#24: 2017
a wrap on this year with a reader's survey and a look back at some Mandopop from five years ago in the team-up of a-mei, Eve Ai, and Lala Hsu, plus more
2022! What a year!
A relatively good year—against all odds, I got an issue out every month. Sometimes I do think about how long this will last and the answer is a very iffy “who knows?” but for now, I’m excited to keep this going next year. I’ve got a fun issue planned for April and hopefully some stuff after that. So, stay tuned for now! We’ve just got end of year stuff left: Mando and Canto singles next week, Mando albums the week after.
Huge heartfelt thanks to everyone who had conversations with me about it, shared it, liked it, or even just read it. I love you.
There’s this whole debate about whether or not a year-end list is an aggregate favourite or a representation of what was important. Can’t do either here given that it’s just me. So I’ve put together a reader’s survey, you can find a pre-filled link here or the button below. I’m always interested in what’s catching other people’s attention and I think a reader’s survey is the best way of capturing everything—feel free to fill out whatever portion you’d like.
I know “Chinese” isn’t the best descriptor but we’ll use it here: Mando, Canto, use your best judgment. Top 10 Chinese tracks (singles or non-singles are fine) and top 5 Chinese albums. More rules on formatting in the link.
I’ll put out the reader’s poll results with the next issue in January.
This month’s issue is not about November. Same deal as last year. Not sure what I would’ve covered from November—perhaps the new mukio EP, Master of Life? Maybe Wang Song’s debut album 張狂的佔慾, 未明的偏執? The two singles that really caught my attention were probably Julia Wu’s “otherside” and Lexie Liu’s “FORTUNA,” both of whom have albums out this month.
Last year I picked some stuff from 2020, one year before, but this year, I thought I’d go five years ahead. 2017. Anie Fann’s indie-pop debut and some singles from the biggest: Faye, Eric Chou, Sun Yanzi (also known as Stefanie Sun), and the team-up of a-mei, Eve Ai, and Lala Hsu.
Albums
Anie Fann - Can You or Can You Not Understand My Mandarin
The Asian-American experience is often summed up as the feeling of being “out of place.” There are a lot of words thrown into the mix but most often it’s about “partially belonging to two groups but not fully belonging to either.” Whether it’s discussed disingenuously or not, it exists. The instances where it’s explored in music are often done in the perspective of the “American” label, attempting to find home in the country they live in—Anie Fann is no different.
Fann was born in Taipei but grew up in Canada. In 2006, she signed to Hong Kong label Hummingbird Music and performed across small venues in Taiwan before travelling back to the U.S. for further education in music arrangement and production at the Musicians Institute in LA. Her debut album, Can You or Can You Not Understand My Mandarin, touches on the disorientation of that experience, moving back and forth between continents, yet ultimately, like many Asian-American artists who put identity at the centre of the art, attempts to justify her place for a sense of belonging.
You can hear a foreignness in the words Fann chooses and the way she pronounces those words. Often using simplistic imagery, she also often takes a compromised approach to the tones of the language despite attempting to force clearer annunciation. Its two English tracks bring something of a fantasy outside of that experience—“Shipwrecked,” a love story built on a deserted island, sidesteps any need for sense of belonging, and “With His Heart, She Run,” subversively pulls at the American myth of the outlaw. But you can hear Fann’s desire to belong to somewhere best in the closer and title track. The exasperation of the phrasing “can you or can you not” isn’t directed at anyone in particular but waiting for a sense of validation, one that hopes to affirm the fact that she belongs in Taiwan.
Can You or Can You Not Understand My Mandarin puts Fann’s easygoing humour at the forefront. On “Sorry Dad I Fell in Love with a Job That Makes No Money,” she goes beyond the often cliché joke of the Asian-American disappointing her parents. In its lounge bar atmosphere, Fann’s voice is comfortable rather than biting; her lyrics touch more upon her own failings as an artist instead of taking it out on her parents. “Wrote a hundred songs, only one was listenable,” she sighs. Later she sings about voice cracking as its own art, attempting to make up for a performance that fell short. She makes easy work of what’s left of an ex on “Sell It, Toss It, Burn It,” casually making a mantra to herself: “sell the expensive, at least you’ll get a little comfort, toss it if no one wants it, burn it to be free of his temper, and forget everything good about him.”
Taiwan-based Japanese guitarist Eiji Kadato pairs Fann’s easygoing nature with breezy indie-pop production. “The New Toy” opens in isolation—a tropical wind by a saxophone, a comfortable guitar strum—but livens things up with a casual bossa nova groove. Similarly, “The Art of Voice Cracking” is all island breeze in gentle swaying percussion and sweltering background brass. “My Neighbour Is Writing a Horror Movie” is campy, not fearful, pushing a prominent bassline and background choir, reaching a climax in an electric guitar solo.
