Music

Tung Duong – Nhung O Mau Khoi Lap Phuong

Tung Duong does not give a fuck what you think. You can call him gay, feminine, freaky or whatever, but you have to respect his musical sensibility. While most of the young singers can’t break away from the pop bubbles, he takes his music to another planet. Working with Do Bao, an imaginative producer, Tung Duong reinvents himself once again on Nhung O Mau Khoi Lap Phuong.

Since his jazz-breakthrough Chay Tron debuted three years ago, Tung Duong has established himself as one of the idiosyncratic performers in the Vietnamese music scene. He has no fear for turning himself into the characters in his song through visual appearance and vocal manipulation. He not just sings about a particular character; he is the character. In the bizarre “Noi Khat,” he transforms into a kid voice to express Huyen Ngoc’s weird lyrics about a woman thirsting for a child. The arrangement gets creepy; his voice gets creepier. Listening to the title track, which written and produced by Do Bao, is like taking a trip to a kaleidoscopic ecstasy where Tung Duong drowns his soul into a pool of bleak, serene chaos. Tran Tien’s “Nhuc Nhoi” paints an odd image of a lonely soldier returning from the war and a woman lusting to be touched. The upbeat production and his painful moan “oi a” served as drug music.

NOMKLP is obviously not cut out for everyone. Different folks like different strokes. Some like Pepsi, some like Coke. Comparing to Chay Tron, this album is much harder to chew on. Tung Duong is way out there and Do Bao’s productions are much more intricate (with the mixture of new age, chill-out, rock, electronic) than his infamous work on Nhat Thuc.

Music

Nguyen Khang – Ta Muon Cung Em Say

Nguyen Khang’s new album, Ta Muon Cung Em Say, is a cop-out: He stays in his comfort zone; he covers candy tunes; and he abandons artistic daring for formulaic boring. With such a unique of a voice, he could push his craft into a higher level, but instead he chooses to play safe, which is a damn shame.

TMCES begins with the dated “Café Mot Minh.” Why bother rerecorded a song that not only every Vietnamese singer had sung, but also in the same acoustic guitar sound and the exact written melody every Vietnamese singer had done? The basic rule of cover is to make an old, popular tune sounds new. He redelivered Dieu Huong’s “Vi Do La Em” with an equivalent blandness and monotone he did the first round. On “Diem Xua,” his flow is slicker on the refreshing arrangement, yet lacking the rawness of emotion he brought to Trinh Cong Son’s lyricism before. “Tro Ve Mai Nha Xua” would have benefited from a string ensemble rather than a club remixed, but he desires to enter the popularity contest more than he would like to raise the musical bar. Fame is blinding him.

On the album cover, he sports a black tuxedo looking like a pimp surrounded by his hotties. His long-time collaborator Diem Lien returns with Quoc Hung’s “Vi Sao Em Oi.” Their duet is once again an opposite attraction where good girl goes for bad boy, and Nguyen Khang beefs up vocals to sound like a badass. Ngo Thuy Mien’s “Niem Khuc Cuoi” turns out to be not so great, even though Ngoc Ha and Nguyen Khang are two of the best vocalists among their peers. What didn’t work is that they don’t seem like a believable couple. The only thing they might have in common is their height. Surprisingly, Nguyen Hong Nhung, his partner in crime, steals all the duets. Truc Ho’s “Gio Da Khong Con Nua” is a lustful pleasant from a sensualist-meets-bohemian romance.

TMCES is actually not a bad album, but rather a disappointing one. He chooses to commercialize more than to challenge himself.

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Colic

In “Crybabies,” a New Yorker piece, Jerome Groopman explains Colic as, “a poorly understood condition that afflicts seemingly healthy babies and who main symptom is frequent, inconsolable crying.” The article is quite interesting, but not available online.