My Room
Maggie Chiang
In the six years since her last album Crybaby (2006), Taiwan’s Maggie Chiang has been quietly remodelling herself as a singer-songwriter.
The initial impression of My Room is that it does not present a very much different Chiang. After all, she already used to sing sensitively wrought love ballads, penned by others, such as Why Is My Beloved Not By My Side and The Gentleness Of Both Hands.
That is not to say that the album is without its rewards – the better tracks include the easy breezy romance of You Do Love Me and The Weight Of Love, the latter first appearing in an EP of the same name in 2010.
In particular, the gently lilting Under The Moon Light, composed by Chiang with lyrics by her and Peggy Hsu, strikes a tender note: “Hey, you in the moonlight, are you thinking about the past on this lonely night.”
So what if there isn’t a radical departure from the past? The more important thing is that Chiang has decided to take a bigger stake in her music and that can only be a good thing.
As the title track with lyrics by David Ke goes: “Open the window, it’s the same sunlight, and yet the feeling is not the same.”
The same could be said of Chiang.
(ST)