted on his previous album.
Instead, there is a back-to-basics feel on this third album which features a memorable clutch of songs.
Still only 23, the singer-songwriter tackles a clever mix of ballads such as Blinking SMS and Eclipse and more youthful-sounding numbers such as Little Darling.
But the singer also sounds like he has done some growing up when he croons on Loneliness: "What do I do when night falls/Who is by my side when loneliness calls/My emotions are mixed up together/Thinking of her, missing her, hating her."
Maybe he can take consolation in the fact that he never had to sing kiddy ditties.
(ST)