"love & its opposite"

quick note in praise of a song that's been on my mind recently, Aretha Franklin's "Angel" (1973). i admire, so much, its balance of pure pain and pure grace: how her howl of "there's no misery / like the misery i feel in me" is counterweighted, and softened, by the chorus of back-up singers, like voices of comfort, like the aunties who will be there for you in times of need, like the words we speak to ourselves: "(you'll meet him / now don't you worry / keep lookin' / and just keeping cookin' / he'll be there / now don't you worry)".

to anyone out there who has been seeking for love for so long, whose "heart is without a home": it will come, and you know what? even if it doesn't, you will be alright, because you love yourself.

the fact that Aretha's sister, Carolyn, cowrote this number of faith and devotion, simply doubles my love of it. Aretha references her conversation with Carolyn in her spoken-world introduction—"'Aretha, come back when you can / i got something that i wanna say' / ...she said, 'you know? / rather than go through a long, drawn-out thing / i think the melody on the box will help me explain'". how beautiful a sentiment, because, you know, there's so much that's better left unspoken, better felt than said, better implied than imposed, which also says so much about family relations, no?

it's an effortlessly transcendental song, in the way only Black pain and Black soul can convey. i treasure it so much.

FOTO: Jan Persson/Redferns/Getty Images

yelue - softscars

i must admit i wasn't fully convinced by Yeule, the SG-born, UK-based artist, when their previous album Glitch Princess (2022) brought them to prominence. i loved the Pixies-like hold-and-release dynamic of "Electric" (why it was never a single is beyond me), and the simple joy of "Don't Be So Hard on Your Own Beauty" (along with its inventive video), but the album as a whole lacked cohesion and solid substance. it left me distracted by their style, naming (after the Final Fantasy character), and Japanese presentation and online image, wondering if they were simply marketing gimmicks. were they another Gen-Z Asian who overcompensates for their only feasible identity in Western centres of power?

softscars (2023), their new album, corrects my misimpression, and then some. the 25-year-old Yeule (also a variation of Natasha Yelin Chang's Chinese name) has crafted a seemingly effortless, catchy, and multicoloured diary (or whatever kids call it nowadays), full of bodily fluids, healing, and ethereal happiness, an insight into what it must be like to be young nowadays. impatient with the very notion of genres, softscars Ctrl-Tabs from singer-songwriter territory to cyber glitch to L'Arc-en-Ciel-type stadium rock to ambient piano balladry. Chang, who also goes by Nat Ćmiel, lets you in, at a remove, into their hard-won fight for happiness. i'm surprised how a 1990s baby read my diary, with lyrics like "Only eyes like yours can see ghosts / Ghosts like me", "Some days I can't believe that I'm still here" and "I would still love you / Ten thousand years from now"; and distilled and transmuted such teenage sentiments into well-earned joy and release.

take "software update", for example: after a burst of guitars (she's an expressive player), a generation-defining line like "You're never alone / I'm inside your phone" is crooned, before her baby voice is transformed back and forth between digital territories. the guitars bloom into an expansive moor, and the most cliched of lines, "I love you, baby", somehow is delivered in a so particular and anti-Julie Andrews manner: "Twenty-five, traumatized / Painting white on my eyes / Handcuffs and hospitals / Are some things I despise".

i've been thinking of softscars in relation to another document of youth, Anthony Chen's The Breaking Ice (2023), whose film composer, Kin Leonn, happily, is a producer of Yeule's album. i can't imagine what it is like to be young now. i can't begin to imagine what it is like to have your body rebel against yourself in an age of "Technofeudalism" (Varoufakis), when Summer 2023 was the hottest-ever on record, when you're so poor and worse off than your parents and robots are really taking over, and it's so holistically hopeless to even begin to try. but i'm permeated with hope listening to softscars: whatever the relative challenges, what pure joy; what complete release! truly "Electric", it's fun that is cognisant; not end-times fun, but a type of resistance to doomism that a boomer like me feeds on, like a vampire, of unbroken, youthful, never-ending time.

a brief introduction to SG lit + muzik

in the dark year of 2020, a dear friend's wife wanted to learn more about singapore. she asked me for a list of local books, and i shared with her, and another person, an overly comprehensive list of fiction (disclaimer: i worked on a few titles).

