Limits

LaLa Hsu

The pixie-ish LaLa Hsu could easily have gone down the cutie-pie route but, thank goodness, the Taiwanese singer-songwriter has bigger ambitions, and the talent to match them.

Hsu’s 2009 debut album was well received and won her the best newcomer trophy at the Golden Melody Awards. The champion of the third season of One Million Star scored a KTV-friendly hit with Riding A White Horse, which mixed pop with Chinese opera, to surprisingly moving effect.

There is nothing quite as exciting as Riding A White Horse on this, her follow-up album.

Still, there are a couple of tracks that will grow on you here, including the ballads Limits and Acrophobia. On the latter, she sings sweetly: “You let the sky lose its distance/I let myself leave hesitation/Scaling love, bidding memory farewell/ I’m loving you”.

The unexpectedly elegiac Disco is another keeper. But, despite the album’s name, it does not feel as though Hsu is pushing herself to her limit.

Once In A Lifetime

sodagreen

Taiwanese rock band sodagreen’s latest live release raises a couple of questions.

Firstly, why didn’t their Daylight Fever tour come to Singapore? Secondly, after the group’s last two feted albums released last year, Daylight Of Spring and Summer/Fever, which kick-started their four-

album season-themed Project Vivaldi, what has happened to the autumn and winter instalments?

And since this is a concert recording offering, why not offer more songs, rather than a paltry selection of 11 songs?

There is a bonus of three new songs tacked on, though one of them, No Sleep, hardly counts, since it is merely the Mandarin version of a Minnan track on Summer/Fever. Thought of as an extended single, Once In A Lifetime comes up to their usual high standards. In that case, can we get the next fulllength album soon, please?

Solace

Jones Shi

After making his debut with Firelight five years ago, local singersongwriter Jones Shi fell off the Mandopop radar. He is now signed on to a new label and has released a threetrack EP to test the waters.

The catchy soft rock ballads here have been crafted to showcase his emotive and slightly gruff voice, with the Lee Shih Siong/Xiaohan-penned Imperfect Perfection being the most memorable. Missing out on five years in the industry can be hard on a musician’s career. Shi can find solace in the fact that this EP marks a promising return to the scene.

(ST)