Notes: I wasn't going to review this album, because I was really late in getting around to listen to it, but it's honestly too great to ignore. It's musically the strongest release f(x) has ever put out and it's the best album SM has released so far this year. The RumPumPumPum MV was meh. With only a few cool shots and little to separate it from the thick of kpop EDM, RumPumx3 was hanging on the coat-tails of Electric Shock's success. It should NOT have been the track to win the MV, the album has so many better choices that it's really quite tragic... Can I get a re-do, please? Top Track: Toy Final Score: 9/10 Scoring Notes: technically speaking the average of the 2 scores is 8.75, but I gave them a bonus .25 for the fact that this is an incredible album period, but for f(x) it's entirely unheard of and should be duly rewarded. Not to mention, it is a tremendous step in the right direction for both f(x) & for SM as a whole. | Promotional Track: RumPumPumPum is a decent song, it really is, but in the face of all the other songs on the album, it's an incredibly weak title track. Certainly it has a unique sound and it's very well spatialized, but it feels strikingly similar to past f(x) releases, had they been executed with half the care this was. The production values in this are far higher than most of f(x)'s past promotional tracks. Their voices are utilized in ways that actually work for their voices, not pushed or pinched into what SM wants. Rather, what the girls have to offer is taken and manipulated from there. It's catchy and fun, and really a good song for them to promote with, my only really issue with it is that most of the rest of the album is better. I give it an 8/10: Fabulous! Other Tracks: Shadow is that artsy track for the teaser and it's lovely. Like RumPumx3 it has obviously high production values, the girls voices are used rather than force-molded, and it has a unique sound. It's not my favorite, personally the style is just not one I like, but it moves very well, the melody evolves, the light harmonies are all beautifully additive, the warm under-fill is supportive and interesting. All in all a well done track. Pretty Girl is fantastically aggressive, and it still makes good use of the girls' voices, which are on the light and airy side of things. The harmonic support for the chorus gives a good feel of strength and the historically wonderful anthem-pulse of 'boom-boom-clap' is thrown in very well, to push the rebel / celebration idea. Kick is another aggressive song. It fits their traditional style a bit more than the rest of the tracks, merging aspects of their recent synth-heavy EDM with LaChaTa's strong rhythms and vocal push, the instrumental sections get a bit repetitive, but not quite enough to be actively irritating and the pre-chorus sections are just beautiful. Very well produced and spatialized. Signal has a unique sound in a fun retro throw. Again, well produced and beautifully spatialized. The harmonies are smoothe and lovely, the melody floats. Melodically it doesn't do too much for me, but it's well balanced,and the members switch in and out with graceful jumps and the chorus . . . gorgeous. Step brims with tension, right from the beginning it puts a listener on edge. It has a unique, artsy flavor and mixes the light and smoothe melodic vocals with rhythmic sound effects and the solid feel of Amber's raps well. The harmonic evolution through the verses is fantastic. Lyrically it's not the most interesting, but it's very fun. The bridge is breathy and breath-taking in all the right ways, and the transition back is beautifully done. Goodbye Summer was not what I expected at all (not least of all because I didn't notice there was a male guest featured before I hit play. . .). It's a more than solid song: harmonically & rhythmically strong; melodically, it moves pretty well, and the call-response is very nice. The bridge is great, showing off obvious vocal talent. Airplane washes over the listener with a beautiful wash of building tension and beautiful melody. It's absolutely gorgeous in how it moves. The light and airy pre-chorus vamps into the EDM drop well. I personally an not a fan of the first half of the chorus, but I can see how it really does work, and it blends into the the second half very well. The synth pattern in the chorus is very familiar, like achingly familiar. I can't remember what it from, but I've definitely heard that pattern before, which is another reason I'm not simply melting over this song. It's so well done that were it not for my gnawing 'where have I heard this?' feeling, I'd be a puddle of goo. I think it's from an IAMMEDIC song... maybe Perfect? or maybe One? NOPE, WAIT IVE GOT IT!! It's Spectrum. It's the chorus from Spectrum, which makes sense, since SM bought the licensing from Zedd last summer and can't be bothered to write new music when they could recycle. Toy really should have been the title