Super Yo
Evan Yo

It has been three years since Taiwanese singer-songwriter Evan Yo’s enjoyable last album, Loneliness (2009), and quite a few things have happened in the interim.
He did his military service, buffed up, and switched to a new label from Sony Music. In general, he seems to have done some growing up.
And it shows on his fourth album.
The easy-on-the-ears love ballads are still here and include tracks such as Can’t Love You Enough and Who Knows. Thinking leaves an impression with its lyrics about being inarticulate in love: “Oh baby, I’m so... love you/The feeling I can’t put into words, can you hear it”.
More unexpected are the dance tracks which mark a change of direction for him. And thankfully, they steer clear of the K-pop template of marrying insanely catchy beats with sometimes nonsensical lyrics.
On the opening title track, he signals this new turn: “We depend, on the right brain, let rationality have a good sleep, Now/Walk with me to the right/Watch me break the flow.”
Kudos to him for not simply going with the flow.

The Scent Of Night
Crowd Lu

Have A Holiday
Soft Lipa, Dadado Huang

Some of my favourite singer-songwriters have come up with EPs, whetting my appetite for their new albums.
Crowd Lu’s The Scent Of Night is an acoustic guitar ballad in the vein of his best folk-pop offerings.
There is a sense of mystery and joy to it that is beguiling as he croons: “I pass through the tree tops, fly over walls, the fables of the city/I’m chasing after, mysteriously able to fly, wanting to find out who is singing in my dream.”
As for hip-hop artist Soft Lipa, his genre-blurring collaborations have seen him venturing into jazz and pop, each time with great success in albums such as Moonlight (2010) and Riding A Bicycle (2011). His tie-up with folkster Dadado Huang is equally rewarding.
The EP cover is already appealing in its visual wit as Dan Bao (Soft Lipa’s Mandarin pinyin name) plus Dadado Huang equals dan huang, or egg yolk.
The breezy Have A Holiday sounds joyful but is emotionally more conflicted. The song seamlessly ties together Soft Lipa’s hypnotic rhymes with Huang’s delicate vocals in this tale of a man who just needs a break. And the gently elegiac The Worries Of A Youngster sensitively sketches out that no man’s land between childhood and adulthood.
This is an egg yolk that nourishes and satisfies.
(ST)