The Dazy Eyes
The Freshman

A Little Blue Jazz
Elaine Lam

One Fine Day
Cheryl Wee

The follow-up to The Freshman’s promising 2010 debut is an EP that casts them in a new light. Sophomore offering The Dazy Eyes is a more assured and mature effort from the duo comprising Project Superstar’s Chen Diya and Carrie Yeo.
The arrangements are confidently stripped down, putting the focus on the lyrics and the melodic tunes – more Indigo Girls folk-pop and less 2 Girls power-pop. The title track explores the idea of seeing and observing: “How much bigger are your eyes compared to mine/How truer is the city you see/How much more myopic are you compared to me/The you in front of me, why can’t you see.”
It links thematically to the next track Spectacle Friend and the EP ends with the English number, It’s Getting So Hard. They might croon that “It’s getting too hard to write a song/A song you might like, or not”, but Dazy Eyes should see their fans liking it more than not.
On her debut EP, local singer-songwriter Elaine Lam keeps it light and jazzy with an offering of five tracks in English and Mandarin.
There is sunniness on The Apple Of My Eye, while innocence and childhood run through The Little Blue Princess and The Boy And His Trains. The Mandarin tracks Drunkard and Bad Temper change tack abruptly and it is a little jarring to have her soothing voice singing, “After downing that martini, you’re now eyeing that whisky” and “Please keep quiet and listen/Don’t keep spouting profanities”. Still, she keeps you listening.
Also making her debut is doe-eyed beauty queen Cheryl Wee. Her sweet but thin voice is best served by tracks which do not tax it too much, so the Jim Lim and Xiaohan-penned Moonlight Serenade and the breezy opener Happiness! are okay.
Unfortunately, she has also decided to cover vocally superior singers with choices such as Stefanie Sun’s Encounter and Mayday’s Gratitude. It is not a smart move for a newcomer to invite comparisons to these acts. The worst offender here is the cover of Crowd Lu’s Zai Jian Gou Gou (Goodbye Pinky Swear), which is bizarrely translated as Hello Doggie! in the album. For some reason, she tackles this in her limited lower range which struggles to be cheery against the happy-peppy arrangement.
Regrettably, this is not the sound of one fine day.
(ST)