#44: Ramune Sipping, Keep Dreaming
#44: Ramune Sipping, Keep Dreaming
on Guangzhou-based XiangXiang and the sweetly refreshing indie rock of their debut album
Last month, I got to interview babyMINT for NME—think they’re one of the greatest acts in Taiwan right now and was a real pleasure to talk with them about their latest song. Feels refreshing how honest they were in talking about their music, never a moment where it felt like they were trying to pretend to like their own material and really frank in saying how off-guard some of it caught them. Reminds me of the first time I watched “2023:BBMeme ODYSSEY” and cried from laughter. It’s always a lot of fun to write for other publications, other people, and this was one of the best assignments I’ve ever done—can’t believe the first artist I ever got to interview was babyMINT.
I’m starting to put together some lists… slowly. Keep getting distracted with the urge to randomly listen to whatever pops in my head like, hey, it’s time to listen to all of my little airport’s discography, so everything is… slow. Apologies to my editor. This month I wrote about XiangXiang’s new album, Hear it, XiangXiang it! and some singles by men in Taiwan: YELLOW, Osean Wu, and NICKTHEREAL.
XiangXiang - Hear it, XiangXiang it!
XiangXiang sound like a new strain of Guangzhou indie. Led by sweet and girlish vocals, a song like “Home Alone” with its chipper attitude and foot-tapping rhythm doesn’t sound far off from the cozy indie pop acts of local Qiii Snacks label, like Cheesemind or Power Milk. But the five-piece often have their sights set on something loftier than a relaxed stroll, injecting the track with shoegaze guitars and power pop melodies that animate their indie pop into something more muscular. As “Home Alone” crests into a shout of “I’m really tired!” (replete with an echoed-back response), it feels like the band has created a comic strip out of life’s most mundane days.
Comprised of slice-of-life segments made to feel salient, XiangXiang don’t disguise that these songs are about nothing. “Ramune” is the band at their sleepiest, with a sigh of a hook about sipping the Japanese soft drink. It lands in a net of sheer distortion, but the build-up makes the song feel refreshing. As XiangXiang wrap their tweeness in fuzzy guitars, it’s like the slow-to-start air conditioner adjusting on a hot day. Elsewhere, the band create their own drama out of the emptiness. “Aww! Dare You Cheat Me!” starts with dulcet guitar tones and soft murmurs, but rips through that in no time, each line pointedly flipping back and forth on a friend as if she’s imagined the entire scenario. Like a bored latchkey kid, vocalist Raku makes times for a step routine in the intermission: “step in light, step in light / dream your dreams and don’t be shy,” she hums—the intensity of the guitars and relentless power of the drumming cause her world to come to life without letting it sound overly mushy.
Like their peers, XiangXiang are casual, even if it’s not a quality that should be mistaken for passive or resigned. The band’s songwriting is self-assured and free, and Hear it, XiangXiang it! plays like a group of close friends improvising bad jokes. Stupid is the line “there’s a snail gonna kill you / but you’ll be a millionaire” off “Ramune,” but isn’t it fun to imagine? Their in-jokes can be harder to parse in other places and worse, the material sometimes sounds like an unfinished draft. “User6061279800,” named after the band’s original WeChat ID, is just a list of foods and the repetition can make words like “creamy mushroom silver soup” sound less appetizing with each recurrence; meanwhile, “Timmy” sounds like a twee-er version of Carsick Cars, too cheap and flimsy to echo any of the band’s drive. As homey and pleasant as these songs are, they can feel a bit hollow, only propped up by the occasional burst of guitar frisson.
It’s the build-up where XiangXiang are most exciting, the moments where they layer rougher and tougher guitar lines, bass melodies, and drum patterns around the familiar sounds of Guangzhou indie pop. They punch up the mundane, sparking it with the kind of perky energy that only a joyous outlook can bring. Not as memorable is the back half, where these songs never reach that sort of climactic crest: “F(oo)lish” hangs a bit too jaunty, Raku’s voice too eager to connect with the brief section of distortion, while “Linear path” bolts straight out of the gate, zooming straight-forward without growing. They lack the dynamism of “Home Alone,” where a proclamation of exhaustion could feel like rebellion. Here, it lacks the punch. A barrage of questions sounds like an inner dialogue, an emphatic symbol sounds frustrated and introverted. It’s all very nice, but it leaves you wishing they’d held that good sense of humour closer to the front of their music.