track. Structurally, it seems all over the place, at least at first glance, but each section is logically strung together, the first verse push a certain sort of tension and the chorus pushes an entirely separate sort, both are then brought together for the second verse a light melodic rap which is just spectacular, and the chorus comes back to push the high melody feel, broken elegantly into my Amber and an EDM break that utilized synth strings to build an edgy, orchestral sophistication of the candy-pop melody the synths take in the next verse, which has bounced back to a rhythmic focus to finish out just how it started. It's a gorgeously cyclical journey of musical progression. And as for an MV . . . oh it could have been beautiful, halfway between Electric Shock and (SNSD's) Gee with a throw to (2NE1's) I Don't Care . . . there could have been rag-doll choreography and over-done make-up and masks and mannequins and magical reversals and time-freezes and maybe even a murder (or at least curses and evil magical trickery bits)!! Oh, it really could have been incredible. No More is another retro throw, this one even further back. Melodically it's absolutely lovely; and harmonically, it's even better. It's arranged to let their voices set neatly in the middle of the mix, which is tricky with voices like theirs. The song doesn't really go anywhere, the bridge is more like a landing on a staircase or a random streetcorner mid-journey than anything else, and it circles back around without any decisive evolution, but it's really lovely to listen to. The melodic change at the end almost alludes to a destination, but it doesn't settle enough to make it a solid idea. Still, great track, fantastically fun to listen to. Snapshot is yet another unique track, lounge-y and still solidly a dance track with just a bit of jazz and blues. It has a fantastic attitude and great aggression. The chorus is the weakest link and it's still strong enough to get me grooving. Technically speaking, it's on the weaker side of things, especially on this album, but it's one that I just happen to really like. Ending Page is a great power ballad sort of song. It has clear roots in the success of Beautiful Stranger, with a very similar melodic and rhythmic base, but the chorus lets the voices stretch and soar in a way that Beautiful Stranger can't touch. Harmonically, it's gorgeous, though it repeats through the song rather than develops. The acoustic touches are well done differentiating it further from Beautiful Stranger while linking it up with the rest of this album (namely Goodbye Summer). It's a great track to end with and it's a fabulous thematic finish to the album. I give them an easy 9.5/10: BLISSFUL! |
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Well. That was downright Sloppy of SUJu. I like the brass (well, the fake brass. It's all synth, but still, it's brass-ish). It was a bit surprising for SJ, but in a good way, especially when balanced with the piano. I really like all of the sets the used and most the styling as well (SiWon's suit is questionable...). If they had released this a few years ago, I would have almost no hesitation in calling it phenomenal. The choreography is kind of sub-par for them though, especially with Sorry Sorry, Bonamana & No Other under their belt. Those dances were not only great fun on their own, but they marked the kpop world forever. Hero's choreo is really just there . . . very typical boyband (not even just kpop idol choreo, but to the straight up international standard of boyband dance), and not terribly well done. Normally, SJ is PERFECTLY in sync, and that is an expectation that has become the industry standard, and yet in Hero . . . they just weren't good enough. It's not that they can't hack it, or that they're declining or anything so dramatic as that, they were just sloppy (I blame their production management, this whole PV is a hack-job of cheats and shortcuts, things that should have been reshot and just weren't). It really is pathetically rough to watch in places. That, when compounded with the lack of story, really makes this a hard sell for me. And that even though I'm hardcore ELF, as Donghae is the sole reason I started looking at Kpop groups outside of BigBang. It's really just not even good. Admittedly, when compared to the industry par of Jpop, the production values are pretty high. However, the Koreans have always been high above the Japanese par and it is just not acceptable to think that meeting the Jpop standard is an accomplishment. The song is pretty good. Like I said, I enjoy the brass-piano contrast. And the low-slung energy of the song is lovely. But . . . it's just not that special. SJ has released a dozen songs that have that vibe, and though the brass in this gives it a unique flavor, it is not, strictly speaking, a unique song, especially for Super Junior. I Give it a 1/10: Wow, this is the best you can do?
