Canto Wrap #6: boys! and girls!
on new singles from Pong Nan, Terence Lam, Beanies, and more
I’m headed off to China next month! Only a little more than a week from publish date. Rushing to try and get everything scheduled but deepest apologies from my editor if he misses the deadline. Though, I promise he is working very hard.
Here’s me with my twice-a-year Cantopop playlist and some blurbs about seven tracks including: Pong Nan’s song that should have had tabloids on a field day, the closing track from Terence Lam’s great new album, and Beanies’ friendliest track yet. Hope you’re all doing well, enjoy!
Terence Lam - “All Ears”
Terence Lam is by no means a pop star. Reluctant of being a public persona, his introversion is a defining characteristic. He’s first and foremost a songwriter, his voice more often acting as a vehicle for his melodies. And while his voice is unpolished, it’s far from the robotic delivery that some critics may lament; he’s a person who’s timid and shy, a distance he often accentuates with a mask of vocal processing that forces you to lean into the music. The singer’s latest album, ISFP, is best when it uses these tricks to establish himself as an oddball, like the baby talk and shimmer on the second verse of opener “TLP” that makes you strain your ear to hear him or the mush-mouth delivery on “Lamoland” as he crams all those syllables into a rollercoaster melody.
According to the singer, he never set out to craft an album around his MBTI—it just so happened that all the singles he amassed over the past year seemed to reflect his personality type. “All Ears” is the romantic conclusion, a melody that branches upward as if suddenly looking upward to a figure rather than wholly concerned with his own thoughts. It might be the most standard arrangement on ISFP, built largely around Lam’s piano without caring too much for adornment, yet as he hums, you can’t help but lean close to him. “Then I knew it was right, it was love, it was you looking up at me,” he sings, confirming the mutual feelings. The music is light-hearted and leaves ample space—sometimes you’re so in love that your bubble expands with just enough room for one more.
Nancy Kwai - “Out of the blue”
Love has a way of sneaking up on the unsuspecting. That squelch of a beat as the chorus arrives feels like it could flip Nancy Kwai’s world around; what was heavy on the verses now sounds like it could be transformational. With “Out of the blue,” the familiar maxims of love apply: a new crush can brighten your day and leave you seeing stars.
see also: Venus Chi - “夜光漫遊”
Takeem - “M+(Seizure)”
Within the first fifteen seconds, producers Soap and Kelvin T set up enough ideas for instant club rap success: there’s the Jersey club beat performed on what sounds like metal on wood, the skittish drum ‘n’ bass, and the overblown synths that make you feel like the roof could collapse in an instant. Yet the producers don’t aim to keep a straightforward motif, instead letting the various beat patterns enter and dissolve at a whim. What keeps the pace is rapper Takeem, his hook spiralling downward at a regular rhythm as he finds himself trapped in the euphoria of love, sex, and orgies.
Panther Chan - “Five-Petalled Rose Celebrations”
With such effusive approval for the city of Český Krumlov, you’d be forgiven for thinking Panther Chan’s “Five-Petalled Rose Celebrations” and its accompanying music video were glorified travel advertisements for the city’s festivities. But she just loves the sights! She documents the titular festival like she’s recording a travelogue: there’s an older fellow in good spirits holding a strange instrument, there’s a maid twirling around in a billowing dress. Swept up in the Medieval celebrations, she puts her observations to Celtic melodies until the sights and sounds are overwhelming—there’s a wordless refrain as she abandons meaning to dance through the streets.
COLLAR - “SSS”
For COLLAR, SSS is a self-described attempt at a new style, pivoting away from the brashness of their former girl crush sound. To me, it immediately calls K-pop girl group tripleS to mind, not just in title or in how casual they can make a club beat sound. “SSS” might stand for “濕濕碎” (“no big deal”) but the girl group aren’t stone faced: “I do have my fears deep down / though as a leader / too much quibble to tell what’s necessary / say goodbye to my fears,” one member sings, hinting at, then dismissing a breakdown. It petitions that girlhood means forcing yourself to keep moving, that staying afloat requires making it look easy. Cruising down the highway over their UK Garage beat, they offer each other inspiration and themselves a necessary pep talk.
see also: “AFK???”
Beanies - “Angry Book”
Do your best to shrug off the pain, but sometimes you just need to vent. “Angry Book” initially feigns an optimistic stance, but the mask quickly crumbles. Boys can be undeserving of your affection, overtime work can be exhausting—there’s never any shortage of reasons for the tears to flow. Yet luckily, the girl group are there to share the burden. Heavy as the verses are, the chorus is bright and weightless as it asks you to write down your grievances. Glasses of wine and pillow fights can do a lot and that first deceptively positive greeting is flipped into a message of reassurance on the second chorus: “girls, I’m fine thanks to the hugs you sent,” the intensity of emotion strengthened by a following background harmony of “I love you so.” The outro wraps around like a warm hug, leaving a final “we will be alright” and a book to burn all the grievances or record the love between the years.
Pong Nan - “boys!”
“Pong Nan refuses to be defined,” writes Jolyon Cheung in the Youtube description, but never has a Pong Nan song catered to the rumours like “boys!” Look to the singer himself for what he hopes “boys!” can be: “I owe my boys an anthem.” It doesn’t so much wave aside the stereotypes as much as call for you to break them: “boys you need to be more coquettish… boys you can be even softer.” Behind his strut of a beat is the shimmer of a vibrant city.
Find the latest Canto Wrap and Mando Gap playlists on Spotify and me on Twitter here.