This is a — if it had been born in the '90s, or even later, as late as the beginning of this century — it would have been the most important album for Chinese rock music. At that time, only a musical genius like Zhang Yadong and a sensitive genius like Dou Wei could comprehend all its grammar and true meaning, and then make it in the Chinese world. But even they can't make such an album so naturally, so uningeniously, so naturally, and so full of rhyme. Even now, in the 20s of the 21st century, a masterpiece with such a character is still out of stock in the treasure trove of Chinese rock music. I mean, it's like the best of the heyday of the London indie label 4AD, but it's made in China, with just a guitar, bass, drum band, and a cello, like the creation of a blood-spurring inspiration from an unknown person.
Therefore, their names deserve to be written in the article and be watched by us. This is the "Simple Lover" - lyrics, vocals, harmony Shi Xiaofei, composer, guitar, producer Gao Xiaofang, bass Liu Xianpu, drum king Zhenyi, cello Zhang Naiwen, recorded and published the album "As Yesterday" in October 2022.
But I have lost my excitement and the cherishing that I held in my heart when I discovered 4AD. And, I seem to be losing my appreciation for all the new music. There is no enthusiasm, let alone fanaticism and reverence, and there is still a kind of cherishing of any newly born musical work in the world today, such as the revelation of life and the treasure of the world. Standing in front of the new album of "Lover of Simplicity", I asked myself: Is a musical masterpiece not a masterpiece ten years after it was born? Will its value be greatly reduced? Will the most beautiful creation of rock music no longer shine without its time background? Will it move us deeply, and will it move future generations in the same way? Is it an era that has passed, or has I deteriorated myself? Why should I still be fascinated by music and beauty, is it necessary? Or is it just because of the rarity and weirdness of my time, because of the hormones of adolescence? Was the shock, enlightenment, and feeling of that time real? Or is it really important, is it the light in the hearts of all human beings, or is it just because of the low age of the times, and it is as light as a feather in essence?
Yes, that was the most important experience in the aesthetic world that I experienced: the abbreviation 4AD-forward, a vague and ambiguous three-character character, or meaning avant-garde, cutting-edge and future, in short, cutting off mediocrity and turning away from the public. It was anti-capitalist big industry, from which it gave birth to independent productions that later opened up the whole world. Not to mention the alternative path of its commercial route, but only its creation in music: since its birth, a new urban aesthetic of darkness, isolation, poetry, fearlessness and vigorous nature has begun to grow freely. Wang Jingwen became Faye Wong, until she became the most dazzling female voice in the Chinese world, which was first obtained from its plucking and lighting. Moreover, the energy Faye Wong got from 4AD is still supporting her to this day. The avant-garde nature of "Simple Lover" "As Yesterday" is a complete and random reproduction, with a small rock band, compact, dense and infinitely energetic, to carry forward that dark aesthetic to the extreme. They proved that only guitars, basses, and drums could make all the sounds and effects of rock music, without the need for keyboards or computers, to shake all the beautiful and alluring lights and shadows of this city, and pierce into all the ambiguities and secrets of this city.
"Just Like Yesterday" has a clear overall structure, which shows that "Simple Lover" has always been soberly creating. At the beginning, "Aphasia" is completely used in recitation, aiming to be clear and extremely clear, that is, to be completely confessed, to give the audience a self-confession, a self-portrait. This is the self-order, the "me" in Shi Xiaofei's reality, self-examination, ideals, and self-expectations: "A hypocritical person, a cunning person/a contradictory person, a runaway person/a noble person, a debauched person/an elegant person, a correct person/a drunkard, a madman/a perfectionist, an artist/a non-existent person", yes, this is the person who sings to you in front of you now.
"This Lonely Life" is presented in two sound effects and two worlds, just like the contradictory dual personality in "Aphasia"—the psychological self of the illusion and the real self of reality. Is it real? The real may be precisely illusory, or the other way around. In the dimness and haze, a sudden shining awareness illuminates certain aspects of reality: "glittering bubbles, the changing tides of the day", "the gibberish sages, the ridicule of the clowns", "waiting for the sea to dry and the stones to rot, waiting for the tiredness", "the ordinary body is dying, with the experience of no regrets"...... Hear me clearly, in a scene of muffled sounds and colorful scenes, have you ever had such experiences and thoughts?" "Spinning, spinning in this lonely life, life with no end in sight / Spinning, spinning in this lonely life, this life where no one survives".
The sound is superbly modulated, with the aesthetic of 4AD, dark, depressing, deep, with a vague sadness. The drumming was simple and violent, as if it were a single rhythm, beating one after another, repeating forever like a clock, but striking at the flesh, striking at the heart of the city, stirring up the darkness of the night, stirring up the dust of the lights, and making a noise of dry powder and smoke. Yes, the aesthetic atmosphere of the modern city is mainly in the night, and even in the daytime, it is mostly in the buildings and interiors, with the interlacing and cutting of the bright and dark of artificial light.
"Accomplice" is noisy and fierce electric music, nice and affectionate, and sinks into it. A slender female voice comes out from time to time. The eager repetition of the fingers of the electric guitar is like a subway speeding away, and the music and singing are like the echoes and drifts of a lonely city. The metropolis is like a big dream.
"The Man Who Stopped Growing" is left with only acoustic guitar and cello, singing about waiting, attempted love, and loss. Calm down, low down, a modern city ballad, loneliness in the bustling, poetry of the capitalist era. The guitar and vocals are like thoughts, like a bubble in the steel plate of the city, breathing.
