NOTES: While I do still deeply miss Jessica, I'm glad to see that SNSD's music is still fabulous without her. Additionally, this is one promotional cycle in which Tiffany is absolutely SLAYING. She's honestly never been a bias of mine, but she's been popping up on my radar all over the place in this cycle. I love it when promotional cycles end up showcasing members in a way that makes me love the ones I used to be ambivalent about. SM had me worried with Catch Me If You Can (the choreo was fun and I love hearing EDM in pop tracks, but it just wasn't up to SNSD snuff); and even Party wasn't quite up to the standard I was holding out for. Fortunately, the pre-release didn't set the standard for the album as a whole and honestly, this is quite solidly one of my very favorite SNSD full-album releases ever. TOP TRACK: | Promotional Tracks:Lion Heart - The first time I listened to it was with the video release, and honestly, I wasn't sure what to make of it. Once I warmed up to the retro feel, I found it quite enjoyable. The lighthearted bubbliness of the rhythmic decorations has an undercurrent of energy that makes the dreamy harmonies and the smoothe melody feel bright and engaging. I found the 3-act aspect of the MV interesting, but odd in that the same song was used over and over, even though the tones of each chapter was very different and there are suitable songs to use included in the album. I think SM missed an opportunity there to get viewers hooked on the album's other tracks. I have to say, the Lion Heart Choreo is adorable and I would LOVE and official dance version. I Give it a 7/10: Me Gusta. You Think - This one I had a knee-jerk reaction towards delight. It throws back to the Boys in just the right ways to make me squeal, but differs substantially enough to make You Think it's own fantastic experience. The glitz and glamour of the glamour shots in contrast to the streetwise slickness of the tunnel shots is GORGEOUS. In the same vein as Lion Heart, the dreaminess of the verses and the chorus is weighted by the energetic rhythmic elements playing just under the vocal tracks, the difference being that in Lion Heart the percussion adds a bubbliness and in You Think it brings a sassy insistence and a snarky push towards drama. SooYoung's rap breaks the smoothe lay of the melody up in a way I find a bit jarring, but that's a rather small complaint and it's the only one I have worth mentioning. HyoYeon's rap follows it up well and allows for the bridge to slide neatly into place behind it. Over all it's an aggressive and energetic track that's dripping with sophisticated sass. I Give it a 9/10: Blissful! Other Tracks:Party - As a pre-release track, it was okay. It felt a bit lackluster to me when it first came out, but over all it's a bubbly bright summertime celebration that has a great slide of casual energy that makes it delightfully appealing for just about any summer setting. It's beautifully spatialized and the harmonies move the melody sweetly along over the relaxed but still engaging bass and percussion lines. One Afternoon - The first of the slower, softer songs, One Afternoon has a low key energy and a warm, jazzy softness that lets it slide over the ears in a way that's pleasantly casual. There's nothing in it that demands attention or makes your heart pound, but it's a sweet breath of easy listening that serves as a moment of calm on an energetic album. Show Girls - This track tricks you into thinking it's going to be another clam track to follow One Afternoon, with sweet brassy tones that play well with the warm tones of the vocals. Then it drops into a high energy bustle with sassy swing of the unexpected with a refreshingly unique charm, before sliding back into the brassy cabaret vibe. It flips back and forth with a carefully timed playfulness that gives the track a delightful whirlwind feel and keeps it from feels scattered or cluttered. I didn't like it as much in the Japanese, but in Korean it's good. Fire Alarm - Another of the softer tracks, but this one has no shortage of sass or aggression despite it's dreaminess and the halo of warmth in the harmonies adds to the undercurrent of energy by pulling the vocal line away from the thrum of the bassline, adding a stretch of tension that contributes significantly to the punch of the coolly engaging vibe. Talk Talk - Taking off from the softness of Fire Alarm this track slows things down further, but it amps up the tension and creates a demanding aching in the swing of the melody. The way the sound of the rain falling and the sound of the object of the singer's affection are compared is very sweet, being that both are rhythmically powerful, deep, and comforting. It's a sentiment that rings through the track with the slow and smoothe evolution of the rhythmic elements. The sharp and clean movements of the vocal lines add tension in smoothe waves that belies how narrow the vocal range is. Keeping things confined, keeping the sound of the piano acting as bassline right within the vocal range with the deeper bass being kept to undertones and synth-y echoes, and keeping the high whine of the synth below the highest notes of the vocals, makes things feels deliciously calm and close; like the wrap of a blanket around your shoulders in a thunderstorm. Of the slower songs, Talk Talk is easily my favorite. Green Light - We move from my favorite slow song on the album to my favorite over all song on it. I suppose I have a weakness for SNSD and the words 'beep beep' because the last song they focused on those words remains to this day my absolutely favorite SNSD Japanese release. Green Light is a bouncy press of melodic excellence. The energy and tension is ramped up by the redoubling of the lyrics, each set of two acts as echos that get closer and closer together; and the sets come in a series with each couplet having more syllables than the last, and then sets of two become sets of three, all of which adds energy while keeping the line on a single note (it's due to the fact that there's no tonal change that the rhythmic change is felt so acutely). And then the note following the rapid syllabic redoubling is a swing up to an octave above the chorus, which makes it feel reaching and tense while keeping it smoothe and sweet. Paradise - In a synthy slowdown, Paradise moves with a relaxed hum of energy that nicely compliments the album's songs in higher gear. Like Fire Alarm it's a smoothe and undemanding track that stands as