12 Girls Band: Eastern Energy : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

China's endearing Twelve Girls Band could be considered an East Asian Polyphonic Spree. After all, a dozen girls playing sweeping songs, wearing white gowns and bright smiles, resembles the Spree's recipe. But the comparison ends there. On Eastern Energy, their second, these girls glide through a pop-Asian landscape that sounds like some sort of epic soundtrack; they layer classic Chinese instruments -- the erhu, a two-stringed Chinese fiddle, and the dizi, a bamboo flute, for example -- over drums and electronics for fourteen rambling expanses, including two Enya covers. The tunes are exotic (at least to us), instrumental-only and lush, as melodies dance, flutter and crash, at once inspirational and funny. But the mostly traditional Chinese songs have won them, oddly enough, a huge following in Japan -- their debut has sold over 2 million copies there. Still, the highlight has to be the dozen's version of Coldplay's "Clocks," an enthralling, strange rendition destined for fetish property.