*****

Jop and Joy's seventh Mor Lam Panlai album is rather variable in quality, containing some of the best and worst, in artistic terms, of contemporary mor lam. The highs alone, though, are enough to make it an essential buy for any lover of the genre.

The album opens rather unpromisingly: khit hawt ai Jack and I love you are unashamedly vulgar tales with Tinglish lyrics and the emphasis on comedy. Nevertheless, the first of these in particular is catchy and, in the right mood, entertaining enough.

Track three, I-wueng pit wang, is the first song here sung by the pair together. Like most of these songs, it's a pretty standard lam number in the pair's typically rather showy style, and with little drama or emotion on show. Even these, however, are at least well-written and are brought to life by some wonderful singing, as in Aep mak paw hang.

The standout exception to the over-familiarity of the rest of songs is track 6, Jep laeo tawng jam, sung by Jop. This is a towering song, all the more valuable for its rarity as a lam phu-tai by a mainstream commercial artist. There's an attractive saw intro, a pounding bass, and above all a gorgeous soaring vocal line. The album is worth the price for this track alone.

Topping track 6 would be impossible, but the next track does generate some excitement of its own. Jop and Joy song pon is a lam-sing style song, performed at breakneck speed and held together by a tight bass-line - thrilling, if unoriginal.

Thereafter the normal service of overly-glitzy, passably entertaining lam songs is largely resumed. Worth a mention are the rather odd track 8, Chuan ai berng Khong, which turns into another lam phu-tai-style song after a unison introduction, and the last, Joy's Hua-ok mia luang, in which her sharper and more nuanced vocal style is displayed to rather good effect.

This album's overall strike rate - two rather poor songs, one magnificent one, and seven decent - is ultimately not bad. Jep laeo tawng jam is the song that requires you to buy this album, and it's one of the most lam tracks of recent years.

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