something easy to listen to but otherwise a bit unremarkable. It's a great low key track and the bridge is absolutely lovely, giving the track a burst of energy it came close to lacking. Check - Released with Party this track had me worried that the whole alum would be a lower key, more relaxed sort of release. With the context of the high gear tracks around it to settle my concerns, Check is a chill track worthy of attention. It's cool and collected, moving at an unhurried pace that feels quite alluring as it rides the funky beat below. Sign - This track keeps the funk of Check in play as it amps up the energy and pulls in the synth-riddled vocal harmonies from the rest of the album to add depth to the spatialization. It's an interesting track that's well worth listening to, but it rests on the edge of experimental in a way that doesn't actually push any bounds, but doesn't feel wholly normalized either. I think it's a track that gives a cool aesthetic to the album, but I would guess that it might feel more at home on an f(x) album than an SNSD release. Bump It - This one is set to finish off the album and it successfully makes sure that Lion Heart wraps up strong. It's another one that seems like it's going to be a slow set, but it pulls in the energy and ties all the aesthetic points of the album together with huge harmonic swells and funky rhythms in both the vocals and the percussive decorations. On it's own it's a solid track, energetic and sassy, but lower key than it could be and cool with a clean brightness. As the final wrap up of this particular album, it's absolutely fantastic. Every single stylistic throw or experiment touched on in the entire album makes an appearance here in a succinct and delightfully connected reprise of the release. It's delightful. I Give them a 9/10: Blissful! |
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Surprisingly Lovely. Sorry I've been MIA for a while this summer! A LOT of things have been happening and I hope to be able to tell you what they are soon! For now, all I can say is that some very exciting things are in store for me and for the music world this fall! Anyway, I hope to be back to regular updates for a while. There's a ton of releases I'd like to catch up on, but for now I think I'll start with a recent release before I go backwards:
Ben is more of a ballad singer than an upbeat pop princess and I hadn't seen any of the teasers, so I wasn't expecting this to nearly as cheerful as it has turned out to be. Better yet, the song is actually quite lovely. This release has been getting a lot of flack and I don't think any of it is deserved. She has a beautiful voice as a ballad singer, but I hate the idea that she's being wasted on brighter pop tracks. There's a clean-ness to the notes she sings and a powerful fluidity that presents in how she flits though the melody and in the elegant arches of the overdubs... it might not be groundbreaking or heart-wrenching or emotionally overwhelming, but it's still good. Pop music has a bad rap for absolutely no reason. The melody moves, it's hella catchy, and the vertical structures of the harmonies give depth and breath and help the track evolve as it progresses. The Choreography is engaging without being overly complicated, meaning that she'll have more than enough air in her lungs to make this sound wonderful live. The moves are adorable and perfectly suited to the song and the set and styling aesthetics, both of which are gorgeous. There's a beautiful throw to playfulness and the charm of childhood that could be considered a bit overly immature. However, since there's no element of creepy sexualized infantilization to it, I think it's wonderful. Just because you go up doesn't mean you can't still play around. Adult and adorable are not mutually exclusive terms and just because this is appropriate for children doesn't mean it's not allowed to be enjoyable for adults. Even the lyrics are lovely. It's a song about moving on and being happy after a breakup. The words literally discuss congratulations on breaking up, and why moving on is not only healthy and wonderful, but can genuinely be fun. She's like the post-break-up-life-revitalization fairy and I think it's absolutely fantastic. Too Cute to Handel! Not only is the MV awesome enough to have made me let it jump the queue of other MVs I should be reviewing, it's made itself so important that I can't even keep it in this section. I've bumped it over to the Editorial section because it's too perfect to restrict to a short review. Kpop has done things were 'cute' and 'gangsta' overlap, there's been other examples of aegyo mixing with straight-up awesome, but nothing else I've ever seen does it quite like this; nor nearly this well. Most other versions of an attitude that resemble this one use aegyo to straightforwardly mix in a dose of adorable, but this release takes that a leap forward by avoiding straight-aegyo, for the most part, and using a more sophisticated weave of more traditional imagery to convey the idea that the object of the narrator's affection is a singular point of exception in his world. Every single detail in the visuals plays off the notions in the lyrics, leading to an achingly cute final product that takes its message more seriously than I would have ever guessed just by glancing at the colorful screencaps. It also has something very important in common with Beyonce (but we'll get to that later). The only complaints I have at all are the fact that the whiny sound at the beginning goes on just a bit too long and the video has no specifically active story. It's basically a pastoral, no forward motion, but a beautiful depiction of a static piece of scenery. I LOVE it, but sadly, it can't get a perfect score. I Give It a 9.5/10: DIVINE!!Underwhelming, as Usual... EXO has only ever once really impressed me with a release, but I definitely enjoy how they routinely make catchy tracks in Chinese, it's easily the best thing about them. This MV's been getting a lot of flack from the international community for the mismatched sporting gear, the artsy-weird aesthetics gone wild, and the fact that nothing at all in the MV feels even remotely relevant... At least when SM's box comes into play there's no expectation for anything to happen outside of that box. This seemed like it was trying for symbolism or a story and just never quite got there... It's visually appealing, but it's definitely not very good in the wider scheme of things.
