About the album. Everything I wanted to say, and more.

後。青春期的詩

Longtime fans of Taiwanese pop-rock band Mayday (五月天) approached the band’s seventh studio album with something akin to trepidation. The band’s last release, 2006’s Born to Love (為愛而生), proved to be something of a disappointment, with repetitive, uninspired lyrics and an overly commercial sound that made no reference to the band’s roots as a freedom-loving, uncorrupted campus act. Reaching back further still, 2005’s Falling Angels with a Flying Soul (神的孩子都在跳舞) had been uneven and almost campy compared to the relative masterpiece of the year before (the album Time Machine (時光機)). In the meantime, the difficult economic environment for putting out records in an age of internet piracy and fierce competition has led the band down a familiarly commercial route, bringing them and their music into ads for tea, beer, computers, clothing, sporting events, and convenience stores, and creating a surge of karaoke-friendly tracks. When lead-singer and band lyricist Ashin reworked the band’s Taiwanese language ode to friendship into a Mandarin song advertising instant noodles, it felt for many of us like a sign that the old Mayday was gone for good.

Fortunately, this indefatigable fivesome has proven us wrong.

With Poetry of the Day After (後。青春期的詩), Mayday revisits the themes of love, heartache and the exuberance of youth that turned them from an underground band into a continent-wide phenomenon, but at the same time introduces new themes of maturity, uncertainty, and nostalgia that reflect their current lives. No longer college kids, the thirty-something band has two married members and a growing second generation of sons and daughters vying for their attention. Their fans span an impressive age range, from new preteens making their first forays into popular music to grandparents who have developed their appreciation over the last decade the band has been active, and impressively, this time the band manages to speak to them all.

Perhaps as a nod to the past, the album contains twelve unique songs – something that used to come standard on Mayday albums, but which has fallen off as the rest of the industry switched to a ten-track standard. Another past practice that sees a comeback is the inclusion of a song in Taiwanese (admittedly only one, but still a welcome throwback to the days when Mayday broke in with Taiwanese rock ballads). “Breakthrough Day (出頭天)” takes its place alongside past songs “Fool (憨人)” and “Stubborn (倔強)” with its themes of believing in yourself and never giving up; for these credentials alone, fans will embrace it, but underneath all that it’s actually a pretty catchy song.

Mayday also recaptures some of its youthful energy with the upbeat “OMG (噢買尬)” and “Spring’s Scream (春天的吶喊).” The latter was not only named after a music festival Mayday used to play but also contains several risqué puns of the sort you’d expect young guys to chuckle over; the former will be a new favorite for live shows, at least. Another fast number, “Liver-busting (爆肝)” (the title is a reference to the health effects of staying up all night) is perhaps night-owl Ashin’s most autobiographical song to date; it combines a little bit of blues and a bit of 80s rock to become one of my favorite tracks on the album.

But the album – like life itself – is not all parties and wild times, and when the band moves into the more mid-tempo and slow songs, the lyrics reflect the difference. “Suddenly Missing You (突然好想你),” “More than Surviving, Less than Living (生存以上 生活以下),” and “You’re Not Truly Happy (你不是真正的快樂),” – coincidentally the first three tracks on the album – all demonstrate a sort of post-adolescent, pre-mid-life sort of discontent. The swelling melody of “Suddenly Missing You” remembers love lost, and opens the album with a strong, and dare I say karaoke-friendly, power ballad. “More than Surviving, Less than Living” is more upbeat musically, but even more depressed lyrically; it uses a great array of sound effects to replicate a day in the life, beginning and ending with the sound of teeth being brushed, and driven forward by a ticking clock in the background, which together covers a somewhat forgettable melody. Under that light, amusing exterior, however, it offers a caution against being too afraid to take chances, to fearful to risk being hurt. From there, the track fades into “You’re Not Truly Happy,” which drives this point home in a pop-charts-friendly melody.

The two most outstanding tracks on the album break with these themes in new and creative ways. “The Yet Unbroken Part of My Heart (我心中尚未崩壞的地方)” is a rare venture into waltz time for the band, and it combines many of the elements that makes Mayday fans so love the band: music that represents something new and experimental for them, but still maintains their sound, well-written lyrics that say something both particular (in this case, commentary on the craziness of the music industry) and general (a determination to stay the course, with or without outside support). No less intriguing is the jazzy “Interview with the Vampire (夜訪吸血鬼).” Only the second Mayday song to be composed by drummer Guanyou, the song also features harmonies from Taipei-based band 831, whose music Ashin has been enthusiastically promoting this year. As for the unusual theme, well, almost every Mayday album has a song named after a movie or book (or both), and Ashin as lyricist has long enjoyed experimenting with putting himself in the place of an individual whose experience was far outside his own (see “Superman (超人),” or “Masquerade (雌雄同體)”). In this case, the loneliness of an immortal vampire is recounted against an upbeat track that makes you want to get up and swing dance. That kind of contrast has been a hallmark of a Mayday song from the very beginning (i.e. “Crazy World (瘋狂世界)”), and the band stretches it further with each new project.

Continuing on the exploration of a life and an album, two songs on Poetry speak from the perspective of someone looking back on a lifetime and taking stock of his experiences. “Like Smoke (如煙),” has no chorus, just marches forward from youth, through mistakes and regrets and a desire to live all over again, before returning to it’s starting point of a man on his deathbed. The story is accompanied by a relatively simple arrangement and nice harmonies (provided by longtime Mayday roadie Shijie and label-mates Champion Band) which swell in volume and complexity as the song continues. Even simpler yet is the album’s title track, “Poetry of the Day After (後青春期的詩),” which sounds like a slow and sweet lullaby and shows off just how much Ashin’s singing technique has improved over the years.

The final track on the album and in this review is “The Song of Laughter and Forgetting (笑忘歌),” which lyrically tries to offer a remedy for some of the pain and regret explored in the previous tracks and musically serves as a reminder that no matter who experimental or arty Mayday gets in the interim, they know their roots.

In the end, Poetry of the Day After is not perfect – some songs fall back into the generic style of the commercial pop version of Mayday, and some of the arrangements are overdone – but it marks a resurgence of everything that fans have always loved about Mayday and still offers plenty to move and inspire new listeners. I recommend this album as much for the lyrics as for the music, though separately or together they will capture your imagination.