A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

About the only thing I can do while I’m over­seas is surf Douban and pick out gigs for every­one else to go see, but that’s fine by me. I don’t get nearly enough time to surf Douban these days. And this time, I stum­bled across a few new songs by my favorite artists!

Big­ger Bang uploaded two new songs in the last few days, 上海爱人 (Shang­hai Lover) and She. They are both much more mel­low songs than their usual fare, and I really enjoyed them both. Shang­hai Lover kept their usual elec­tron­ica sound, while She was a straight up acoustic gui­tar track. They both felt very light and airy but still very much indie elec­tron­ica. I really hope to see these in action soon. Maybe at the Zippo gig at YGYS next month.

And fol­low­ing up on their release of Dar­ling… ear­lier this month, SuperVC has released Mr. Must — on their MySpace. Dar­ling… wasn’t a great release and left me feel­ing a bit bored (if I wanted to lis­ten to The Bea­t­les I’d crack out Hard Day’s Night myself), but Mr. Must is at least appre­cia­bly dif­fer­ent from any song I’ve heard before — either from The Bea­t­les or them­selves. It’s a rock­ing track, much more 70s rock than 60s pop, and I loved it on first lis­ten, which isn’t some­thing I can say for most of their other songs.

Out­side of the indie rock realm, Spar­row released another of their gor­geous instru­men­tal tracks, 十九 (Nine­teen). Now, I can’t describe to you what makes an instru­men­tal track good in my esti­ma­tion, but I can tell you when I like them or not. And some­how, Spar­row checks all those invis­i­ble boxes, every time. They’re very atmos­pheric, but there’s not too much fan­tasy. The music is based in a real­ity that I can relate to, and the sounds make sense to me. Their new track is no different.

Check them out! And keep your eye on Douban; it’s the place to be, even when the blogs get shut down…

In clean­ing out my Douban mails over the hol­i­days, I came across new song noti­fi­ca­tions for two of my favorite bands — Ashura & The Life Jour­ney.

Let’s start with Life Jour­ney, just because their songs were added most recently. They have two new songs out: Marry and 小南 (xiǎo nán). They were released days before the Chi­nese New Year hol­i­day and came with an adorable New Years mes­sage video on Youku (embed­ded below the cut). These songs aren’t exactly dif­fer­ent from your stan­dard Life Jour­ney fare — they still sound like lul­la­bies that you should lis­ten to with a cup of Eng­lish Break­fast tea while wear­ing your favorite grey cardi­gan — but they’re new, and that’s the most impor­tant thing for a band that hasn’t had new tracks in nearly a year.

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So, because this week­end was a com­plete write-off in terms of gigs I meant to go to (I’m plac­ing the blame squarely on the shoul­ders of the weather and com­ing home from a visa run to Hong Kong; they’re solid shoul­ders), I’ll intro­duce an album I’ve had the most con­flicted feel­ings about since I bought it a few weeks ago. I only bought this album a few weeks ago, in a large pur­chase from the afore­men­tioned Music Store, and after giv­ing it a good lis­ten, I’ve decided that I like it.

This album has its down­sides, of course. It’s the band’s first shot at a stu­dio album, after hav­ing appeared on a cou­ple of live record­ing short-release albums, and I have to say it’s a pretty good shot. Com­pared with what a lot of bands put out, it’s fan­tas­tic. The biggest down­fall these record­ings suf­fer is a touch of over-production. Everything’s a lit­tle too bal­anced, a lit­tle too easy to lis­ten to, when you can hear — just behind every­thing com­ing out of your speak­ers — some real poten­tial in the music. But what I really love about the songs on this album are the singer’s voice. It’s got a touch of the nasal about it, but in the fun-loving Super­grass kind of way, not the annoy­ing Conor Oberst kind of way.

There are some truly fun songs on this album, which I don’t hes­i­tate to admit that I like the best. 圈 (Cir­cle), 王子复仇记 (Ham­let), 生之爱 (Life’s Love) are among my favorites, just because they’re easy to lis­ten to and you can clearly hear the effort behind them. They’re snappy and mem­o­rable (espe­cially 圈), and you can imag­ine just what it would be like to stand in the crowd lis­ten­ing to this song. Other songs remind me of other bands (尾巴/Tail sounds like it comes straight off the Hed­wig & The Angry Inch cast record­ings), and their influ­ences are clearly set in the late-nineties British pop/rock tra­di­tion, but over­all I think it makes for a good album.

There’s sounds you rec­og­nize and those that are orig­i­nal, and what it does best is make you want to see where they’re play­ing next.

Check out GAR’s gigs and more at the Bei­jing Gig Guide.