In The Name Of... Love (CD + Mini Movie DVD) DVD Region All

In the Name Of... Love largely continues the pleasing pop sound of So Far So... Close, with some impressive add-ons. The album's most notable number is Here We Go, which the singer described as Hong Kong's "most R&B Cantonese song" during his album launch press conference. I'm not sure what Justin Lo has to say about that, but Eric certainly isn't far off the mark. Here We Go is co-composed by Babyface's nephew Jason Edmonds, who has participated in his uncle's albums, as well as written and produced for Toni Braxton and Sisqo. Hey, sounds impressive on paper, and it sounds pretty good on the album, too.

Since the advent of Jay Chou, R&B has become a very popular genre in Chinese music, and the liberal range of music now described as R&B in Taiwan and Hong Kong is something of an Asian variation. Here We Go, however, is really an American R&B number in Canto-pop guise (or a Canto-pop number in American R&B guise). A clear cut above your average Cantonese plug, this mid-tempo R&B ballad is soft, soothing, and soulful all the way, with a particularly remarkable arrangement. Eric Suen does a good enough job on the vocal end, and this song can be considered a minor breakthrough for him, though his performance is still a bit lacking. His singing, while smooth, isn't liquid, so the notes don't linger as well as they could. This weakness is more apparent in the English version of the song, which is otherwise a welcome addition, particularly since Jason Edmonds's lyrics are better than that of Lin Xi. The business-as-usual Lin took care of the lyrics of all the album's songs save for Eric's self-composed, self-penned "Baggage" (Track 10), a solid karaoke-friendly ballad.

The majority of the album's offerings are likable mid-tempo ballads, with "Answer Right Letter" (Track 2), "Happy Farewell" (Track 3), and "Marble Toy" (Track 8) being particularly noteworthy. The best karaoke ballad of the album though would have to be "I Teach You How to Breakup" (Track 1), which hits the right notes with a memorable melody and bitter lyrics. This song also happens to be the main theme of Eric's music movie Love Care which comes with the album.

Lest the term music movie conjure up images of Leon Lai's A Melody Looking or Jolin Tsai's Agent J, Love Care is a decidedly simple and straightforward offering, an urban love story with some philosophizing about romance and separation thrown in. The movie co-stars Kelvin Kwan and Viveon Yeo, with support from the likes of Hins Cheung, David Lo, and Tats Lau (in a characteristically wacky performance). The movie is an agreeable if not outstanding production, although running at 90 minutes, it really starts to stretch the patience near the end. From his previous album to this one, Eric strikes as a throwback to 90s pop appropriate for 2007, and Love Care really drives in that feeling. During the 90s, TVB would regularly air music specials featuring singers trying to plug new albums. These specials usually had lightweight urban caper romance storylines backdropped by the singer's new songs. Love Care feels like one of those TVB music specials, and that's certainly not a bad thing. I actually watched it on the big screen, as a special screening was held for his album launch, and it's at least better than some of the legitimate big screen Hong Kong movies I've seen this year.