14 書香人生 B O O K S & R E V I E W S SUNDAY, JUNE 20, 2010 • TAIPEI TIMES CD Reviews: Taiwan

took TV talent Italian noisy fog lingers love summer,” show Happy embarks on throughout croons It Sunday (快樂星期 An a journey A Boyz & Girl’s “I Bearbabes’ 天) champion William through East Asia self-titled debut, and female lead singer Wei (韋禮安), aka and tells the stories never lifts. That’s and bassist “Cookie” WeiBird, three years of his travels using part of the beauty on the opening track to release his debut what was originally of this shoegazer of Year After Year (年 album after winning an American idiom — rock album, which is 年), which cries out the series. The result, this is jazz drummer full of otherworldly to be played during Wei Li-an Debut Pietro Valente’s debut dreamscapes conjured an oceanside drive Eponymous Original release Tales From Pietro Valente Quartet up by reverb effects, a Boyz & Girl with the windows Bearbabes (熊寶貝樂團) Album (韋禮安首張同 the Far East. Tales From the Far East barrage of guitars and Boyz & Girl rolled down. Year After Year (年年) 名全創作專輯), brims The 27-year-old Self-released synthesizers and post- Self-released It’s also well- Himalaya Records with a rare folk- WeiBird (韋禮安) native of Padua, www.pietrovalete.com punk songcraft. boyzandgirl.blogspot.com suited for a stroll bearbabes.com.tw rock elegance that Wei Li-An Debut Eponymous in northern Italy, The album is on a scorching city establishes Wei as one Original Album composed eight tracks inspired by a nine-month trip worth a listen straight through from beginning to end. pavement. The Bearbabes, a trio that has been around of the most polished (韋禮安首張同名全創作專輯) to Thailand, China, India and Taiwan. He lived in It opens with Ghost Parade, an aptly titled number since 2000, play everything from slowcore rock to upbeat singer-songwriters of Linfair Records Taichung in 2007 and 2008 and was active in the jazz saturated with sustaining fuzz and high-pitched power-pop that is radiant but far from saccharine. his generation. www.weibird.com scene in China and Taiwan. squeals, artfully wielded by guitarist and vocalist Jon This second album, said Cookie in an interview On the anthemic On appearances alone, the album theme comes Du (杜澤威), one of the group’s three “Boyz.” printed in the band’s promotional material, is about Story (故事), a homage to Maroon 5’s This Love, Wei across as a little cliche, with song titles that sound The “girl,” guitarist and vocalist Ban Ban (斑斑), aka “loss.” On the radio-friendly Rockable, it hurts so good, builds a paean of youthful romantic yearning with his like outdated TV travel show sound bites (Red Light Bambam Lin (林以樂), surprises as the emotional center especially when she hits those yodeling notes during sun-kissed vocals and tingling guitar chords. “In this in Bangkok and The Spirit of India). Then there’s the of the band. She has a high-pitched, childlike voice that the choruses. story, the ending is not the most important thing,” he cover design, adorned with fortune cookie typefaces was cute and charming with her previous indie-pop Cookie turns on the charm with her honey-smooth philosophizes. and a Chinese dragon emblazoned on the CD. Tourists band Freckles (雀斑). voice on Firefly (螢火), a beautiful piano lullaby, but With Reason (理由), Wei flirts with rhythmic jazz might find it cute. With Boyz & Girl, she sounds eerie and spooked, she’s no Mando-pop prude. She drops the F-bomb and gets it down pat. With credible ad-libbing and For the most part, though, the music is worth the like a kid trapped in a nightmare. In the dark rocker without flinching on Sick N’ Tired, the band’s only jamming motifs in the background, he croons about trip. Valente is a talented drummer with a larger-than- Watch Out! Aikly Is Dead, her whip-cream airy song written entirely in English and a great alt-country- idiotic procrastination with irreverent wit and usual presence in a small jazz ensemble. He catches timbre gets drenched in reverb and wrapped in a flavored tune with spacey pop choruses. musical verve. your attention like a rock drummer would, but not gauze of distortion. Her soaring cries fuel the song’s Guitarist Wei-jun (魏駿) has the band scorching on In the contagious Sunflower in a Cloudy Day (陰天 because he can get loud. exhilarating pace. A City Without December (沒有12月的城市), matched 的向日葵), Wei achieves a melodic catchiness reminiscent Always on the move, Valente chases tone and color, Things really start to blossom on Cannot Touch, by top-notch drumming from Chen Tai-yuan (陳泰元), of the works of Taiwan’s indie queen Cheer Chen (陳綺 extracting every drop of sound he can from the drum a slow-motion sequence built on a hypnotic rhythm who also plays with another indie-rock trio, Windmill 貞). The track begins with a calm, lulling guitar melody kit, whether it’s thunderous rolls from the floor toms played on drums that sounds like it was recorded (風籟坊). and builds into a