This has been a long time coming for me, but I finally listened to chinese music. It is my mother tongue, and I did suck at it in school but I always felt like I should at least start listening to music in chinese to remain connected to the language, and I was always expecting it to be mandopop but this chinese punk rock band has taken the honour of popping the cherry.
No Party For Cao Dong (or 草東沒有派對) was a band I found quite literally out of nowhere, I can't even remember if it was a YouTube feed suggestion or a Spotify recommendation, but it looked interesting regardless and I figured I might as well try a listen for my one-record-a-day project. Turns out, it's one of the best things I've heard all year (last year).
Now, I'm not sure how much weight I want to put on the fact that it's in a different language, but that aside, it also isn't particularly in my usual taste of rock subgenres? It's a punk-influenced indie rock record, one that I can't really say that I listen to quite often. It definitely feels a bit progressive musically too, I guess it's just that I was quite surprised to find a rock album this good in chinese so quickly, one that clicked with me as instantly as this did.
There's a lot to love about this album. I remember when I first played it and 苦難精算師 played, I was not expecting to hear a instrumental rock cut and it intrigued me. Then 缸 came next and I was mesmerized by how well-written the whole song was, with its structures, vocals and instrumentation. Song after song, I kept finding more things to love about their pristine indie punk sound. The wordplay on some of the songs were amazing, the riffwork on most of the songs were either energetic and exciting or beautiful and serene, some of the parts are basically math rock too. The production was also on point, especially when bringing in dance-pop and dream-pop influences on some of the cuts or just sticking to the pure punk rock tone on others.
I really do adore how unapologetic and youthful this album feels, with that tinge of maturity that makes it all so human. Everything they did on this album makes them far from generic, and there are many popular english-speaking bands that aren't as memorable and diverse as this one is. It really speaks to the simple fact that there's an endless amount of amazing music for anyone out there as long as you keep looking for it, the number of albums I've stumbled upon that I never expected to love so much is growing slowly but surely.
Also, this album is legitimately the turning point for me to want to be interested in the learning of the chinese language again, and to listen to chinese music, and that's a feat. I can't fully express how much I want to find more chinese rock music like this now that I've heard this album. Isn't that more than enough to deserve this recognition?
瓦合 is definitely one of the most unexpected great finds of the year, and it's the way it strangely fit so comfortably in my ears like I've been listening to it for all my life that strikes that chord with me. If not about the spark to reconnect with a mother tongue, then it's absolutely about the bangers.
Rating: 9/10