Listen here: Apple Music // Spotify
YELLOW - “Ghost Swing”
Executed with YELLOW’s signature showman flair, the performer finds a way to make the most of every riff on “Ghost Swing.” Part of the theatricality is that it’s as if he’s built an audience into the track, every handclap and snap like another attentive onlooked awaiting his next movement. But the rest is how he moves with the arrangement, compressing himself as the burbling bassline gestures, exploding as it burps out noise right beside the guitar. When the track hollows out, YELLOW takes advantage of the negative space, his voice double-tracked and quiet, like a creepy goblin dancing for no one.
Osean Wu - “Dancing Alone Together”
The Taiwanese R&B singer’s music is carried by atmosphere rather than performance, like it’s the blanket rather than the lover beside you, tangled in the sheets. So meditative and dreamy, Osean Wu’s voice skips over the synth ripples, but gets stuck when he remembers the soft house beat, looping into a monotonous cycle of going out alone, dancing and returning home alone. The muffled intensity feels like an indication that it’s no longer working, that drinking until dawn and dancing next to sweaty strangers doesn’t attract the same fulfillment it once did. Maybe that softness can also hold an invitation for change.
NICKTHEREAL - “Talking to You”
How many times has NICKTHEREAL made this song? Once? Twice? Thrice? He stands at the apex of the chorus, singing his words slowly and deliberately on top of a pop punk instrumental that feels like 00s nostalgia-bait. But the singer’s only got better at performing the part, his voice getting ragged and rougher with age: he’s a bad boy, but wait! he could be the kind of bad boy that treats you right if he chooses you. On “我做的是愛不是夢” (“What I Make Is Love, Not a Dream”), the singer made a convincing echo of an after-school MTV performance dressed in a neon green t-shirt and with his hair bleached yellow. The song rings sincere, but often undersells his commitment: “I’ll be there / probably before midnight,” he calls.
So with “Talking to You,” you’ve head this chorus before, but NICKTHEREAL is no longer content with just rehashing the past, this is his version of Y3K rather than Y2K. He mashes together elements like a himbo mad scientist trying to stay relevant in today’s current obsession with club tropes: what if we threw a breakbeat on the verses? what if you gave the second pre-chorus a little Jersey club beat? He growls in a raspy howl on the chorus, but turns like a charmingly more energetic man on the verse. “Let you know 4 ever got your back / this time ain’t no holding back,” he raps, “L-O-V-E you and I / bit by bit, I’ll get it back.” It’s stupid enough that it comes across as charming, the song is brilliant enough that it’ll get your heart pumping. He’s a man ready to concede, a man ready to admit that you’re right. He’s a man in love.
see also: LIN CHIEH-HSIN - “In the night that hasn’t become the future”
Extra Listening
Chinese mainstream rap tends to be pretty late in hopping on trends, so YOUNG13DBABY’s “Sexy Drill” is one of the most fascinating rap songs this year. (I’m late myself, sorry) It’s the highlight off his new album, Pema Tenzin. The Tibetan rapper namechecks the influence in the title, the song relies more on branding than on sexual magnetism (he spends more time sing-rapping about Fenty Beauty than anything that could be considered explicit; the closest he gets is asking “let me be ur sugar daddy girl”), but that makes it all the more captivating to me, watching him try to take something that feels incredibly American and make it appropriate for Chinese consumption.
Dream pop outfit Hello Nico have returned with their first music in almost ten years, a new EP Plan B: 如果回來, 我們一起看海 (Plan B: If You Come Back, We’ll Go to the Sea Together).
Leah Dou has a new album, in the air, that largely feels like attempting to wrestle with the feelings of being in a long-distance relationship. There’s the great, funky single “California Baby” along with a bunch of more toned-down performances, including features with rapper Jiuwei and waa wei. I think while much of her last album lived in the shadow of “Monday,” this one flows together better.
Drogas has a couple new ones, including a new EP that feels like throwing out the idea that you’re unworthy of anything and deciding to have fun regardless (I’ve seen it described as Taiwanese 2hollis, but I think this is significantly more fun) and a pair of singles that sound like that yeule-indebted shoegaze. Both are fascinating, evolutions of his sound that are leagues more interesting than his album from earlier this year.
TIA RAY seems to be readying her long-teased English album. This one’s good.
Find the latest Canto Wrap and Mando Gap playlists on Spotify and me on Twitter here.