Before officially entering this new album, we may as well ask ourselves in advance: When did you meet Chen Grain?
Is it at a livehouse, concert, music festival or variety show?
Is it obtained from the spread of social platforms, recommended by friends or actively searched?
And it comes from the love at first sight of which song below: "Wonderful Ability Song", "Flammable and Explosive", "Walking Horse", "Light", "Virtual", "Little Half", "Look Through", "Empty Space", etc.?
When we mention Chen Grain, many people will subconsciously bring out the above series of related words in their minds to complete their memory splicing, and emerge a little musical impression about her.
However, no matter what kind of opportunity to know Chen Grain, these singer impressions formed from the perspective of the audience or the audience do not seem to be able to be called complete, but can only be said to be one-sided, fragmentary, and part of the Chen Grain. The faces of different dimensions and the singing under different scenes all have her inevitable long board and limitations, which cannot yet be characterized as its full picture. It's like many people will produce an "idealized" singer image out of their own understanding and digestion of the song listening consciousness, and use their inertial cognition to interpret the singer - they will take it for granted that Chen Rei should be, what her music direction will be, and even always used to compare her current works with those of that year... The contradictions under this stage are, in the final analysis, entangled, but also a kind of "cognitive" gap.
However, as a singer, especially a singer with independent consciousness and singer-songwriter self-knowledge, the process of moving forward will often enrich and prolong their artistic life, the "gap" is inevitable, and the progress is also accompanied by the process of breaking the cocoon and rebirth again and again.
Chen Grain is so, from "Ru Ye", "Little Dream Most" to the live album "In Penglai in Blue Note Beijing", from "Play", "Migration" to today's "Long Holiday", growing savagely in countless similarities and differences, and also expanding the "grains" of the doppelganger personality in music. Chen Re highly carries forward her advantages as a singer, switching from time to time in each piece to maintain a creative mentality and style, adding and subtracting music at different stages according to the theme, and projecting the current thinking and state into the final presented work, forming an output that conforms to the setting context.
This "Long Holiday" creates a daily travelogue like an immersive stage theater, using casual interpretation to introduce the audience into her holiday atmosphere, and taking everyone on a new journey through musical works. During the journey, with a more balanced singing and confrontation with the past self, we will bring everyone to re-understand Chen Grain.
Using Chen Grain's own weibo forwarding language to interpret, is a good confirmation, "I first give you a preventive shot, this is a popular album, but in order to balance their own private interest in listening to music, each popular song is followed by a long outro, usually only listen to the pop song friends will feel that these outro is inexplicable, don't get angry, cut the song just fine." Don't scold me, scold me I will apologize: sorry, I am me. ”
This stubborn and sober posture and unwillingness to bend over backwards and seek perfection are consistent with Chen Grain. She knows too well how to present the staged appearance of the work, and she can always release the different "original me" in the song, connect with the scene, the stream of consciousness and the work, follow a certain orderly law at will, and condense the daily preciousness in impermanence.
Therefore, whether it is the more different genres of musical expression and singing forms challenged by Chen Grain in this album, or the addition of various variations and the use of instrumental music to enrich the emotional flow of the core of the song, "Long Holiday" jumps out of the traditional pop music context. The sound is different from the scattering of general pop albums, but pays attention to transition, twist, articulation and release, and emphasizes the vocals while also strengthening a life temperament that is biased towards lo-fi under the indie system. In the seemingly "useless" musical logic, a pragmatic and pluralistic expression is formed, and the core concept is unveiled one by one based on the "long holiday", so that the audience can hear the confrontation between the old grain and the tradition, the popularity, and even the past self.
Perhaps in the past works, it was still necessary to make consideration according to the market and the audience; now when she can really add the instrumental accessories she wants to try and more innovation, it is the best time to really know Chen Grain. All of these create a unique temperament that belongs to Chen Grain's "Long Holiday", and build a complete musical composition with true audio-visual integration.
Looking at these specific songs, it can fully explain her intentions that she wants to express through music.
In the opening episode of "Devil Spicy", the vocal recording is done at home, which is contrary to the industry general knowledge that pop music seems to have to be completed in the studio, but the holidays from home seem to be the most reasonable way to open. Lyricist Shi Huan also contributed a masterpiece of realistic combat, which led the lyrics to interpersonal discussions under the relationship society and responded to many methods of dealing with the world that were defined by labels. And Chen Grain's melody and singing, although there have been similar creations such as "Evolution" before, but "Devil Spicy" is like its song title, everything is pushed to a more extreme. The song is based on piano and synthesizer solo to group out the song skeleton, and then add guitar, bass and drums as a push, mood and stream of consciousness parts enrich its humanistic thickness.
The subtlety of this song lies in the mood, which reflects the most free and uninhibited creative concept of Chen Grain at this stage, and also sorts out the musical expression of laziness, publicity, arbitrariness and awakening alone in chaos. In the busy daily life, perhaps everyone needs to leave themselves a "long holiday", and then look at the scenes and singing in the online MV, which also highly echo the theme of the song.
"Jade Song", which was released as a precursor song, and "The Great Crack", which was later released with the complete album, are the second of my favorite songs in the whole. They seem to be scattered and flowing, two completely different emotions, but they both echo the previous chen grains and form an internal relationship through Outro, such as the outro of "The Great Crack" that burns the melody of "Jade Song"; of course, there is an infinite extension in music.
The "Jade Song" launched on Chen Grain's birthday is actually a retrospective of this album. The lyrics of "also passed through freedom / also thought of absolute possession / so possessed / so locked in freedom" and the previous old work "Absolute possession, relative freedom" to achieve emotional echo, but there is a new realization at this stage. Chen Grain's singing is more comfortable, crying and singing the song list, and borrowing "Jade Song" to express love and cherish, and the voice has become the best interpretation of this song. The melody of the whole song, from the piano, to the addition of strings, to the upswing and closing of the whole emotion, sublimates the excellent sense of picture in the song with a kind of empty extension of the outro in the tail.
"The Great Crack" is more like a description of the status quo, and there is a prospect beyond the retrospection. The song's twists and turns, the fission of emotions in laziness, and the more intense emotional singing digs deep into the state of the narrative. If "Jade Song" has past scars, then "The Great Crack" tears the scars apart and sprinkles them with salt to make the sadness deeper.
Of course, in addition to these two songs, the appearance of "Long Holiday" also grinds out the healing effect and heals the wounds with time. The combination of orchestral music and trumpet is also an effective emotional solution to music.
The next few songs are also very interesting.
With the casual singing of "Good Morning", Chen Grain's smirking singing can be called the magic stroke of the whole song, the whole song is full of cuteness in the holiday, adding some funny sound effects, and the strong rhythm of the ending is completed by drums; the indie rock "Like the World" also carries the rhythm of popular ballet, but its tentacles rise to a wider space; "Giant Fog" with colorist jazz fusion rock, constructing an audiovisual revolution in obscurity; "Practical Music" Outro is also quite interesting. Turn music into a transmission of energy.
At the same time, "Swimming Fish" and "Swift", which are named after animals, the flow and driving of the former return to the narrative logic of pop music, and the latter stir up the grandeur and poetry of the electronic symphony, which are Chen Grain's more diversified attempts in songs. In different song scenes, Chen Grain and Band Sound are combined, and the freedom of creation and singing across multiple genres provides different aspects and possibilities for extension.
Of course, it also provides a new idea for the audience, so that more people can re-understand Chen Grain through "Long Holiday".