.
Live Review from Dada Ante Portas China Tour Last stop:
For some reason I kept calling them “Pleasant Garden” all evening and pleasant could certainly be used as a word to describe this band. The lead vocalist is attractive and exudes friendliness, but she seems to need to work on her lung capacity as she was often drowned out by the guitars in the band. Pleasant canto pop with a Faye Wong cover thrown in for good measure. Indeed a pleasant way to spend a Monday evening.
Ollday Jess
Live Review from Underground 84:
Pleasure Garden is a four piece Cantonese Pop Rock band consisting of Haley on vocals, Frankie on guitar, Jack on Bass and Verdi on drums. What drew me to this band straight away was the good looks of Haley out in front. I don’t think I am being biased either because I heard other guys around me comment on how ‘fit’ she looked. So, she is good looking but can she sing? The band was greeted by a warm and mainly Chinese audience. It looked like they had many fans or friends who had come to support them. This was their first Underground show, despite being active in the Hong Kong underground scene for some time. I heard from Chris B that this band was recommended highly by Dear Jane who also played this night. So, I was very interested in how they would perform.
They started off sounding very punky. Haley’s voice was not too strong, but maybe that is because the microphone wasn’t turned up loud enough. I could see her pointing her finger in the air to notify the sound guy to turn her up. But, he either didn’t see her or ignored her requests. Anyway, I thought that she had plenty of potential.
Their second song sounded like every other Canto-rock song that I have ever heard. Maybe it’s because I can’t understand what she is singing about. As you will probably notice, I don’t make mention of any of their song titles as I am just a mere gwailo. She spoke with the audience in Cantonese and I waited for the English translation, but unfortunately there was none. And at this stage I didn’t have my interpretor next to me to tell me what she was going on about. The band was very talented and I really enjoyed listening to the guitarists play their instruments. In their fourth song they changed up their styles once again, this time sounding more like the previous band, Logo. It had an Arabian feel to it which I really dug.
The fifth and last song involved some shouting from Haley which was very unexpected, especially after her meek performance prior to that. Was she saving it up for her last song to stun the audience? Her yelling and shouting was umm… interesting to say the least. It gave them a little bit more flavour. Someone commented to me that they sounded a little bit like Flyleaf and he wanted them to do a cover of one of their songs. So, maybe that is something that they can think about doing in the future.
Cain (F.B.I. vocalist)
