Shanghai Baby emerges with declarative intensity on the empowering “Is This The Right Time”
Originally written for Alt Citizen
Ade Martin of lo-fi indie rockers Hinds continues to explore new sounds on solo project Shanghai Baby, borrowing the name from the title of Wei Hui’s semi-autobiographical novel. Known for frank discussions of sexuality and romantic relationships and realistic depictions of substance abuse, the novel Shangahi Baby has been lauded by critics for communicating a feminist perspective rarely expressed from within China’s conservative borders. Like the novel, Martin’s Shanghai Baby takes a bold stance as a liberating channel for focusing on more personal topics and breaking free from the abstract constraints of what defines an individual when removed from the collective.
“Is This The Right Time” opens with a driving rhythm and electronic squeal before settling into a fuzzy groove accented with jangly guitars and skittering percussion, packed with an emotive essence that elevates the track beyond the indie rock template into a soaring anthem for personal independence that feels much larger than the sum of its parts. The propulsive, forward momentum spools up into a massive hook that swings for the fences, exploding into a blast of sound and fury like a ray of sunshine piercing a thick grey layer of clouds to deliver light and warmth to a slumbering, expectant landscape beneath. “Is this the right time to let me out?” asks Martin, as if shouting from a mountaintop at god itself, resolutely defiant in the face of overwhelming odds and determined to make her voice heard amongst the din of all things.
Brilliant in its simplicity, the video recalls the spartan, industrial aesthetic of Nine Inch Nails’ “March Of The Pigs,” juxtaposed with the track’s musical buoyancy to create an aura of cognitive dissonance that balances “Is This The Right Time” on an uncomfortable precipice demanding one’s complete attention to the visual poetry unfolding on screen. Martin takes center stage throughout, the sole occupant of an empty white room bedecked in rags and chains like a corpse exhumed for examination under the clinical fluorescence of an unblinking TV eye. Abrupt scene changes briefly cast the room in black, an undisturbed grave beneath the earth offering relative solace from the blinding lights and comfortless vulnerability of the white room’s liminal space. Spilling up from the floor, Martin sits amidst scattered piles of soil, freshly emerged from below and glaring up into the camera with feral intensity, literally smoldering amongst the debris. “Is This The Right Time” is an emergence, a threat, an ultimatum borne from releasing a djinn from it’s bottle, a series of events impossible to stop once launched into motion.
On the strength of “Is This The Right Time,” Shanghai Baby feels less like a new project and more like a complete reawakening, a reinvention of self that discards the past to embrace a new personal perspective.
Stream “Is This The Right Time” on Spotify and follow Shanghai Baby on Instagram.