Miss Elva

Elva Hsiao

From the glitter of Diamond Candy (2009) to the punkish nu-wave neon-glow look she sports for this album, Taiwanese singer Elva Hsiao sure likes to dazzle and shine.

Maybe it’s to distract you from the fact that she is once more serving up the same calculated mix of dance tracks, remakes and ballads. Then again, it’s a formula that works – the record has topped the Taiwanese album chart for three weeks – so why mess with it?

While the track Slim is a remake, it at least has some biting lyrics about the obsession with being thin: “The tastier it is, the more sinful/Fats, please go to the one next to me” and “Treat all those shows with good food like horror flicks”.

The gospel-tinged Dream II ~ I Am Not Afraid actually offers something different but it sounds a little out of place on this collection.

Offering fans visual eye candy with each new album is all part of the game, but Hsiao should bear in mind that it’s the music that should be grabbing one’s attention.

Hao Jiu

Nicky Lee

The title is a pun on Lee’s Chinese name and also means “been so long”.

As the liner notes tell us, it has been 765 days since the Taiwan-based Korean’s last Mandarin album Imperfect (2008).

Given the long wait, you would have thought that the singer-songwriter would want to wow us right off the bat instead of serenading us with a cover of Richard Marx’s Right Here Waiting.

The album closes with yet another cover, Air Supply’s classic ballad Making Love Out Of Nothing At All, which was featured in the soundtrack to the Taiwanese gangster flick, Monga (2010).

Actually, Lee doesn’t do a half-bad job with these two overly familiar songs. There is an appealingly tender gruffness to his voice which landed him the Best Male Singer award for his second album, Baby It’s Me, at the 2007 Golden Melody Awards.

Still, one would have hoped for more original material here.

On the ballad Last Day, he brings some lovely phrasing and colour to the conventional lyrics: “The last day, the last day/Whose tears have blurred the scene/The last day, the last day/Can’t remember why we forgot to say goodbye”.

No More Cryin’, meanwhile, is a fruitful attempt at R&B and also makes for a nice change of pace.

Perhaps Lee could consider making an even bigger change the next time round and take on something apart from love songs.

(ST)