"Don't Come to Harm", the best song in the whole album, continues to sing about unfinished love. Yes, although it is said to be soberly creating, Shi Xiaofei can't express it clearly, this is the fate of sinking into the confusion of this city. "Don't Come Unharmed" is like an unfinished song, which cannot be completed, and its ending is unsatisfactory. "The turmoil is going on again, and the rest of my life is boundless/The mask is on the stage again, and the dream of Huangliang is again", this can be regarded as the most sober understanding of the encounters in this life.
All the instruments, all the members, are in top condition. This is the third album of "Simple Lover", the second blow of the combination of Shi Xiaofei and Gao Xiaofang. This song is a powerful testament to the transformation of this band. Gao Xiaofang is a master of composing, playing, arranging, and producing, and the guitar is first acoustic, and then electrified. Completely out of blues, jazz and folk guitar, with a tonal, rhythm and color that can only be found in today's cities. The cello is like a shadow, like a cry, like a complaint, like a real illusion. Shi Xiaofei's female voice is like a shadow and a real body in a chorus, hanging from each other, and in the surging noise of bass, drums and distorted guitars, a silver needle is thrown into the sky.
"A moment of pleasure is hard to resist the greed of eternity / Looking to the end only to see emptiness", "Talking to Myself" further confirms that this is a disillusionment of total devotion. Strictly speaking, it is not the feeling of "life is like a dream" in ancient times, but has the contemporary life of living in a science fiction-fantasy world, although the two are essentially the same. The feeling that life is like a dream used to mostly take place in the red cliff moonlight lake of Su Dongpo, and this, the sound of the alarm and the electric sound that amplifies the shape and volume are all reminded of the modern content of the superimposed buildings and the overlapping of technology, and life is swirled into the whirlpool of the 21st century city where light and shadow are blurred.
"Lonely Hero" doesn't expect anyone to come to the rescue, maybe she had this kind of flash at the beginning, but then she understood that she could only comfort herself with stubbornness and lonely stubbornness, and everyone would be their own lonely hero. "The oath is blown away as soon as it is spoken/A lifetime withers with a wave of the hand/We grow old as soon as we hug/You are my lonely hero", "Stranger/Your sorrow is as light as a puff of smoke/Drifting away with the wind", the city accelerates the transformation of the drama of life, including the shortness of life itself. For the people in front of him, Shi Xiaofei used the word "strange" to describe it, and then used "crazy", "numb" and "silent", in short, silent and silent.
"Your Good Times" is the ending, the whole album is a whole, and Shi Xiaofei clearly wrote the sentence "The story has ended tonight" in the song. She vaguely wished, "Please stay awake at dawn / and be safe at sunset" – it's good not to end with sadness, to be optimistic about the future, and to look forward to the end. At the same time, she also vaguely realized that she had to leave this place and go to her hometown, "not waiting for her sideburns to turn into frost" - this is a precious awakening.
Behind this song, there is also a hidden audio track, which is to sing "Don't Come to Harm" again, in the way of a male and female duet (male voice Zhang Xi).
On the whole, the album "Just Like Yesterday" wraps the delicate female vocals with rough and violent electronic music. Its modern beauty is conclusive, deep, yet ultimately pale, like the urban entertainment life that nurtures it. It's not really people's daily life, it's just the experience of urban youth in bars, nightclubs, rock music, and urban avant-garde. But it also has a deep truth, a shadow that accompanies the glare of modern fashion life. More and more young people who are flocking to the big cities will experience this first-hand – perhaps in a deviation of life, perhaps in a carnival of self-liberation, and occasionally, stepping into the borders of this labyrinth. If you can't jump out of the psychedelic light and shadow of this city, if you don't have a critical understanding of life, if you don't have a broader goal in life, then you have to look at it for a long time.
And Shi Xiaofei's female voice is like poplin, slender and a little earthy. I think there is the voice of her hometown in Hebei, not an accent, but a timbre. It also reminds me of a word I haven't thought about in almost fifty years, "." In our area, "girls" does not refer to women, but to "sisters-in-law" in particular. The voice of "girl" is a sharp and particularly sharp voice, implying pungency, including a clear understanding of the world of men and women. When I think of it, I think of a large group of weavers passing in front of me, speaking in a loud and soft voice. I think Shi Xiaofei was one of them, but she flew up and released spirituality and poetry that swept through the air.
Therefore, Shi Xiaofei's singing voice does not give me the image of a pure woman, in the creation of the metropolis, that image seems to have been abstracted, and it is a paradoxical capitalist commodity production. Her voice is very real and has a distancing effect: she is not a stage icon, she is not a standard beauty, and even the gender of the woman is finally blurred in the singing, as if it becomes a voice-over, a scratching sound made by this time and space. The city is like a glittering object, dreaming of its dreams and showing its cranky thoughts.
Over the course of this century, rock 'n' roll has lost much of its creativity. One of the most obvious features is that everything is repetitive, and we no longer see new creations, so we lose the deep aesthetic experience of the first meeting, and it is difficult to feel the shock. Like Cui Jian, Luo Dayou, and even like Faye Wong and Zhang Yadong, Ding Wei and Jin Wulin, there are no earth-shattering creations. Of course, rock music can exist apart from the era and time background of its creation, and even in the future, it can still shine its original light, which is the miracle of the great era, with originality that is only possible at that time. I believe that my fascination and shock back then was not because of my youth, let alone because of uncommon and strange. However, the road is long, the life is still long, and the lasting aesthetic power and criticism still need to polish the true nature and make life brave and diligent. This can also be a message to Shi Xiaofei and the "simple lover": you have been reborn, but look at the top, look at the front, the best scenery, still need to be braver, more persistent, more far-sighted, and more progressive.
December 10, 2023