After Faye's break-up with Mr Dou Wei, one would expect her songs to become even more melancholy and sad and gloomy. The title of her newest album, says it all. "Faye only loves strangers" - a statement of her love-life? Perhaps not...

 

The first composition (Ooops..I can't get a suitable translation) got me trying to fiddle around with my CD player. I thought that the CD was spoilt or that my CD player was giving me problems again. It was only when I listened to the subsequent compositions that I realised that there was nothing wrong with the player nor the disc. The first song was heavily laced with synths and drums, and Faye's voice was digitally altered to produce a distorted effect that you would get if you turned the volume up too high. The first hearing was rather unbearable; with the weird lyrics (by Lin Xi yet again) and the distortionic voice, I couldn't wait for it to finish. But after subsequent listening and with much reference to the lyrics, I grew to enjoy the song thoroughly. Sometimes, first impressions doesn't give you a good overview of this song; like wine, it only gets better with time.

 

The second song, The Moonlight Then, is of the balladdy genre. Faye's sweet, inspiring voice is very much welcome after the encounter with Faye's singing behind Darth Vader's mask in the first composition. This song laments the things that would have happened if things had been different last time. One of the more commercial songs, The Moonlight Then potrays a similar singing style to Red Bean in her previous album, Sing and Play.

 

While all the songs in this album are pretty much listenable, one of the best songs in this album, IMHO, would be Track 12, "Postman". "Postman" is the Cantonese rendition of Track 6 "Butterfly", but the lyrics are much more, well lyrical and soothing that the Mandarin version. One of the stanzas in "Postman" describes the lover as the snow while she is the street; she is afraid that the sun might come out and everything would be gone. She is probably wishing that the day might never come and the snow would still be 'embracing' the street, thus symbolizing when the next day arrives, she wouldn't be in her lover's embrace anymore. Another stanza describes her lover as being a letter and she is the postman, and while she hurries to deliver all the letters, she never has the time to open up the letter meant for her and discover all the love that it contains. So meaningful!!

The most commercial piece in this album would be the "Exciting" track. This piece was composed by Faye herself and was used in the ongoing Pepsi commercial "May your dreams come true". Sad to say, this Pepsi adverstisement has not been aired in Singapore yet, but both the Mandarin and Cantonese versions depict Faye in her younger days, as a cute little schoolgirl. She gets transported into this fantasy world of hers and is seen swimming, kicking in the misty liquid environment. The MTV is basically an extension of the Pepsi commercial, only it has less focus on the Pepsi drink itself and depicts the fun Faye was having with her child counterpart. The "Exciting" track is heavy on the bass and is very much lively. The MTV does bring back memories of my childhood days and environment as well although I didn't grow up in a kampung school.