Sexy Smoothe, but not Quite what I wanted . . . Well, that was utterly predictable. SM has released the dance version first, and the drama version hangs in the ether waiting to throw this round of promotions sideways just like the Wolf drama version did. Anyway, my bad feelings for SM Ent aside, I actually really like this MV. The boys don't look half as ridiculous as they did for Wolf, the setting is much more organic and therefore more appropriate for an MV released in the midst of an epic 'real-ish world' storyline, and the choreography is absolutely kickin'. It all bounces perfectly within the context of Growl's melody, exploiting the smoothe sections for sensuous moves and utilizing the sharper sections for quick aggressive movements. I especially adore the little skipping bits that move the boys and the camera around the warehouse, it's a nice throw to Wolf and it's a beautiful use of the song's bouncy beat. I love how the boys play with the camera and the 'scene' transitions are flawless. It feels very one-take-only in the best way. Musically speaking, Growl is far superior to Wolf. Despite the fact that on it's own, that is not much of an accomplishment, Growl is actually a very good song. The harmonic development is fabulous and the raps work well to delineate the sections while utilizing a singular uniting bass-line (if you recall, one of my biggest problems with Wolf was that it tried to cram six different songs into one. There was just too much going on and nothing to tie all the different bits together. Growl does not have that problem). The track manages to squeeze a few different genres in, but it still doesn't leave a listener feeling lost. There's a great use of delay, and reverb, and echo, and the synth-piano contrast is very well capitalized on to set up the various sections. Also, it's not a carbon copy of anything TVXQ or SHINee has done, it's not exactly a revamp of anything EXO's done before! It's a miracle! Admittedly it does have a very similar vibe to EXO's previous release, but at very least it's original enough so that I can't imediately identify the track(s?) it's based on. Also, this is the first promotion from EXO that I've seen in which the Korean Vers is treated with almost exactly the same level of care and attention as the Chinese version. Usually one or the other is dramatically better, and I usually gripe about it endlessly. This time, however, SM has actually done well. The Chinese version is still a bit better, but it's really a fractional difference. Only time will tell if that pertains to the other songs on the repackaged album (I'm hoping that the Korean version have all been magically remastered), but so far, this is the best release EXO has ever put out. I give it an 8/10: Fabulous!
Drama > Dance. Okay, I'll admit that I wasn't too keen on watching this, which is why I actually forgot about it entirely until it came up on my tumblr this morning because of the Growl teasers. Wolf is an okay song and the dance version of the MV has some cool choreography, but it really wasn't anything worth the hype it won. The drama version is actually quite fabulous, first and foremost because Heart Attack and Don't Go are both much better songs than Wolf. Of course, any drama version is better than a dance version, by default. The drama version really should have been released first, two weeks or so before the comeback as a full album preview (with part two being released one full week before the comeback to make the anguish of not knowing hit a peak, but not be absurd), and the dance version should have been used to maintain the thrill, previewing the choreography on like the Monday before the Music Show performances. SM should have known that. Besides, SM dropped the drama version out of nowhere, there was next to no warning for it and poof there it is, all the hype that came was post-release which is honestly tragic, because videos are supposed to promote appeal not garner attention because of other promotions. Anyway, this MV should be like three minutes longer than it is, the plot progression needed to slow down and the characters develop a bit more, give the fluff scenes a fuller feel. Right now they feel rushed and like they're just there to establish a love line. If there were a few more scenes in school, a little more initial distrust, some shots around the town, out shopping, showing them having more and more fun, and then a private smile or two, walk her to the bus and then pause have both reflect on each other . . . give the story just a bit more STORY . . . it could actually be really good. And the first scene, there should be more to that as well, background on why he's getting this assignment, why that girl is key for some reason, the magic blue-glowiness . . . it that a pack thing? IS there even a pack? or what? if there was just a little bit more . . . it would be epic. Also, Wolf actually works really well with the fight scene. On its own, it's not a good song, but it makes for great dramatic BGM. They didn't use it well, the songs pauses were not exploited and the dramatic swirls of melody were entirely ignored, which is practically criminal, but still, it's a better use of the song than in the previous music video. The drama version has SO much potential to be incredible. But they really didn't do it right, especially towards the end: The trigger that makes her get off the bus confuses me, I mean there is a sightline shot of her seeing the bad guys, but she waits so long after seeing them, there's no way she couldn't have caught up to them before they made it to the warehouse. They should have shown her antsy as she was, but watching them walk away from her, THEN have her get up and