This is an album that, for me, pre-dates my arrival in China and my true eye-opening to the world of Chi­nese indie music. I found this over at Music Envy on Live­jour­nal, when I finally insisted to myself that there had to be some­thing other than the Canto– and Man­dopop that had invaded my ears when it came to Chi­nese music for my entire life. What imme­di­ately endeared me to The Life Jour­ney, how­ever, is their cute­ness. I’m not sure I should really be using the word “cute” to describe a rag-tag group of indie rock dudes, but the vocalist’s voice is just so lilt­ing, and their music so… adorable, that I just want to pour them a cup of tea on chipped china in mis­matched teacups and put them on lace doilies. Which doesn’t mean I think my gran would like them, but that they remind me of the sort of indie music you get with grandpa glasses and over­sized gray cardigans.

To put their music in more solid terms, they are a lo-fi indie band that sings in three lan­guages: Chi­nese, Eng­lish, and French. There’s five of them, round­ing out the indie rock sta­ple three-piece with two gui­tars and a keyboardist/synth player, the lat­ter of which is def­i­nitely the key to their music. It reminds me of retro French 60s/70s pop music; not that I have a lot of expe­ri­ence with this genre, but there’s some­thing about psy­che­delic pop stylings on a lo-fi Chi­nese band that sings in French and Eng­lish with the cutest accents that makes me think that this is what it would be like. They’re not the shoe-gazing sort of lo-fi band I’ve usu­ally come to asso­ciate with the sound, but they have a mature feel to them — even if the over­all feel­ing is a lit­tle childlike.

It’s def­i­nitely relax­ing music, with quiet and mean­der­ing tracks like “My Desert” and “Panda”, even though I would describe most of it as bub­bly, irrev­er­ent indie pop. My absolute favorite song off the album, which I have held for a long time, is “回到巴巴拉拉的城堡” (huí dào bābālālā de chéng bǎo/“Back to Cas­tle Babal­ala”), but as I’ve been lis­ten­ing to it more, “全世界都在水里游” (quán shìjiè doū zài shuǐ lǐ yóu/“The World is Swim­ming”) is grow­ing on me, not only for its catchy “带我走” refrain but the fact that it has the same watery qual­ity that you can hear but can’t explain when you play a water level on a video game. “中央公园” (zhōng yāng gōng yuán/“Central Park”) is also another favorite; the sort of song that makes you feel like tak­ing a walk in the park — appropriately.

I think the best part of this album is its abil­ity to express a par­tic­u­lar feel­ing very vividly. I’m aware that not every­one is going to hear the album and want to serve tea in chipped china on doilies, or hear the sound­track to a respite in a French café, or feel like going for a walk in the park, but I’m pretty sure that every­one will be able to get some­thing vis­ceral from these songs. Every­thing in the music of these songs comes together seam­lessly to express some­thing absolutely charm­ing, and the only way to expe­ri­ence it is to lis­ten to it. Check out the Music page and lis­ten to the track I’ve put up. Let me know if you can just see the grandpa glasses and over­sized gray cardigans.