SHE SPEAKS HER mind - when her minder lets her. She wants to be original - but she's happy to sing someone else's songs. She laments the fact that fame has ruined her social life - then cheerfully admits that she never had one to start with. She's sharp as a tack, yet almost painfully naive.
Meet the bundle of contradictions that is Eve Pancharoen - better known as Palmy; the nose-pierced, kinky-haired hippie chick who is trying hard to be Thailand's pop princess with a difference.
'Sorry I'm late,' she says as she sweeps into a room on the upper floors of the green glass tower that is the headquarters of Grammy, Thailand's biggest music company. 'I've just come from the hospital. My throat's sore.' And no wonder, given the punishing schedule she's been set to promote her second album titled Stay.'I had a concert in town yesterday,' she says. 'I've got another one in Korat [a central province] tomorrow, then I've got one down south the day after. And I'm also rehearsing every day for my big Bangkok show on the 15th.' It's been dubbed Palmy in the Candlelight, an al fresco extravaganza in a park near Chatuchak, home of the famous weekend markets.
Palmy in the Limelight might have been a better title. It's hard to turn anywhere in Bangkok without being accosted by posters for the show, with the waif-like beauty doing her best Mona Lisa smile from under a halo of fern fronds. Stay is racing up the charts, her single of the same name, and her debut album was Thailand's top-seller of 2001, shifting more than one million copies. She's on heavy rotation on all the local music video shows is the 'face' of Thailand's biggest mobile phone operator, AIS.
Some artists might be worried about burning themselves out or damaging their vocal chords, but not Palmy: 'I love to perform, even if I'm not feeling 100 per cent. I just go out and do it, and if I can't reach the high notes, the audience will help me. I just go ough-ough-aargh and do this,' she laughs, thrusting an imaginary microphone out towards the crowd.
So what's all the fuss about? Well, for starters, she's gorgeous. She's what is known locally as a luk kreung (half-child): her mother's Thai and her dad is Belgian, bestowing her with a beauty which is at once lambent and ambiguous. She can sing, for sure. And she eschews the pop uniform of aggressively bared navel, crop top and painted-on trousers for her own ethereal look, which gives the impression of someone stuck in limbo between the 60s and the 70s; a renascent flower child. Palmy opts for soft, billowy shirts, arms covered with bangles, keys and rocks and weird artefacts hung on antique-looking chains around her neck, crushed velvet or tie-dyed trousers, op-shop hats. There's something about her that brings to mind Alanis Morrissette, if Alanis were Eurasian, a bit less angry and much prettier.