Review: Mingjia – star, star

Style: Contemporary classical, baroque pop, chamber jazz (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Roomful of Teeth, Vienna Teng, Laufey, Bjork
Review by: Ian
Country: Canada
Release date: 17 November, 2013

I have been informed by my Subway superiors that my habit of waxing rhapsodical in thousand-plus-word reviews is unsustainable, and that brevity is the soul of wit, as it were. While I do prefer to err on the side of verbosity and detail in describing an album, part of me does see their point. Not every album needs a full college essay’s worth of prose describing its every nook and cranny—sometimes it just isn’t that deep, bro. Album good, album bad, album mid. Why say many word when few word do trick? Now let’s see what I’ve got next… a through-composed, tonally dense, sixty-eight-minute opus incorporating a thirteen-piece orchestra, choirs, improvisational elements, spoken-word collages, and lyrics influenced by magical realism and Chinese mythology.

Fuck.

As that summary above indicated, star, star is an album with a lot to say. The brainchild of Toronto-based (at the time of recording anyway) vocalist and composer Mingjia Chen, it is technically her debut full-length, though this descriptor belies the sheer amount of musical projects she has joined or appeared alongside over the past five-plus years. And with one listen, it is immediately apparent that this album is the sound of a seasoned creative mind being let fully off its leash, with opener “Sane // the Dancer” dancing and reveling in breathless exultation amidst disparate musical threads, each presenting its own delightful surprise for the listener.

Sonically this album is a lush, kaleidoscopic cocktail of sounds that overall fits into the “contemporary classical” / “art music” umbrella, yet it makes numerous detours outside even that broad scope. With jazzy sax and clarinet solos (“moon II: dusk, dawn”), atonal interludes (“Sane // the Dancer”), passages of synths and electric guitar (“Losing // the Dancer II”), and some lovely guzheng playing courtesy of Chen herself (“moon 1: time is but a sound”), to say that there’s never a dull moment here is an understatement. The sheer number of musicians involved here means I can’t do my usual mention of everyone’s performance in turn, but the Tortoiseshell Orchestra all turn in impeccable performances, with Naomi McCarrell-Butler’s woodwinds, Ben Heard’s upright bass, and guest vocalist Việt being particular highlights. 

Within all of this, though, there is a solid singer-songwriter core, particularly within the more accessible tracks like “**-*” and “Everything Looks Prettier from Afar”, which recall elements of the eclectic, yearning chamber-pop sound of Vienna Teng and the retro mid-century stylings of Laufey. Yet Chen is never content to make just a pop song, and soon, even the softer, more intimate moments are swept up in grandiose flights of melodic and compositional fancy that often flex her jaw-dropping high soprano range. She’s an incredible vocalist in general, with an astoundingly agile, lovely tone perfect for conveying the complex melange of emotions that run throughout the album.

Speaking of complex emotions, I could write a whole thesis on this album’s lyrics alone. They cast a dizzying arc from the sweeping and cosmic to the small and searingly personal, ranging from a distinctly uncomfortable age-gap romance in “**-*” to a gorgeously abstract painting of a relationship’s rise and fall in the four-part “moon” suite. It’s an album about love, sure, but also the contradictions, flaws, and uncertainties that run through every ugly and holy human being. It’s about the many little distances we put between ourselves and the searing joy and pain of existence, whether through metaphor, religion, storytelling, or the simple passage of time. 

So far as storytelling goes, though, we need to address the spoken word sections throughout, which form my only gripe with Star, Star. While some are welcome additions to the soundscape and lyricism alike, particularly the harrowing, sung-spoken monologue buried in the climax of “moon IV”, having them take center stage in “& Then” feels like a bit of a misstep. Though the underlying layers of strings and winds are playfully complex enough to keep things interesting, hearing various voices ramble on about things like there only being “three stars in the universe”, for me, tips the balance of the album’s concept from “fascinating” to “pretentious” for a brief moment and saps its pacing.

Minor quibble aside, Star, Star is an incredibly beautiful album in every dimension, and my favorite Subway-eligible release of the year. At once fiendishly complex and strangely accessible, deeply personal yet somehow universal, this album blends its contradictions with shocking ease. Like an Escher painting, it pulls off feats of melodic geometry that should, in reality, be impossible, yet in its dreamlike story realm, everything seems to just make sense, and from a distance, the picture comes together to something bewildering yet pleasant. Everything does look prettier from afar, after all.

Recommended tracks: Sane // The Dancer, Losing // The Dancer II, Saint, moon IV: the birds could not sit still
You may also like: iamthemorning, James Fernando, Exploring Birdsong, Gleb Kolyadin
Final verdict: 9/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Instagram

Mingjia is:
– Mingjia Chen (vocals, guzheng, electronics)

The Tortoiseshell Orchestra is:
Tom Upjohn (conductor)
Anh Phung (flute)
Jeff Larochelle (clarinet, flute)
Naomi Brigid Mccarroll-Butler (bass clarinet, alto flute, alto saxophone)
Aaron Paris (violin)
Meghan Cheng (violin)
Clara Nguyen-Tran (viola)
Jill Sauerteig (cello on tracks 1-2, 4-11)
Evan Lamberton (cello on tracks 3 & 12)
Ben Heard (upright bass)
Ewen Farncombe (piano, synth)
Jillana Nickel (vibraphone, glockenspiel)
Mark Ritter (electric, nylon string, & acoustic guitars)