“Viva Love” (“Ai Qing Wan Sui”) is the album that proves Mayday is more than a good-time band with a few infectious ballads. Ashin stretches out in his songwriting to longer, more complex pieces and the arrangements are more complex and varied. With more instrumental parts comes a richer, more mature sound.
The album begins unassumingly, with the light-hearted “Love of These Days,” a short, sunny trifle featuring Ashin and the band singing along to a strumming acoustic guitar as if on a summer day at the beach -- complete with beachy sound effects at the beginning (reminiscent of Wilco’s “Just a Dream.”). It's followed by "Loneliness Terminator," a frantically upbeat Mandarin tune in the style of the first album, and then a more dramatically arranged version of "Ming Bai" from "Touch Together." The three Mandarin tunes come back to back and seem almost an overview of the band's work to date: the sunny tone, the energy, and the melancholy. The production is a bit more sophisticated than on the earlier albums and the sound quality is better, but there's nothing in those tunes to suggest the lads have anything new to say.
It's in the next song, “Nobody Else in My Heart,” that Mayday breaks out of its former limitations. Beginning with a few odd, staggered drumbeats that give way to thundering guitar chords, the band leaps to life only to suspend the beat again, then leap ahead and hold up the beat over and over through a whole verse. Then the chorus kicks in like an engine starting, and instead of bouncing along like all the earlier Mayday rockers, the song rolls forward. The guitars provide the locomotion, Ming riffs on the drums, and Ashin's voice is deeper and more confident than on the earlier rock songs. The second verse stutters forward like the first, then there's another chorus and a rollercoaster of a bridge to the final chorus. It's a typical, simple form, but even at just 4'12" in length, the endless surprises in arrangement make it a much more substantial work than it probably would have been on Mayday's first album.
“Nobody Else in My Heart” is no fluke; it kicks off a series of midtempo songs that reflect the more mature sound. Where the "Mayday" album suggested the Monkees and, somewhat, the early Beatles, through these songs runs a thread of influence from the Beatles' last recorded album, Abbey Road, though that thread is sometimes thicker and sometimes thinner. The drums in particular, which are almost always out in front of Mayday's songs, have a polished sound on this album that at times perfectly mimics the later Beatles, though Ming is a far more adventurous drummer than Ringo. For this whole set of songs the band also shifts to Taiwanese, in my opinion a better language for rock vocals than Mandarin. The syllables are hard and staccato where Mandarin tends to slip along on the tip of the tongue.
Track 5, “A Future Without You,” is another of Mayday's best. It opens with a drum lead-in, an "Octopus's Garden" style guitar and a soft vocal and builds over its 5'37" running time with several repetitions of the melancholy chorus. Musically, the climax of that chorus is a simple "na-NA-na!" that sounds like nothing but the triumph of pure pop. The addition of a horn section, another late Beatles influence, adds to the song's majestic quality.
“Fool” continues the majestic tone, though it's a straight-ahead anthem and less dynamic in arrangement. Again the strings and horns build to one climax after another while the drums and Taiwanese vocals keep up the song's edge. This song, which foreshadows the many anthems that would follow on Ren Sheng Hai Hai, is set apart from them by a more economical arrangement and a sometimes whimsical tone. (The video is a Monkees-like comedy skit that finds the band in a jail cell, striped jumpsuits and all.)
“Call Me No. 1,” a frantic rocker in Taiwanese, breaks up the series of groundbreaking songs, but a change in tempo keeps the album fresh. At just 2'30", its buzzing guitar and repetitious, shouted vocals here mostly serve to create a great lead-in to the next song, “Rainy Night.” (Incidentally, Call Me No. 1 sounds much better as the opening song on the Tour 2000 CD.)
“Rainy Night” sounds like its title, and even more so what seems to me its literal translation: Rain Sleep. It rolls along, the same melody repeated again again, building slowly as the cymbol crashes get louder. It's like a dream that repeats itself as the thrum of rain turns the night restless.
Then the lyrics shift back to Mandarin, with "Romeo and Juliet," the band’s best straight-ahead rock song yet. Despite all the power chords Stone and Monster have strummed up to this, Romeo and Juliet gives the band's rock sound an edge it’s never had before (nor has anywhere else on this album). Ashin leads us through an apocalyptic electronic universe. The sound is reminiscent of U2's, with layers of guitars and effects. A repeated, high-pitched vibrato tone in particular stands out, getting louder with each verse. And where the verses growl and churn, the choruses sound sprung open and aspiring, reminiscent of Squeeze, creating a nice contrast. Ashin shows a flair for the dramatic with the ending, simply singing a capella, "Romeo and Juliet."
“Tenderness” forms a perfect pair with “Romeo and Juliet,” coming in like a sigh of relief. It's the second full-on ballad on the album and shows Ashin at full pout (and at the edge of his vocal range). Though it's a simple song, the melodies it repeats are among Ashin's prettiest, and a pair of guitar solos toward the end of the song make it stand out. The first is simple, melancholy and nicely played. The second comes at the end of the song after Ashin murmurs "Zhe shi wo de wen rou" (This is my tenderness) over and over. It explodes with an astonishing guitar line that reaches up an octave. The line glows and sears, then just as quickly fades, only to be replaced by a spiraling violin, and then a moaning cello. The song ends with a classic late Beatles touch: a short, repeated violin chord.
That ending to a great pair of songs raised my expectations for the remaining two songs on the album, each clocking in at more than six minutes. But both are disappointments here. The Mandarin rocker “Viva Love,” like “Romeo and Juliet,” features layers of guitar effects, and its form is the most innovative of any song on the album. But it's all in vain as the song lurches forward, losing momentum with a repeated, meandering bridge. Where in "Romeo and Juliet" the band seems to fire the verses from a gun, here it's stabbing ahead with poor aim. A much better version, appears on “Where Are You Going To?,” the live collection from the 2001 tour, with a pulsing synthesizer providing momentum.
“With Love to the End,” the final song on the album, sounds like a too-drawn-out ending. With few lyrics, it’s dominated by heavy-metal guitar. The use of feedback is good, but it’s not enough to sustain the song. As in “Viva Love,” Ashin seems to stretch his voice not just to hit the high notes but to be heard over the instruments. The only highlight is our first chance to hear him actually scream, though even that is buried under the guitar heroics.
Still, by the end of “Viva Love,” Mayday is far away from where it was on the first album. The band has new colors in its palette, yet as always, the old brightness and innocence is still there.