(Thanks to Meredith Oyen for lyrics translations.)
After two years of almost constant touring, Mayday hasn't forgotten how to make a studio album. In fact, Born to Love is more coherent than its previous album and the most refined of its six major releases.
Those looking for exciting new developments from Taiwan's biggest band will have to wait for a future record, though. The emphasis this time is on mastering familiar approaches and perfecting details rather than casting off in new directions. It's just a solid album of catchy songs, with three tracks that stand among Mayday's best work.
The album starts on a grand note: a brief orchestral introduction. This bookend, paired with a gentle instrumental at the very end, helps give Born To Love the sense of being a unified work. The string section reappears in the title track that follows, which is a rocker in the vein of the Time Machine album, though it never reaches the artistic heights of that record. There is some blistering electric guitar work here, but as elsewhere, it's a bit overshadowed by other parts of the mix. More on the second track, "Angel," later. It's followed by "Another First Love," a typical bouncy tune further brightened by the addition of a banjo, a clever touch. The rocker "Perfume" has a muscular rhythm track, but like many Mayday rockers, it sometimes lurches where it ought to roll. Ashin also returns to the mic to rap on this one, always a pleasure to hear.
The acoustic "Motorcycle Diary" is nicely crafted and atmospheric, suggesting but not fetishizing a Latin theme. Naturally, it's by flamenco master Monster, whose songwriting skills are catching up to Ashin's. It's just not clear why it needs to be nearly five minutes long. "The Most Important Trivial Concern" is a ballad on a huge scale, but it's too soft around the edges. The melody, which sounds like a forgettable middle-of-the-road ballad from the Seventies, just isn't interesting enough to carry the piece. In addition, Ashin's treacly lyrics -- more on those later -- hit bottom on this track.
I hate to criticize Masa on his first composition, but I'm not singling him out. Stone's gimmicky "Happiness Is Grand" sounds like the kind of track that was fun to record but soon grates despite technically crisp production. Loud and overblown yet slight in inspiration, the song inexplicably goes on for more than three minutes. To Stone's credit, his other composition, "A Thousand Centuries," the last regular track, is one of the album's better songs. It opens with Stone's wavy guitar and has a dreamy quality, following in the tradition of the brilliant "Goodnight, Earthlings" with its millenial lyrics. (Clearly, there's some collaboration going on when other band members write songs.)
Production, which generally shines on Born To Love, positively shimmers on "Forgotten Words." The ballad has a gorgeous layered quality, laced with instrumental and vocal parts that sound like they're coming from a transistor radio. Ashin turns in an impressive vocal performance, too.
But like most of the songs on this album, "Forgotten Words" lacks the melody to support Mayday's characteristic repetition of themes and entire choruses. This approach puts them firmly in the mainstream of pop music, of course, and countless times it's worked gloriously for them. But it takes something like "A Future Without You" from Viva Love, which sustains interest for nearly six minutes with an intimate tone and a constantly building mood -- not to mention a shifting, multifaceted tune. What works for the lads on that and so many other songs too often works against them here. Listening to the last minute or so of most of these songs just isn't rewarding after the first few plays.
The lyrics are a recurring weak point on Born To Love. On the plus side, there is an apparent theme here: Devotion. It starts out promising enough with the title track, evoking images of the Crusades. (This imagery dovetails with the North African setting of the video and reappears in "Perfume." It seems to follow on from "Monkey King," which used Middle Eastern melodies to suggest the Journey to the West. Is Mayday on a reverse Crusade?) The lyrics to "Angel," though simplistic, are at least heartfelt. "Perfume" is imaginative and has some gems: "Just let me live until I've been derailed." But too often, as on "Trivial Concern," the love songs are just fawning and contrived. Sometimes they almost seem like songs to children, which would be fitting with two new fathers in the band, but they aren't. After all these years, and some very wise lyrics along the way, it's disappointing to hear Ashin singing love songs better suited to a teenager.
But three songs stand out on Born To Love. "Angel" fuels its worshipful words with a soaring melody and crisp strings. In wave after joyous wave, this song expresses all the devotion the album needs. Equally ecstatic in a different way, "Offering to Heaven" is the first song on the album -- maybe in the band's career -- that really captures the feeling of a Mayday concert. The music says eloquently what the lyrics do poorly, and with several themes that invite singing and dancing along, this is one of the band's best uses of repetition. A live version could be twice as long and still entertaining. Mayday finally has its "Sherry Darling." And the ballad "Mickey Mouse" is at the same time intimate and majestic. Its singsong melody, martial drums, sad lyrics, and references to cartoon characters clearly recall "Wrong, Wrong, Wrong." But the lyrics go beyond common heartbreak to hint at a deep loneliness in the heart of a someone who's now an icon to a quarter of the world. If Ashin made this all up, more power to him as a songwriter. If not, I feel sorry for him.
Mayday seems to be making fans happy as it refines this pop sound, judging from sales figures. Those who've been along for the whole ride may be itching for fresher material, but if the best of Mayday's material is any indication, the lads will grow bored sooner rather than later. Until then, there are bound to be more gems along the way.