The track itself is lovely, nothing ground breaking, but it's catchy and genuinely great to listen to. The Chinese version is my favorite and it's generally just a good song that's not great, but was never expected to be. I like the follow-up less than I like Call Me Baby because even with the main promo's weird choreo, the track was just a bit more interesting and at least I could tell what was supposed to be happening in the video. There's not actually a single moment in watching this video that I have any ability to confidently explain what's going on or even to guess how the image matters in relation to any other image. And considering the fact that I have a COLLEGE DEGREE in Media Analysis... that's unsettling... and kind of annoying, to be honest. Not what I was Expecting...
I Give it a 6/10: Good Job.Refreshingly Simple & Sweet! This video and the track that goes with it are both charmingly straightforward and delightfully sincere. Chicks and power tools are always a fabulous combination, especially when they're put in a real world context and given to a girl in work clothes whose actually doing work. And watching art-installations being built are always epic backdrops for tracks. Especially, a track like this one. Rhythmically, it's light, energetic, and almost buzzingly busy, but the relaxed and focused vibe in the lyrics keeps things calm and centered. It's like having few cups of coffee and then getting down to work. All of which melds well with the video and with the lyrical story off insisting that you be nice to yourself and stop holding yourself back. If you wanna get, go get. It's the chorus and it's a great life lesson.
There's nothing spectacular or ground breaking, but it's the perfect summer-casual BGM. Well Hot DAMN... At first I wrote this off because the MV was... well kinda gross, quite frankly. I'm still not the biggest fan of the ridiculous objectification, gawking, desire to be possessive of the female body, thing, but there's other elements that I decidedly enjoy, and the fact that the track is just unbelievably kickin' means I've watched this MV like a thousand times at this point and it's therefore more or less criminal for me to avoid reviewing it. I don't have too much to say on the matter, just that it's a shame the MV's so... over the top. In some ways that's what makes it almost excusable, there's an element of parody here. There's also the advocating for safe-sex aspect, and the fact that it represents women of multiple skin-types as all equally sexy. All in all the MV is not my favorite but the track is incredible. Honestly, the feature rap section is just a bit too long for my tastes, but still it gives the rest balance and an enjoyably dynamic contrast. The undertow of epic synth energy pulls the whole track forward and the light bounce of the lyrics moves over it with a sassy slide of confidence that steps well into arrogance but somehow stays appealing. It's spatialized perfectly and the bounce of beats between the ears makes the whole thing even more ecstatically energized. The transitions are smooth and the timings flawlessly poignant. It's pretty dang epic.
Well, it's Cute, but It's not my Fave... Stalkery, obsessive behavior is no better when it's framed with Aegyo than it is when framed by dark broodiness. It's still creepy as hell, and the fact that they not only stalk him, and invade his home, but also rifle through is underwear drawer is just plain stalker-creep of them. It's not cute, no matter how many plastic toys or foam-plushie kitty noses go into it... That said, I do still like this MV, though not entirely for it's own merit. It reminds me strongly of Kara's Wanna MV, which has a very similar concept, though I like the track for Wanna much better. Kara's MV is one I found perfectly acceptable when I watched it, but that's because in 2009 I was 16, and stalking the person I had a crush on seemed perfectly reasonable to my hormone-addled brain. Which it isn't. At all. And as a significantly more sane 22yr old, I'm appalled that I ever empathized with the idea... So I'm kinda ewwed out by this, worrying over how many teenagers are going to see it as an acceptable response to attraction...
