'What Is Troubling You?' (你在煩惱什麼), sodagreen's eighth album and sixth studio album was released on Nov 11, 2011, on the same day as the releases of Mandopop emperor Jay Chou (Exclamation Point 驚嘆號) and Cantopop superstar Eason Chan (?).
Tracks
1. 片刻永恆 This Moment is Forever (Instrumental)
2. 幸福額度 The Limit of Happiness (Theme Song to Love on Credit)
3. 你被寫在我的歌里 I Wrote of You in My Song/You Were Written in My Song (ft. Ella Chen)
4. 如果凝結就是愛 If Love Were Like Condensation
5. 喜歡寂寞 Enjoy Loneliness/Like Loneliness
6. 燕窩 Bird's Nest
7. 繭 Cocoon
8. 當我們一起走過 As We Walk Together
9. 浪漫派 Romantics/The Romantic Clique
10. 控制狂 Control Freak
11. 你在煩惱什麼 What is Troubling You? (ft. Suming)
The album's tracklist and previews of each song were released nearly a month before by lead singer Wu Tsing-Fong on the Taiwanese online board PTT and sodagreen's official facebook. The first songs from the album to be sung in public was the 2nd track, 'The Limit of Happiness', at the Ho Hai Yan Rock Festival, and the 7th track, 'Cocoon'. Soon to follow were 'What is Troubling You' and 'As We Walk Together' at the band's Beijing stop of their Stations Tour and 'I Wrote of You in My Song' with 'Control Freak' at a performance back in Taiwan. The pre-order set for the album featured a CD called the sodaguide, which featured Tsing-Fong as the host of a radio programme, Wu Fannao (無煩惱, a pun on his name and the Chinese expression 'no worries'), who was interviewing sodagreen on the new album.
This is my first time reviewing an album and I am a relatively new sodafan, so do forgive any mistakes I may make.
The first track, 'This Moment is Forever', is a quiet instrumental track which gently sets the mood for the album with its subtle arrangement of piano and strings. It's final notes lead into the next track, 'The Limit of Happiness'. The liner notes credit the band as the creators of the song.
'The Limit of Happiness' (Wu Tsing-Fong) opens with the song's keyboard riff before you hear the English word 'Listen', Tsing-Fong almost spitting it out, sounding as if he is commanding the listener to sit down and consider the lyrics of the song. He proceeds to ask the listener questions about love and life. As he sings about how 'Love is not as simple/Like Newton discovering gravity due to an apple/So if you can't get the one you love/Should you hate?', the song takes a warmer turn, with acoustic guitarist A Fu (who recorded his parts while on break from the army), electric guitarist Jiakai (growing his hair and donning glasses), bassist Claire and drummer Xiaowei joining in. At the chorus, Tsing-Fong goes into his falsetto range for the first time in this album, singing 'Oh why, why/Does loneliness seem to last forever', bemoaning the complexities of love. The bridge of the song goes quieter momentarily before climaxing into the final chorus. The song ends with Tsing-Fong singing 'Can it be? Can it be?' repeatedly over a string ensemble playing an uplifting riff. Everything then quietens down, leaving the keyboard's riff and Tsing-Fong's voice, which drops an octave and sings its final 'Can it be?'.
The lyrics of the song are thoughtful and the melody is sweet and in the mid-tempo range, a hallmark of sodagreen's soft rock and something the band are perfecting over the years, but one may find something missing. The song is a good song, and sounds very pleasant, but something seems to stop it from joining the likes of 'Little Love Song' or 'Incomparable Beauty' in sodagreen's hall of fame. People have commented online that the title does not even sound like a sodagreen song's title, being somewhat 'crude'. The lyrics have also been called 'too direct'. People should not, however, forget that the song is tied in with the Mainland Chinese film 'Love on Credit' (starring model Lin Chi-Ling), which has the same Chinese name as the song. The director said that sodagreen visited the set to view filming for a day when they were asked to produce the theme song. Tsing-Fong wrote it that night in a short time and recorded a demo before sending it to the director and Lin Chi-Ling, who said that she wept as she heard the demo as she felt it captured her character in the film wonderfully. (sodagreen keyboardist A-gong was in charge of the movie's soundtrack). The first time I heard the song, one of the thoughts that ran through my head was 'sloppy', but that view vanished as I listened to the song more. sodagreen songs almost always grow on you.
The music video (the first one released from this album) featured shots of sodagreen (minus A Fu) watching a movie and performing in the middle of a forest with blossoms raining down on them. A pretty sight. The video also features the band members' opinions on what happiness is to them.
Jiakai: Happiness is finding someone who has the same frequency as I. (So he's still single?)
Xiaowei: Happiness is having a group of people whom I can chase my dreams with. (How heartwarming.)
A-gong: Happiness is being able to enjoy music with others, and being able to use music to communicate with them. (Always the musician. He's the one who has a music degree.)
Claire: Happiness is being able to do the things I love. (I share her sentiments.)
Tsing-Fong: Happiness is "when you do not become unhappy from wanting too much happiness". (Quotation marks because I'm not sure how to translate this profound statement from the Great Greeny himself.)
For me, this is one of sodagreen's most effective music videos, and I love how it is so polished.
The reaction among sodagreen's fanbase for the next song, 'I Wrote of You in My Song' (hereafter 'My Song') (Wu Tsing-Fong), was thoroughly mixed, with some fans praising the song for it's 'simplicity and cuteness' and others panning the song for its 'crudeness' (again). sodagreen invited SHE singer Ella Chen to feature in the song, with Ella's alto blending well with Tsing-Fong's boyish falsetto. This song was first written for Malaysian pop star Fish Leong, and it does sound like the type of song Leong would sing. The problem was that she had finished recording her album when Tsing-Fong presented it to her, and she declined, and sodagreen kept the song and decided that it would be sung as a duet.
