I’m not super impressed. It’s fine. They definitely got better as they went, but they never really broke the threshold into being an act I like. They’re good, they’re fine, but they don’t quite compel me to like them. They start out at “alright” and move over to “pretty decent”, but not much more than that. Nothing crazy, nothing amazing, but it’s pretty consistently decent.
One observation I’ve been making as I’ve been listening to so much music in Mandarin— whether as part of my listening or as shown to me by other people on the study abroad, or as heard in malls or in taxis or whatever— is how it really does feel like its own genre. Not everything— I think No Party for Cao Dong, for example, is more closely related to Western rock, and feels more familiar to the kinds of sounds I’m expecting from that sphere of influence— but there definitely is a “Mandopop” sound that lots of these artists share. It’s not really related to the instrumentation, as genres often are. Instead, it’s something about the shape of the melody. There’s definitely a difference in preference for chord progression as compared to the West, but even disregarding that, there’s something about the shape of the melody that’s pretty distinct. It’s hard to describe with words and without digging up a bunch of music theory I’ve forgotten, but it’s audible for sure.
And, of course, yeah the preference for different chord progressions is pretty notable. I’ve not been paying close enough attention to say much, and my ear’s not good enough to pick out a whole lot without checking on a keyboard or something, but boy do they love their chromatic walks up the baseline and their secondary dominants (I think, I’ll have to check that, my aforementioned theory knowledge is long decayed. If you know better, correct me if I’m super off on what I’m hearing here).
Anyway, in conclusion. There’s not a whole lot of stuff in here I really like, most of it is just… pretty decent, y’know? It’s aight. So that’s gotta be somewhere in the B range- I’m inclined to a flat B. Maybe they’ll grow on me, but I’m not super expecting it. Time will tell.
tunafruitsandwitch 