Aside from that I do love the styling in this, the whole comic-book pizzazz with sequins vibe is absolutely fabulous and I deeply enjoy all the street fashion that was worked in as well. In terms of the track, I actually find it annoyingly cutesy, considering how wonderfully they managed to avoid falling into that trap with their debut. This track does have it's appeal, it is well made and well balanced and it moves over a delightfully energetic beat with a strength that normally evades straight-up aegyo tracks. For an aegyo-focused song, there's no skimping or shirking, so it's actually a really good track. I just don't like it (There's absolutely no relation between how good a song is and how much I like it, they often correlate, but there's no legit connection). It's a solid comeback and it does good things for the Aegyo genre as a whole, so I'm quite pleased by the release and CLC is a band to watch! Well... um. I Love History. But I am NOT a fan of this... History holds a special place in my heart for having seen them in person last year when I got to watch them warm up to perform Psycho on Music Bank. That release was one I wasn't initially thrilled about, but eventually came around to adoring. This one is similar for a lot of reasons. There's the black & white start-off for one thing, and the tracks' common theme of being obsessed with a particular girl who seems to be spurning the narrator's affections. There's one really important difference however, and that difference makes me squint uncomfortably at this release: Psycho admits that this obsessive characteristic in the narrators displayed desire is really frickin creepy, it acknowledges that this sort of thing can be expected to make people uncomfortable and that it's NOT A GOOD OR HEALTHY RESPONSE TO 'ROMANTIC' FEELINGS. Also, the narrator in Psycho has been locked up in a psych ward where he's forced to project his feelings onto his fellow inmates, meaning that no real portrayals of viable relationships with obsessive abuse are depicted... Might Just Die doesn't acknowledge that the obsession is bad, or wrong, or even very creepy. And worst of all, it uses emotional BLACKMAIL to attempt to bully the girl into staying in the abusive relationship, which basically is the lowest of the low in terms of responses. It's far too common in the real world for me to accept it in the fantasy of music, so unfortunately this release has been taken off the table for any score higher than a 4 at best. ABUSE IS NOT SEXY. ABUSE IS NOT OKAY. THE ABUSER IS NOT SAD OR UNFORTUNATE OR WORTHY OF PITY OR EMPATHY. NOT EVER. And I simply cannot support something that depicts an abuser as the wronged party in an abuse scenario. The way the History members hold the girl against her will, despite obvious attempts to fight them off, is rape or at the very least assault; the way the lyrics discuss 'if you leave me like this I might just die', is not sweet, it's sick, and it's blackmail / extortion; and the way she leaves them is not something SAD to cry over, it's something STRONG to celebrate. JiYeong might have been aiming for sadness and regret and whatnot when he wrote it, but he missed the mark by FAR.
There are a few other things I have to quibble over. While the track is undeniably catchy, it doesn't really go anywhere over the course of the piece, and there really isn't all that much in it to begin with: 2-3 lines per member, and then 15 repetitions of the main line in the chorus... not much depth there. It does effectively represent the mind-set of a man in the throws of obsession, I'll give it that much, but it doesn't elaborate on anything, which makes the blackmail bit stand front and center... Also the saw-tooth synth-waves add a lot of complexity and interesting aural value in some ways, but the over use of them leads to a roughening of the vocal lines that does History's incredible vocalists very little credit. All in all, while I find myself enjoying the drama and getting the earworm of a track caught in my head... this release is really quite disastrous. And with how much I adore History, I find that fact really rather tragic.
It's Certainly Slick, but it's not my Favorite... For the most part, I found the mask thing to be pretty cool, how each member left their mask on until they had a line to sing. Unfortunately that did highlight the imbalance of roles and it forced some members to get dramatically less screen time than others in a way that wasn't really amenable to creating a sense of a successful debut. Also, the lack of names at the unmasking feels like a very tragically missed opportunity to me. Still, I do enjoy the aesthetic and the idea behind it.
The voices are strong enough to be worth watching carefully in the future, and the track is catchy enough to make their debut rewarding to come across. The MV is very simple, but it doesn't feel cheap or cliche. The camera work, editing, and choreography all suit the track perfectly and feel like they've had an expert's touch involved. The puppetry concept is fantastic and it suits the energetic slide of the song very well. The dubstep break felt a bit unnecessary to me, but I've seen worse versions of something similar, so even though it may impact what playlists I put the track in, it's not a deal breaker for ruining a debut. Overall, it's a solid debut for a group that's worth watching. It's not my favorite, but it's really still filled with an impressive use of limited resources and great potential. |
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