The song opens with a guitar melody and interestingly enough, both Jiakai and Claire are credited for playing the acoustic guitars in this one. The guitar is then joined by a woodwind instrument (I think it is a clarinet) before Tsing-Fong's voice croons 'The road we walked on is like a magic spell/Making everything good and bad mine'. Ella's first lines begin in the next verse, with her voice soothingly singing 'And you're like the sound of water flowing into poetry/Knocking on the door of my heart/Embracing the hate'. Their voices come together, harmonising at the chorus: 'But you reminded me/Neither to be scared of dreaming/Nor to run and hide from the desires of my heart'. Xiaowei's drums come in solidly at the repeat of the verse, beating out a firm and strong rhythm. The instrumental bridge is sugar-sweet like the entire song, with the clarinet (?) playing a lilting solo over a strumming guitar and an almost military snare drum. A-gong said in an interview that the bridge was changed from its original form upon a comment from Ella that it sounded like an unnamed song. The chorus repeats and the vocals ends on a high note, with Jiakai plucking the guitar strings as a countermelody and the ever-present clarinet concluding the track, winding it down neatly.
Are the lyrics crude? Not by Mandopop standards. It sounds to me somewhat similar to Mayday and Cheer Chen's 'Elope to the Moon', with oh-so-sweet lyrics and music. The lyrics to 'My Song' are a lot more direct as compared to the band's previous duet, 'Blue Eyes' (2007, with Angela Chang), and the melody is syrupy. I would not call the song crude, but it certainly seems to be in line with what mainstream Mandopop fans enjoy. Nonetheless, it is a good song and it sounds good. I like it but it isn't, in my opinion, among the stronger songs in this album.
The music video (3rd plug) confirms the song's status as a sweet ballad, with the band and Ella clad in colourful clothes (the same ones they wear on the album cover) and performing in front of a white backdrop, a moon (?) and a playhouse. The piano room from the music video of 'Incomparable Beauty' features here again (the same director) and scenes from 'Little Love Song' appear (with A Fu). Tsing-Fong's latest catchphrase 啾咪 (jiumi, a cat's purr) makes a cameo appearance here too. At the bridge, we see a lot of interaction between A-gong and Claire (hint hint). The third to last scene of the video shows the four band instrumentalists marching/hopping/dancing off the screen, referencing the music video of 'Daylight'. The one thing I have to complain about is the crossfade at 3:22 which just looks awkward each time I see it. A very sugary and kinda cute music video. It isn't as polished as the video for 'The Limit of Happiness', but it is just as effective and is fun to watch, despite Ella's presence diminishing the sodagreen-ness of the song and video in general.
'If Love Were Like Condensation' (hereafter 'If Love') (Gong Yu-chi/A-gong), the 3rd track of the album, is among my three favourite tracks among the eleven, and is the first time a song written by A-gong has been featured in a sodagreen album. A-gong, a classically trained pianist and viola player, wrote this song back in '08 and posted his demo on his blog. Here is the demo version (it differs drastically from the end product):
A-gong wrote that his feelings at the time of writing were complicated, and they produced a complicated song. The poetically written lyrics that could have come from the pen of Tsing-Fong compare love to the various stages of the water cycle. The tune lilts and sounds like a Romantic-era piece, with moods rising and falling dramatically. The best part of the song, however, is the arrangement, which is mindblowing. The song begins with a keyboard solo against some soft strings with Tsing-Fong intoning the lyrics solemnly, making the song sound very atmospheric. As his voice rises, so do the instruments, and as he sings the chorus (A man, word, a window, a home, a hallucination/In this fictitious space, I think madly) the full band comes in powerfully, the keyboard starting to play a rhythmic, pulsing riff. Tsing-Fong's voice floats airily above the instruments and sounds ethereal and dreamy. The chorus flows on before pushing gently into the last few lines of the chorus which features only the band members' voices, a guitar and strings. Tsing-Fong sings four syllables '烏雲密佈' (wu yun mi bu, dark and cloudy) as the rest of the band (minus Jiakai, who doesn't sing) sings seriously in unison not unlike a choir: It's shining/It's soul-stirring/It's getting hard to see/Sharing weal and woe with you'.
At the second verse, the drums, guitars and bass are present as well, and Tsing-Fong sings in a more carefree sounding way, with slight echo-effects and harmonisation present. The song then cuts abruptly to a piano solo without going through to the chorus. In the middle of the piano solo, the bass enters and a few bars later, so do the rest of the instruments, running through the bridge before we hear Tsing-Fong dramatically singing 'All becoming your...', his voice rising in preparation for the climatic chorus, in the middle of which the entire band sings in unison. Suddenly, everything dissolves and Tsing-Fong's voice is left alone with the keyboard, which plays a countermelody with a very different and messy rhythm that manages to sound subtle. Tsing-Fong sings 'All becoming...' before taking a deep breath as Xiaowei pounds the tom-toms and the whole band joins in for the final, epic-sounding chorus. The 'Dark and cloudy' segment is sung twice (both slightly different from the original) before everything quiets down and Tsing-Fong thoughtfully sings the first verse. The guitar plays a riff and A-gong uses the keyboard to play a sweeping synth pad and the song ends quietly.
Wow. There is nothing more to say about the song other than it is amazing and I look forward to hearing more of A-gong's work. I believe that I haven't done justice to the song with my description, so you've gotta buy the album and listen to it for yourself. Or... you could download it or listen to it on Youtube (I won't link unofficially uploaded Youtube videos but I will link videos from sodagreen's official Youtube channel achun5 and A-gong's Youtube account CDix2). But if you like it, please do buy the album and support original music!
TO BE CONTINUED.
