Simple Love
Yen-j

How To Deal With Loneliness?
Kenji Wu

I Remember
Shin

A trio of male Taiwanese singer- songwriters have new releases but only one has decided not to pull double duty and to focus on his vocals.
The jazz-influenced pop of singer- songwriter Yen-j’s third album harks back to his debut Thanks Your Greatness (2010). The piano and drums-propelled The World’s Not Too Bad opens with this optimistic observation: “The world’s not too bad when someone is willing to do something for you, not to return a favour, nor for money, but because of love.”
There is also a gentle sense of humour and self-deprecation in his songs. Temporary Boyfriend casts him in the role of rebound guy over a breezy tune: “I’m willing to be your rebound ball, be a temporary boyfriend.”
Sneeze brings on a smile with its chorus of hachoos. It strikes me that it could also be a drawled reading of “heart you”.
Simple Love thoughtfully strikes a better balance between pop and jazz than his sophomore effort Not Alone (2011), and that is something to be thankful for.
Meanwhile, singer-songwriter Kenji Wu gets contemplative on his dusk-to- dawn concept album. It kicks off with an instrumental dance number and then charts the course of the lonely night that follows after a night of partying.
He is down in the dumps on Messing: “So I party wildly, so I mess about, because I don’t dare to face, face the dark, face heartbreak.”
The tempo picks up on Chase as he resolves to go after the love he once had. Wu tends to be stronger on faster tracks than ballads, especially when the ballad is a schmaltzy one such as Because You’re A Woman. The gently rousing Morning ends the album on a hopeful note and is a nice contrast to the frenzied opener.
Shin, former frontman of the rock band that bore his name, is showing more restraint on his new disc. Unlike the angsty rock anthems he delivered in the past, he sounds more tender on the ballad Secret Regrets.
Maybe the photo shoot in dreamy Paris helped to get him in the mood: There are plenty of shots of Shin looking pensive and mellow in the lyric booklet.
He has left the songwriting duties here to others, such as indie band sodagreen’s Wu Ching-feng, lyricist Lin Xi and Singaporean singer-songwriter Hanjin Tan.
Old rocker habits die hard, though, and there is a sop to fans of his more intense style on the duet Hugging In The Wild Wind with power belter A-lin.
Still, it is good that Shin is trying something different, vocally, to shake things up. We will be even more intrigued if he ventures into socially conscious rock – something he said he might do in a recent Life! interview. Now, that would be something to remember.
(ST)