off the bus to run after them, but only once they've disappeared from sight. And why everyone abandons him bothers me, there's not a long enough pause between "yay I beat the baddies" and "opps I accidentally hurt a good guy". And how on earth did she not get involved with the fighting? Come on, a terrified girl standing at the door, making everyone pause as the bridge comes up? That would have been perfect, and it would have made the perfect catalyst for his little psychotic-super-fighter-kill-everyone-fit in a way that makes more sense than "oh know my friends". If he was protecting her, than anyone near her would have been a threat, including his friends. Since he wasn't protecting her, and was protecting his friends, seeing them as enemies makes next to no sense, even in the haziness of battle. And that they just left... instead of turning on him, roughing him up at least a little . . . but no, a disgusted look and a bump of a shoulder is all they throw at him. Not even a single punch of hurt or outrage? I don't buy it for a second. Sure one wants too, grabs his jacket and all, and the others hold him back, but someone should have been able to get at least one good swing in. And that she has to approach him, instead of say confront him from being pinned underneath him as he 'protects' her . . . and we don't even see her see him go all bad-ass, whats to say she really did see him, where's the drama in having her just go up to him and talk? We should have had a shot of her watching, horrified from the sidelines at the very least! And also that she has no back up is ridiculous, not one of the other guys stayed behind? Come on, they HAD to have seen her go inside, and not one thought, "this could be a bad thing, maybe I should stick around", seriously? I just really don't buy it. And where is part two? With teasers for Growl floating around . . . is it going to be Growl's MV? From the teasers, it looks like the same set up as Wolf: mediocre dance MV first, then a drama version. If that's the case, SM has truly fallen, but still I'm hopeful. On it's own this MV is incomplete and therefore cannot earn anything over a 9, and as I have so much I would like to change about what the MV does have . . . as much as I think it's a great video and I do truly like it, it is not, technically speaking, very good. I Give it A 6/10: Pretty good.
It met my f(x)-pectations. I'm an English major. I cannot apologize for puns. Besides the statement is true. This video met the expectations I held for it, for f(x) as a whole in recent years. That's not necessarily to be taken as a good thing. F(x) is SM's last big risk and first great failure, in my opinion, they've never been able to push into their own unique and successful niche. This is their same old out-there styling, generic techno-pop, visually interesting, but not spectacular thing. The choreography is fun, I like the patty-cake parts especially, and it plays well with the song and its transitions. The Styling is odd, as expected. Amber's sparkly eyebrow is . . . interesting. I think I kind of like it, but I'd like it better if they were even. I'm not a huge fan of the plaid sections, especially with Krystal's hat. It looks like they're trying to push a Scottish thing and the sound feels Hindi . . . is just doesn't work. And is Victoria wearing a CollegeHumor dress? I really like the glass floor thing, that is actually really cool. Especially with the upside down and out of proper perspective elements, they really play well off the pitch-bend of the song. The rest of the sets are very generic electro-pop backdrops. Visually interesting, but nothing out of the ordinary. Song-wise, it's interesting. The sound feels almost Hindi-pop in the intro, and a bit in the chorus. Like most recent f(x) songs it never really takes off. I like it much better than Pinnochio but a little bit less than Electric Shock. Amber's rap works really well, but it feels like the climax of the song and leaves the rest to hang. Melodically, I like the bridge and the ending, but they don't contrast with the verses well enough to make them pop. I Give it a 3/10: I've Seen Worse.
Hot Hounds, but No Bite. For Exo, I think it's a well made track, they've been seriously gypped on the musical qualities of their releases, but I definitely agree that the song's construction is a complete mess. There's no real shape to the song. The transitions between sections are pretty well done and the chorus and bridge are nice on their own but they really don't fit into the song. The bridge especially, I think it's honestly quite wonderful. And their vocals are strong and smoothe in all the best ways. The styling's pretty cool I like the eyes and most of the hair styles, but the clothing is pretty much a standard raid of the SM over-size scraps closet. All that baggy clothing . . . it's all very familiar, I'm pretty sure it's made a few other SM MVs and none of it was made very memorable. In Wolf, it looks pretty good, but it's just there, none of it has any real oomph to it. I LOVE the choreo, it's powerful and complex. It plays off the concept and it makes good use of all the members, but meh, it's still not very high on my list of releases for summer 2013. And for heavens sake the MV is them dancing around in a room. They really could have pushed the concept further, added some story, maybe taken the leap into the real world... Anything to make it more interesting. Over all, it's blah and SM is really showing that they're stressed at the seams. SM is a dying company and if they don't shape up soon the Big 4 is going to go back to 3 and SM will be nothing but a memory. 3/10: I've Seen Worse.
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