Live review from Underground 104:
Charles is a Asian-Australian artist who is travelling through Hong Kong and entertained the audience with a set of acoustic pop music. Kicking off with a light-hearted number reminiscent of the 59th Street Bridge Song, it was a good start to the set, not being too downbeat to lose the audience nor too energetic which would be hard to keep up. The 2nd song, however, Charles went full steam with the energetic Personal Anthem which definitely caught the audience’s attention. What followed was a change of instrument to a ukelele, and while doing so, he spoke of his thoughts when he saw the slope leading up to the Hard Rock with all his gear on him, then proceeded to entertain the crowd with the charming (as ukelele songs tend to be) Feels Better Now, which I thought was a nice touch. A couple of songs later and the set ended with Almost Sunday which was all about going home, again, nice touch for an artist on the road.
Stylistically Charles is a bit of a melting pot – I had a couple of people telling me on the night that they thought he was the Asian version of Tracy Chapman, which, while I wouldn’t disagree, there were so many more, other than the aforementioned Simon & Garfunkel, there were definitely traces of Jack Johnson/Josh Kelly about the music. Charles was clearly a seasoned performer – confident on stage, with a well thought out set and did a great job in engaging what started as a less than lukewarm crowd.
— Thlayli
