*****

Dokfa is one of the best, and one of the least cute, mor lam and luk tung artists currently recording. It's a measure of the relative importance attached to these qualities that she has such a low profile. Fortunately she keeps going, and every year puts out an album of perfectly-formed songs. She's been doing a lot more luk tung recently, and her latest album has only one mor lam track. Even so, this is one to be treasured: she has a great edge to her voice, which keeps away the blandness of so much luk tung, and the scoring makes good use of traditional instruments (the saw and flute are the most prominent).

Tracks 1 and 2 both deal with alcoholism: the former — Baw Tuewa Ai Sua — straight luk tung, the latter — Paw Bak Oh Lay — lam played for laughs (its video, taking off The Matrix, scores full marks for weirdness). The later tracks are lacking in musical variety: track 4 in particular is almost identical to track 1. This is odd, since the tracklist prominently includes the names of the songs' seven different writers, but it seems to be the Dokfa style: the sameness extends not just to the other tracks here, but also those on her previous tung albums . Unsurprisingly, there is even less variation in the content than in the music, with only minor variations in how the girl was mistreated by her man. While this is to be expected, some greater musical variety would be very welcome.

One final note: if you're not comfortable reading Thai script, don't expect any help from the romanised subtitles, which are among the least accurate ever committed to disc.

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