climactic piano chorus. or cymbal splashes that sizzle and simmer. The drums in a deep cavern. There are no guitars, just ambient Dig deeper into Year After Year, and the band’s On More Perfect (完美一點), the theme song to are busy, but rarely overbearing. The pensive opening synthesizers that shadow Ban Ban, as she whispers cohesiveness and maturity as musicians only becomes China’s romantic comedy Sophie’s Revenge (非常完美), track Di Mare in Male is a nice example of Valente’s and sighs a singsong melody. The ethereal mood brings more apparent. In Dear Stranger (親愛陌生人), they Wei crafts a Mando-pop-meets-lounge-jazz gem with keen awareness of mood and atmosphere. to mind M. Ward’s more recent albums. venture into psychedelic pop territory without getting laid-back vocals and soothing melody. He’s backed by a highly competent quartet — a The synth orchestration continues in the spacey too carried away. Monster (怪物) is a dreamy, slow- Wei updates Good Weather (好天氣) and Waiting pianist, bassist and tenor saxophonist — and together instrumental Passengers, which then gets foiled by burning number that is one of the better examples of Slowly (慢慢等), tracks from his EP that was released they weave familiar Chinese melodies with modern Kiss Me Blindly, a grimy, garage/blues-rock romp. Taiwanese indie rock. last year, and arranges them with more emotional jazz on Shanghai Today and Wide Breath in Beijing, Here the album takes a surprising but rewarding turn — David Chen urgency and maturer vocals. an interpretation of the Chinese folk song Jasmine — Ban Ban’s sassy, spot-on delivery is a sudden breath The album holds together as a coherent folk- Flower (茉莉花). of fresh air, and relieves some of the tension from the rock album with occasional nods to jazz. Neither a These tunes give a sense of genuine appreciation for previous songs. powerhouse nor a virtuosic singer, Wei’s warm vocal the delicate, elegant side of traditional Chinese music, but Boyz & Girl’s noisy soundscape grows to be more timbre is appropriately complemented by songs that Valente sounds most at home on the very funky Muswing, inviting, and the emotional space feels warmer in wax poetic on romantic infatuation and life’s joys. a tribute to kids playing on the streets in India. the later tracks. On a side note, a lot of the lyrics Though he’s a charismatic singer who has garnered In his eagerness to give us a snapshot of his are barely audible without repeated listening, or significant attention through his appearances on a TV journeys, Valente sometimes overdoes it. In Shanghai they’re simply buried in the mix. But the mood and talent show, Wei opted to use an illustration rather than Today he inserts sampled recordings of ambulance atmosphere are pitch-perfect. a close-up of his photogenic face on the album cover. sirens and honking horns, which robs the imagination — David Chen Perhaps the intention was to encourage audiences to (the tenor saxophone does a fine job on its own). It’s pay attention to the music rather than his good looks. songs like the buoyant, bossa nova-tinged Last Mango But with an album this entrancing, that isn’t an issue. in Taiwan that leave a lasting impression. — ANDREW C.C. HUANG — David Chen Hardcover: UK Softcover: UK Rescues and romance Taking it to the limit Alan Furst’s newest tale of intrigue and derring-do finds its Legendary mountaineer Walter Bonatti brings the perils and poetry of protagonist turning up the erotic heat ‘extreme climbing’ to life in ‘The Mountains of My Life”

By JANET MASLIN By BRADLEY WINTERTON NY Times News Service, New York Contributing Reporter

he man around whom Alan with Furst’s usual acuity for trans- n 1965 the famous Italian alpinist masks to make this possible), causing Furst’s new spy novel revolves Publication Notes European scheming. In the process, Walter Bonatti spectacularly ended Publication Notes it to run out two hours before the T is Constantine Zannis, a highly he incorporates enough historical I his career of “extreme climbing” successful pair reached the peak the placed police official in Salonika, background to establish how unstable by pioneering the most direct route up following day. Greece. In late 1940, as Spies of the Greece in general, and Salonika in the north face of the Matterhorn, alone Bonatti felt that he had effectively Balkans begins, Zannis’ specialty particular, have been, and how age-old and in winter. Many people ask why been abandoned by the pair in the only is discretion. He heads a new Balkan enmities still cast long shadows. men climb mountains, and often by the available tent, and could well have department charged with handling The book is dotted with klephts, most difficult routes they can find. In died, along with Mahdi, as a result. delicate situations. Is a politician evzones, Ustashi and other fierce, the account of his last sensational feat When he sued the Italian newspaper for being blackmailed