Le Minh Son is no doubt a multi-talented musician. With solid albums like Tung Duong’s Chay Tron, Ngoc Khue’s Ben Bo Ao Nha Minh, and Thanh Lam’s Nang Len, he proved to be a skillful songwriter, imaginative producer, and inventive guitarist in his own right. Now he wants to demonstrate he could sing—not quite. With the exception of Thanh Lam’s contribution on “Sau Bao,” he uses his own grumpy old voice to express himself in Gieng Lang, his latest album. After listening to Le Minh Son, I wonder where Thanh Lam got her overemotional style. When he reaches the high octave, the bottle-breaking screech in his voice is “À Í [Ẹ]” (and I thought Trong Tan’s rendition was bad). Le Minh Son should have just done his part behind the scene, and let Tung Duong helps him get his message across, even the most personal “Ga Trong Nuoi Con,” more effectively.

Nowadays young singers love to cover old tunes, yet they do more damage than good to the beloved ballads. To my surprise, Thy Dung who was unknown to me is not one of them. Her album, Xua, featured a dozen of refreshing reinterpretations including Nguyen Trung Cang’s “Da Khuc,” Le Uyen Phuong’s “Tinh Khuc Cho Em” (a delicious duet with Hien Thuc), Viet Anh’s “Khong Con Mua Thu,” and Trinh Cong Son’s “O Tro.” Switching between up-tempo jams and soul-soothing grooves, Thy Dung exhales a new plume of smoke into the standards with her weed-puffing timbre and slight-intoxicating flow. On the medley “Toi Yeu Cuoc Doi,” she comes out swinging and enjoying every single moment as if life only lasts sixty years. Life sure is short, but she seems to make the most out of it on this album.

Thuy Duong is apparently very sleepy and lazy according to most listeners, and the latest criticisms of her returning to Asia’s Bon Mua is no exception. While most singers drown their soul into their performances, Thuy Duong sounds and seems like she’s rather doing anything else but singing and pleasing the audience. Like many listeners, I had snored on her albums a couple of times. Yet, it is the power of ease, which I have learned to fall in love with, that gives her a style of her own.

Thuy Duong is beyond relaxed. She has not yet sung an up-tempo tune. She never pushes her voice. She never uses vibrato, nor does she wants to. What she has accomplished, however, no one dares to come near. She is capable of creating an opposite attraction instantaneously between her voice and her flow. While her languorous delivery appears soothing, her sharp, needling timbre cuts deep into the emotional core. In other words, she can put her cold hand on your heart and still shock you like water touches electricity.

If I have to pick one song to describe her, Truc Ho’s “Trai Tim Mua Dong” would be it. Although Don Ho had swept our hearts with his warm, soulful rendition, it was his gentleness and kindness that won our pity. Thuy Duong’s version, which had been overlooked, has nothing to do with sympathy. She sings in such a cold-hearted condition that people couldn’t find their way into the sentimental state underneath. In the opening line, “Ta gap nhau trong muon mang,” Don Ho might refer to a woman who’s leaving him to walk down the isle with another man, but the woman in Thuy Duong’s version is about to leave this world. In the closing line, “Nen danh om tron mot moi tinh cam,” he might holds that painful part forever in his heart, but she holds it forever in her dead.

Thuy Duong’s style is so cold that you have to be damn near frozen to get in. If you want to be broken in, seclude yourself to her Khuc Thuy Du released by Asia Entertainment. The title track alone would give you a startling chill. When she sings, “Hay noi ve cuoc doi / Khi toi khong con nua / Se lay duoc nhung gi / Ve ben kia the gioi / Ngoai trong vang ma thoi,” the frostiness in her voice suggests that dying is as painless as breathing.

Thuy Duong’s technical skill is quite interesting. To the average ears, she displays none because she hardly takes on high notes. When she does, she would stop abruptly at a certain level and let the air fills up the meter instead of letting her voice vanishes into a diminuendo. Most of the time, she stays in the middle register and leaves plenty of empty space in between the bars. In a way, her voice reminds me of Miles Davis’s Harmon mute. They trimmed away the unnecessary details and developed a stack, hesitant style. Their gruff and chilling sounds are best suiting for an intimate setting. Just imagine her voice accompanied by his closed trumpet in a small café with the weather plunged below zero outside.

