- What is love? Is it at the basis of everything we do? Or is it an illusion, in the end, just a performance? When we last caught up with Rainbow Chan, the Cantonese-Australian r’n’b chanteuse was locked in combat, a mighty confrontation with life’s largest questions. What is reality? What is truth? How does every element of it -a constant, swirling struggle- fit together, creating me and all that I am? It imparted a certain world-weariness to her 2017 record, Fabrica, that complemented her stylings as a smoky, barroom diva. Come 2019 and Chan has retreated from such fundamental inquiries, fuelling the seductive melancholy of her songcraft with something more traditional: the fire of romance.

Don’t get me wrong, love got a look-in back in 2017, it’s kind of hard to do r’n’b without it. Neither has Chan thrown her intellect in the trash to pursue some vapid romance, today. It’s just that the headlong pursuit of truth has been replaced with something more circumspect. Pillar strikes a fairly even balance between love and heartbreak, the sweet and the bitter. Much of the lyrical content is spent making pillow-talk with some unseen lover, but other moments catch Chan when that love is gone, but she's still whispering, disconsolately, to an empty room. There’s still a skein of deep thought, subtly uniting it all: interrogating, questing, asking what love is, in this space between us. It sneaks in right from the beginning on opener Oblivion: “Feel it in our bodies / It will arise with the sweetest clarity / The push and pull between us - Is that thing love / In our changing boundaries?” 

There’s a sensation of precarious balance, between love and loss. It’s as though Chan has it all and it’s hers to lose. It’s made explicit on Pillar’s title track: “Can’t wait to grow up / You want to be bigger / Buy all the cool stuff / With money you save / Well now that you’re grown up / You long to be smaller / Swallowed by worry / We rush to the grave.” Just waiting to lose her footing atop that pillar she performs a long, theatrical swan-dive, spiraling: “Down, down, down.”

Interestingly Chan doesn’t sound heartbroken or lost, talking about it. The electro r’n’b it’s couched in makes her sound detached, like she was watching it all from a distance, or performing someone else’s passion play. I keep thinking of how she looks on the album cover: all in stylish black, with an over-the-top hat. Good for a funeral or a day at the races, this is a diva who’s seen and done it all and is ready for whatever comes.

Musically as well, that’s the way it plays out. There’s snappy electro, bouncing hip hop beats, sighing ambience and bizarre idm too, to really complete the Björk and FKA Twigs impressions. I think I can hear some Cantopop stylings snaking their way in, every now and then, complementing the passages Chan sings in Cantonese and adding a stylish, exotic quality for an uncultured laowai, like myself. 

For all that Pillar represents a turn towards romance, there’s an emotional distance here. It’s as though performing comes first and real heartbreak is something that happens in private, if it is actually allowed to come out at all. Adopting the persona of the flinty, experienced diva works quite well for Rainbow Chan. She’s happy enough to let you know that she’s done this before, can tell it like it is, turn it into a melodic hook and then make bank on the music.

- Chris Cobcroft.