by a prostitute? exotic fighters from this region. in this wonderful book Bonatti offers libel, a court hearing found entirely in Call Zannis. Has a woman of some Furst is better at establishing a reason, almost as an aside. As he his favor. Rumors persisted in Italian importance killed her husband and then Salonika’s subjugation to the Ottoman settled in for the night on a tiny ledge climbing circles, however, and the insisted she’s glad he’s dead? “Naughty Empire than he is at making what, surrounded by rock, ice, blackness disillusion that resulted led him to girl,” Zannis says, giving the Furst for him, are atypically blunt sexual and intense cold, he could see Zermatt embark from then onwards on a largely hero’s characteristic knowing shrug. innuendoes. Ordinarily, he is a writer and the life of the valley below him. solo climbing career. Furst has written so often about of very few words and inversely strong It was a life, he writes, “perhaps easy After he retired from climbing in such men, the intrigue that surrounds impact when it comes to eroticism; and alluring to one who, like me, was 1965, Bonatti explored remote places them, and their subtle, intuitive here, there are times when he must suspended between earth and sky, but around the world as a correspondent maneuvering that he risks repeating strain a bit to establish Zannis’ sexual so banal and disappointing, a man had for an Italian magazine, returning to, himself. But Zannis is a younger, more bona fides. “Strange, but it just now to run away from it and somehow finish among other places, Patagonia, where vigorous version of the prototype than occurs to me that the ottoman is up here.” he had achieved sensational success some. And he is Greek, which adds a an extraordinary piece of furniture, Bonatti started young. He recalls back in 1958, though failing to conquer whole new perspective to Furst’s view ingenious,” Roxanne remarks at one how in the summer of 1949, aged 19, the steeple-like Cerro Torre. of Europe before and during World SPIES OF THE BALKANS: A Novel louche moment. Why? “Because you he and a friend climbed the north THE MOUNTAINS OF MY LIFE He had seen some disasters War II, given the strategic importance can, you know, also sit on it.” face of the Grandes Jurasses in the happen. On an attempt on the Central By Alan Furst by Walter Bonatti of Greece’s ability to resist German However acrobatic this dalliance Mont Blanc group by the hideously Pillar of Freney on Mont Blanc in the domination. If shades of its personal 268 pages may be, it’s also over very early in precipitous Walker Spur. They couldn’t 445 pages summer of 1961, for example, four drama are by now familiar to Furst’s Random House Spies of the Balkans. That leaves afford balaclavas, and their knapsacks, Penguin Modern Classics of his companions lost their lives, readers, this book’s larger and more Furst time to incorporate an almost containing a few apples and tomatoes, each in different circumstances, but important geography seems new. de rigueur flirtation between Zannis were army surplus. Their rope was all essentially by freezing to death In 1939, Greece’s prime minister, and the wealthy, imprisoned wife of an frayed hemp and they’d made their following extreme fatigue. General Ioannis Metaxas, said “that important man — a man so important pitons themselves from an iron bar. It’s The Mountains of My Life is a the old Europe would end when the Englishman” arrives, perhaps in that, if Greece falls, he will have both small wonder that these days Bonatti is selected to attempt the summit set collection of accounts culled from swastika flew over the Acropolis.” The Roxanne’s place, who calls himself a ship and yacht at his disposal for an opponent of “Himalayan methods” off to establish a final camp at some Bonatti’s nine books, together with Nazi flag did not rise over the Acropolis Escovil and purports to be a travel purposes of making a getaway. in the Alps — advance parties who 8,100m, while Bonatti and a Pakistani some other material such as translator until April 1941. Spies of the Balkans writer at a time when carefree travel Her name is Demetria, and she’s prepare the way with fixed ropes and porter called Mahdi were told to follow Robert Marshall’s analysis of what is about the time in between, when is a thing of the past, Zannis has not much of a match for the more tents — just as he’s skeptical of the them and take up oxygen cylinders, actually happened on K2. It’s the detail, people like Zannis were forced to get become more watchful. He is made effortlessly devastating women for benefits of sponsorship. He prefers spending the night in the summit much of it poetic, that makes this their bearings in an increasingly hostile even more so by a quasi-seductive whom Furst’s incurable romantics to use the methods that sufficed for pair’s tent. Progress for everyone was book come alive, and no account of