人賤人愛

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Live Review from Underground 113

The night began with, what turned out to be, an unexpectedly sexful set (was that just because The David Bowie Knives were in the house too?) I had expected something more avant-garde and ‘arty’ (in its ‘inscrutable’ sense), purely based on the description of the band and how they looked. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to find a mix of power-pop and pub-rock greeting my ears, in the first song. There’s some New York Dolls-ey loud, brash, drunky sound, from which they moved on to a little light jazzy touch on You Are Just…) and then to the loungey Just Be Gay. This is all topped off by the vocals, singing sarcastic, cutting lyrics in a deliberately hyper-saccharine tone to nicely juxtapose the two; which tactic, while being somewhat common (particularly among female singer-songwriters), was very well-executed, for which many kudos to Tang Yi for that. I suppose a good comparison of her style would be to Lilly Allen, with some spoken-word-type stuff (in I’m Sick and Tired…), the sing-song, extremely simple tunes and the general manner of phrasing (to be fair, she did name-check Katy Perry during the set, but I am worse than unfamiliar with her catalogue, so I must of necessity remain silent on the matter). The contempt oozing from You are Just… and Why on My Bed? were very much in that vein, and expertly done, getting the crowd going immediately. Their cover was a brief interlude into more trivial ground, and while I would strenuously contest the choice of song, it was competently done (though it sounded very much like a Brady Bunch song, which I found amusing). In all, it was a solid set with which to start the show, and they certainly set the mood for the night to follow quite well.

— Shashwati Kala

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