Many musicians had recorded “Body and Soul,” but Coleman Hawkin’s version remains one of the most renowned saxophone solos in jazz. The tone is simply gorgeous. Hawkins assumed that listeners were aware of the familiar tune; therefore, he set the melody aside and just dropped his soulful improvisation over the 32-bar rhythm section.

Based on the harmonies of George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm,” Duke Ellington composed his colorful “Cotton Tail” in a 32-bar form. Within six brief choruses, Duke and his Orchestra pumps out tremendous energy from Ben Webster’s vigorous solos on the tenor, to imaginative sax soli, to the call-and-response patterns between the brass and reeds section. What grabs my attention, though, is Ellington’s little stride solo (at 1:57) in the fourth chorus. Duke’s the man.

I am “In the Mood” for a sweet, light swing from Glenn Miller and his Orchestra. What I am feeling is the simple yet effective use of shifting dynamic levels. Even though the tone is not bluesy, the structure is a straightforward 12-bar blues. Dig the typical call-and-response effects between reeds and brass sections and the rising chromatic phrases of the trumpet at the tag ending.

I listened to My Tam’s Vut Bay when the album dropped late last year, but didn’t even mention it since I couldn’t feel it. Now that my hommie gives her such a big prop, I revisit the whole joint to figure out what I am missing. It still comes across as a bubble-gum pop record that has been Koreanized and sprinkled with kindergarten rap verses. When I heard My Tam sings in Korean, that was it for me. I hung up my headphone. Hoa Mi Toc Nau has lost her direction moving from pop to rock to Korean crap. My Tam’s fans might have eaten this right up, but I am spitting it right back out. The only Korean product I would eat up is kim chi.

Dizzy Gillespie’s “Groovin’ High” is a “silent theme” tradition. Diz took an American popular song called “Whispering,” abandoned its melody, then wrote a new melody on top of the metrical and harmonic structure of the original composition. The tune kicks off with Diz and Bird (Charlie Parker) play in unison. The tagging between the two is awesome. After Bird’s marvelous solo, Slam Stewart’s bowing-bass improvisation is invigorating. Of course, Diz’s wailing trumpet on the high register is unmistakable. After guitarist Romo Palmieri gives his solo, Diz takes the tune out with a sudden turn to a much slower tempo. With the powerful way Diz blows, I could just see the huge puffiness on his cheeks.

As a hip-hop listener and a lyrical freak, I pay close attention to the accentuation of the words. Listening to Vietnamese music is no exception. I am a stickler for those diacritical intonations as well as the differences between “ch” and “tr” or the ones that ended with “n” (gian) or “ng” (giang), and so on. I find these nuances to be fascinating, and Vietnamese singers should as well.

This brings me back to Tuan Ngoc again. Yes, that guy who loves to close his eyes when he sings. Yes, the guy with all the veins popping out if his neck when he soars. But heck, he could sing not only well, but also correct in his exotic enunciations. As much as I would love to say that I know the capitol of Vietnam, I know jack about Ha Noi. Yet when Tuan Ngoc sings Trinh Cong Son’s “Nho Mua Thu Ha Noi,” I could sense the fragrance of “cay com nguoi vang,” “hoa sua,” “com xanh,” and “com sua,” even though I have no clued what they smell or look like. They all come from the way he articulates those words, especially “nguoi,” “sua,” and “com.”

For argument’s sake, let’s say that Trinh Cong Son had crafted these lyrical words, not Tuan Ngoc. That is not incorrect, but when other singers cover this tune they could only get as far as the visual elements such as “mai ngoi tham nau” or “mau suong thuong nho, bay sam cam nho vo canh mat troi,” not to the point where I could psychologically smell the poetical stimulations. See, I don’t need Ecstasy to get me high, a simple song from Tuan Ngoc and Trinh Cong Son would do. Big up to Duy Cuong for the gorgeous vibe as well.

“St. Thomas” is a famous piece among jazz musicians. The form is ABA with sets of improvisations that fall into two sets of five choruses, then two sets of four. In the intro, Max Roach sets up a Latin groove with sixteen bars on the drums. The fluidity and intensity build in from Sonny Rollins’ tenor saxophone. His sound on the tenor is sensational and powerful. Roach then drops an intoxicating Latin vibe that filled with rhythmic complexity. As Rollins returns for his solo, Roach switches to a strong jazz beat along with Dough Watkin’s four-to-the-bar bass. The beat prevails almost to the end of the performance.