world and to become rescuers to those encounter with Emilia Krebs, a Jewish always fall. Or perhaps Spies of the his 19th century predecessors such as extremely slow at that altitude and one perilous ascent is like any other. fleeing more perilous places. Furst’s woman from a wealthy German Balkans simply has different priorities. Whymper — boots, an ice ax, a hammer as night fell Bonatti and Mahdi hadn’t But cold is cold whoever you are, and gift for exquisite calibration transports family. Spies of the Balkans can be In any case, urgent concerns about the and pitons, a rope, and little else. found their colleagues and the vital sharing three dried bananas between the reader back to a realm where positioned in terms of time, fear and fate of Europe easily eclipse the book’s On his third attempt, Bonatti tent. Because their dangerous position four people brings home the brutal characters like Zannis could determine uncertainty by the facts that Emilia is efforts to contrive star-crossed amour. conquered the Grand Capucin, a made any movement in the dark out of situation on an icy rock face at night, the limits of their authority only by openly married to a Nazi colonel, and Oddly and wonderfully, Zannis’ granite pinnacle in the Alps whose the question, Bonatti and Mahdi were however celebrated those involved testing it to the extreme. that both of them feel that they are most tender relationship is not with east face had up to then been thought forced to spend the night in a shallow might happen to be. Zannis does not enter Spies of the safer together than apart. a woman. He must help everyone in unclimbable. The Italian city of Monza depression they’d scraped in the snow. Sometimes in daydreams I see the Balkans as a freedom fighter. Like But Emilia is also still in a position his extended family when the wartime erupted in frenzy on his return, but At dawn they descended to the original, 21-year-old Bonatti on the summit of any of Furst’s insouciant spies in the to help other Jews escape from crisis finally erupts. That means saying his mother, long a victim of high lower camp, leaving the oxygen where the Grand Capucin, eating an apple and making, he starts off with an almost Germany through Greece, via a route goodbye to his brave grandmother, who blood pressure, was overcome by they’d spent the night, as the leading laughing into the sun. He stands for casual view of the dangers mounting that is increasingly vital because vows that the family will not go hungry the excitement and suffered a fatal pair had told them to do in their last youth, something that will never come around him. And at first those dangers others have been closed. “For Europe,” if it can hang on to its sewing machine. collapse. Bonatti was 21. voice contact. to any of us again. And climbing is an don’t make much of a dent, although says one of the many figures in this But of all the qualities that make At the age of only 23, Bonatti was Mahdi lost his fingers and toes to activity appropriate to the young — not Zannis is inconvenienced when his book’s large international tableau Zannis one of Furst’s most appealing chosen to be a member of the 1954 frostbite and gangrene as a result of done for money, or even fame, but to paramour of the moment, Roxanne, of characters, “it’s like slipping out protagonists, his rapport with a Italian expedition to climb K2. This that night. Later an Italian newspaper assert that you’re alive, something done an Englishwoman who runs a ballet the back door.” As a police official, four-legged family member is one of was seen as an enormously important printed two articles that suggested in the short space in a human life when school, is suddenly summoned home. Zannis has a suddenly crucial power: the best. By now, the ultimate grand- project, something that would restore Bonatti had secretly planned to reach it can be done. And looking back, the Although Zannis is extremely astute as He can name certain individuals as scale nobility of his characters may Italy’s national pride after its defeat the summit with Mahdi ahead of the old mountaineer can think “I can’t do a matter of professional necessity, he wanted criminals and ask that they be come automatically to Furst. There’s in World War II. In the event it led to other two, that he had somehow been that now, but I did it once.” Climbing, hasn’t noticed that she might also be a extradited to Greece. But this process something more fresh and idiosyncratic controversy that would pursue Bonatti responsible for Mahdi’s frostbite, in other words, is a consolation for British spy. requires many delicate steps, and Spies in the way this one cannot bear to lose for the next 40 years. and that he had used some of the mortality, and there aren’t very many By the time “an infinitely deflective of the Balkans pieces them together his dog. The two Italians who’d been oxygen himself (despite not having the of those.