Artemis 1889, Fann’s second album, switches to more electropop territory, again sidestepping belonging or lack thereof, by looking at society from a colder stance, attempting to take an objective lens and framing it through technology. But Can You or Can You Not Understand My Mandarin is a better profile of Fann: a peek at her relationship with her parents, her steps to handling a breakup, even what she believes to be her shortcomings as an artist. It’s a framing of the indie-pop outsider, one that leaves her scratching her head, wondering why she still feels foreign at the end.
Find it on streaming here: Apple Music // Spotify
Singles: “Outrun” // “My Neighbour Is Writing a Horror Movie”
Singles
Faye - “Riverside”
The wintry path of “Riverside” seemed to understand that its existence was a sacrifice, that Faye’s solo ambitions would mean the end of her time with trio F.I.R. “Actually, I’m not good at talking,” she opens in a moment of vulnerability before closing with a painful understanding, something both parties recognize but sidestep: “you say you need to go far away and I can’t do anything about it”—the outro repeats the word “leave” ad infinitum. Understanding how unceremoniously she was ousted from F.I.R. after thirteen years of playing vocalist for the trio leaves the admission feeling like a brutal premonition. She’s lost in its cold storm—the plodding crunch of snow under shoes, the swirl of an icy squall, the bells of Christmas festivities fading into the distance.
Eric Chou - “The Chaos After You”
Eric Chou writes a lot of his songs like they’re meant to be played as the credits roll because, well, they are: his breakout single “The Distance of You” was for the 2014 drama, The Way We Are and the equally massive “How Have You Been?” was used for Life List. Recent singles have been used for dramas and film, including More than Blue: The Series, Mom, Don’t Do That, and My Best Friend’s Breakfast. Chou’s third album, The Chaos After You, is a collection of sentimental digital ballads, experimenting by pouring his romanticism into EDM or placing an electric violin in the midst of its plaintive tracks. Its title track—later used for 2019 drama, Hello Again!—simulates much of its drama and affectation through digital samples of rain and thunder crackles. Breathy falsetto, a choked rush of a line reading but the core of “The Chaos After You” is the extreme sentimentality that made Chou such drama fixture: simple desperation from a pathetic character soaked in the rain; here’s the kind of man who would do anything for you in the line “if you have to leave, take me with you.”
Sun Yanzi - “A Dancing Van Gogh”
“A Dancing Van Gogh” disguises its carnival as an opera. It opens like high art: Pizzicato strings. Dampened thuds of piano. Sun Yanzi singing quietly in her lower register. But every build to the chorus is another descent into madness. The drums thud like an elephant clumsily marching and the strings spiral with tension. Sun herself has said she got slightly drunk off wine for the vocal performance to remove the sense of reservation. While it doesn’t exactly brim with chaos, “A Dancing Van Gogh” descends into a into a beautiful lonely tragedy, like a wine mom at her wit’s end—“no curtain call, no celebration, no cheer,” the final beat is a bow and an execution.
a-mei - “Catfight (feat. Eve Ai & Lala Hsu)”
Perhaps at first, “Catfight” sounds like a mess. Composed by Lala Hsu with lyrics written by Eve Ai, its elements certainly shouldn’t cohere: a piano line that instantly changes from lonely to villainous, all without sacrificing its drama; a rap that’s not quite threatening but knows how to stand its ground; booming drums that culminate in glitchy laughter; and its three singers constantly circling one another, attempting to outclass the others without having to be the first to lift a finger. It shouldn’t cohere and doesn’t really. But a-mei, Ai, and Hsu only teases at being the mess, remaining controlled, even if a little choppy as they circle back to that elegant swoop of a melody.
Story Thief, the parent album of “Catfight,” flip flops between dramatic and subdued. Its title track frames a break-up as the end of everything over nothing but a sparse piano line: “the day you left, I stopped telling stories,” she sings, as if her purpose has been taken away from her. “Whatever,” takes the staccato of “Catfight” but without the mess. Here, she gets catty in the way she evades on “Catfight”: “say ‘I love you?’ say ‘I do?’,” she sings exasperatedly, “from now on you’ll never have to worry about me again.” Both “Story Thief” and “Whatever” present drama as the great hook, yet the greatest drama of “Catfight” remains an act behind the scene. a-mei iterates through a list of acts and steps of her own plan sneakily carried out while Eve Ai and Lala Hsu flex their vocals. First jealousy, then rage, then deception. “Darling you shouldn’t bet against me.” She dismisses all the details but still comes out ahead of all the harmonizing.
Find the latest Canto Wrap and Mando Gap playlists on Spotify and me on Twitter here.