MASK OFF

Vietnamese singer-songwriter MINH delivers a debut EP that traces heartbreak's stages and the quiet freedom that comes with telling the truth.

- WORDS INDRAN PARAMASIVAM PHOTOS MINH

SOMETIMES, THE FIRE that burns is the fire that builds. The glow of its flame derives from the gleam—and friction-born sparks—of experience.

For MINH, that fire arrived late enough to matter, and early enough to reshape everything. His debut EP, THANK GOD! IT DIDN'T WORK OUT, is not the sound of an artist perfecting a formula, but of one finally catching up to his own life. Where earlier projects were guided by instinct and ambition, this one is driven by trials lived. Specifically, the kind you don't go looking for, but cannot avoid once it finds you.

“Before this EP, I hadn't really experienced life that much,” he admits. At 20, he was confident to the point of cockiness, convinced he understood more than he did. That certainty didn't survive his first serious relationship, nor the breakup that followed. What came after was not just heartbreak, but revelation. “It wasn't until I was in a relationship and went through a breakup that I learnt how much I didn't know about life”.

The songs that compose this EP move quickly. Unlike earlier work, some of which sat unreleased for years, this music reached the ether fast.

“The turnaround for this EP was very quick,” he says. “It felt like it came straight from my heart to the audience, immediately.”

There is no ornamental distance here. This is music written in real time, while the feelings were still warm.

NAMING THE WOUND