recently, i realised i haven't thought up the same for singapura muzik, so here's a preliminary list of my personal faves (limited to one album per artist), and the book list too, based on my faltering memory of some years of tuning in, on and off, to the sonic and textual waves emanating from this black isle. for anyone out there:

MUZIK

Anita Sarawak - Live at the Mandarin Singapore (1975)

ASPIDISTRAFLY - A Little Fable (2011)

Astreal - Ouijablush (1997)

Fauxe - Half of my Love (2016)

Force Vomit - Give It Up for the Trustfund Rockers (2002)

Gulayu Arkestra - Hippocampuskuda (2011)

humpback oak - Ghostfather (1997)

陳潔儀 Kit Chan - 心痛 (Heartache; 1994)

Leslie Low - Triangular (2014)

許美静 (Mavis Hee) - 遺憾 (Regret; 1995)

MEAN - In Flight (2013)

Muon - The Death of Cinema (2003)

sonicbrat - stranger to my room (2013)

The Observatory - Catacombs (2012)

X’ Ho (Chris Ho) + ARCNTEMPL - Lucifugous (2013)

Xhin (Official) - The Images Within (2022)

Zircon Lounge - Regal Vigor (1983)

LIT

Adrian Tan - The Teenage Textbook (1988)

Alfian Sa’at - A History of Amnesia (2001)

Alfian Sa’at - One Fierce Hour (1998)

Amanda Lee Koe - Delayed Rays of a Star (2019)

Andrew Koh - Glass Cathedral (1995)

Arthur Yap - The Collected Poems of Arthur Yap (2013)

Balli Kaur Jaswal - Inheritance (2013)

Boey Kim Cheng - After the Fire (2006)

Boey Kim Cheng - Between Stations (2009)

Boey Kim Cheng - Clear Brightness (2012)

Chong Tze Chien - Four Plays (2011)

Claire Tham - Fascist Rock: Stories of Rebellion (1990)

Cyril Wong - Tilting Our Plates to Catch the Light (2007)

Damien Sin - Classic Singapore Horror Stories series (1992—2003)

Dave Chua - Gone Case (2002)

Eleanor Wong - Invitation to Treat: The Eleanor Wong Trilogy (2005)

Faith Ng - Plays: Volume 1 (2016; ed. Lucas Ho)

Goh Poh Seng - If We Dream Too Long (1972)

Goh Poh Seng - The Immolation (1977)

Gopal Barantham - The City of Forgetting: The Collected Stories of Gopal Baratham (2001; ed. Ban Kah Choon)

Gregory Nalpon - The Wayang at Eight Milestone (2013)

Haresh Sharma - Off Centre (1993, 2006)

Haresh Sharma - Trilogy (2010)

Isa Kamari - Rawa (2013; trans. R. Krishnan)

Jean Tay - Boom (2008, 2009)

Jeremy Tiang - State of Emergency (2017)

Joel Tan - Plays: Volume 1 (2015)

Johann S. Lee - Peculiar Chris (1992)

Julian Davison - One for the Road: An English Boyhood in Singapore & Malaya (2007)

Kuo Pao Kun - Complete Works: Plays in English (2012; ed. C. J. Wan-Ling Wee)

Ming Cher - Spider Boys (1995, 2012)

Mohamed Latiff Mohamed - Confrontation (1997, 2013; trans. Shafiq Selamat)

Morgan Chua - Tiananmen (1989)

Philip Jeyaretnam - Abraham’s Promise (1995)

Pooja Nansi - Love is an Empty Barstool (2014)

Rex Shelley - The Shrimp People (1991)

Russell Lee - True Singapore Ghost Stories series (1989—ongoing)

Sonny Liew - The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (2015)

Sonny Liew - Warm Nights, Deathless Days: The Life of Georgette Chen (2014)

Tan Hwee Hwee - Mammon Inc. (2001)

Tan Kok Seng - Son of Singapore (1972)

Tan Tarn How - Fear of Writing (2011, 2012)

Tania de Rozario - And the Walls Come Crumbling Down (2016)

Teng Qian Xi - They hear salt crystallising (2010)

Wong May - A Bad Girl’s Book of Animals (1969)

Xi Ni Er - The Earnest Mask (2004, 2012; trans. Howard Goldblatt & Sylvia Li-Chun Lin)

Yeng Pway Ngon - Art Studio (2011, 2014; trans. Goh Beng Choo & Loh Guan Liang)