Checking in on the Hong Kong charts…

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[6.17]

Iain Mew: I have been learning Cantonese for a while. I am still not very good at it but that means that it sits in the same sweet spot as French and German where I can mostly listen to the singing as abstract but also get the occasional thrill of understanding, like in the first verse here when Fiona’s cat asks her when it will have tuna to eat. I’m mentioning this for this particular instance as it also goes some way to confirming the impression (not least from the video) that “9:55pm” is twee as fuck. It also has a few things going for it which make it really great as a song regardless of tweeness, language or whatever. Fiona’s voice, which is like a slightly less cut-glass Sophie Ellis-Bextor. The ultra light and composed way in which the song almost all glides along. The hand claps. Most of all, though, I love “9:55pm” for the bit after the chorus when it destabilises with a ‘wrong’ chord and completely unspools before snapping right back into forward motion. I can’t think of anything that sounds remotely like that bit and it is completely amazing. I look forward to it every time and still get a little surprised by it.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: If I spoke Cantonese I might be more irritated by it, but the fact that she sounds like she’s singing in an exaggerated English accent (my brief sampling of the rest of her career suggests that it’s put on for this song) only doubles down on the tweeness of it all. She Manic Pixie Dream Girls it up in the video, playing with colored yarn, wearing a top hat, hip-hop dancing alone, and sobbing at a television soap opera, but the music is solid enough under her feet for the flights of fancy to stick. Particularly that wobbly bridge, a stroke of inventiveness I’d like to hear more of.
[8]

Alfred Soto: The hyperactive synth gurgles and burbles evoke mid eighties SOS Band if they’d been at the service of an okay singer. 
[5]

Anthony Easton: Exquisite chorus, extra points for hand claps and disco lasers, but the whole thing could be in and out in under a minute, and as it is stretched into oblivion. 
[4]

Brad Shoup: Perhaps it’s not possible to construct an aural version of The Clock. Maybe I’d just be better off slotting this after Chuckii Booker.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: This is what happens when Zooey Deschanel gets into Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, isn’t it?
[5]