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EXO’s Don’t Mess Up My Tempo is polished to a fault

EXO is back on familiar ground: their fifth album proper Don’t Mess Up My Tempo is a polished yet middling mishmash of brawny electropop and mid-tempo R&B, accompanied by vocal performances so polished they sometimes border on insentient. The best moments of the album reveal brief glimpses of a human touch, but they are few and far between.

★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

As sad as it is to say, EXO and their fans are no stranger to drama, especially surrounding the makeup of their group. A turbulent 2014 (ironically, the year after their breakthrough) saw two of their four Chinese members sue their management -- megacorporation SM Entertainment -- and their resultant exits from the group; the following year, a third one would leave as well. Coupled with the fandom’s growing distrust with the agency, it is no wonder that EXO-Ls smelled blood in the water when it was announced that Lay -- the only Chinese member left -- would not be participating in the production of and promotion for their fourth album, The War. Also unsurprising is their relief once rumors started swirling that he would return for their 2018 comeback, Don’t Mess Up My Tempo.

What eventually materialized is probably the biggest let-down in recent K-pop history. Lay’s part in the comeback amounted to a split-second cameo in the music video for “Tempo” (he fares better in the Chinese version, but not by much) and a total of five lines on the entire album. Unlike EXO’s previous release, which saw the group embrace the spirit of grand experimentation to varying success, Don’t Mess Up My Tempo bears more resemblance, musically and aesthetically, to their last release with Lay, their third studio album Ex’Act. But while that album saw the boy group settling into their newly mature sound, this attempt feels a lot safer, not to mention a bit dated (which makes sense considering the majority of the songs here were formulated in a writing camp two years ago, right around the time Ex’Act was released).

As standard practice for SM Entertainment artists since the turn of the decade, Don’t Mess Up My Tempo is the product of a collaboration between the Korean artists and a diverse team of international musicians (the agency arguably pioneered this practice). As a result, the influences present on the record are predictably omnivorous. “Ooh La La La,” probably the most obviously trend-chasing track here, takes cues from Latin pop, while “Gravity” gets its futuristic feel from Daft Punk’s soundtrack to Tron: Legacy, although it sounds more like what the past thinks the future would sound like than the future itself. This extends to the three additional tracks on the repackaged edition, the best of which, “Trauma,” is inspired by the sound of Maroon 5’s inoffensively sounding yet unfortunately named Red Pill Blues. Aside from external influences, some tracks also draw from EXO’s own collection: “Gravity” includes some of the sound effects on the crowd-pleasing, Olympic stadium-filling “Power,” and “Sign” and “Damage” recall a similarly aggressive cut on Ex’Act, “Can’t Bring Me Down.”

Sonically, Don’t Mess Up My Tempo is split between the kind of brawny electropop that EXO is known for and mid-tempo R&B with a few surprising touches that do not quite land, the former of which is evidently stronger. Title track “Tempo” follows in the genre-blending spirit of post-2013, combining elements of R&B, funk, and house; despite this, the end result sounds far more cohesive than its radically disjointed predecessor. Meanwhile, “Ooh La La La” deftly navigates Latin pop over an understated flamenco guitar but does not stray too far from EXO’s musical wheelhouse, which is more than their juniors NCT 127 can say with “Regular” (also their most conspicuous trend-chaser) -- both songs raise questions about cultural appropriation and ownership, on which K-pop does not have a particularly great record. This forceful approach has its limits, however. “Damage” turns up the aggressiveness dial to a 10, and it is here that EXO’s usually superb vocalists falter: Baekhyun particularly struggles to match the energy of the production, but pretty much all of the singing members fail to catch up with the song’s pace.

On the other hand, the R&B half of the album contains some of its weakest songs. On “With You,” the vocals move leisurely on a garage beat that goes at least twice as fast, but the two never reconcile; ironically, when the rappers finally pick up the pace to match the beat in the bridge, the beat disappears. “24/7” reaches for an effortless mood not unlike “Ooh La La La,” but without an effective low end like the flamenco guitar, the track just floats without a discernible climax and might find a place among the 148 indistinguishable songs on Spotify’s Chill Vibes playlist. Still, none of this quite prepares you for the snoozefest that is “Smile on My Face,” the token ballad of the album, whose thesis statement -- “I did it all with a smile on my face” -- feels akin to equally empty attempts at authenticity, like Charlie Puth’s “Through It All,” and whose soft-touch production sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the LP.

As usual, the vocal performances on this record are near-perfect. Main vocalists Baekhyun, Chen, and D.O. remain the ones to beat when it comes to vocal technique and continue to be at the forefront of these tracks, but other members are getting their moment in the spotlight too, especially Kai, who has always been more appreciated for his dancing than his singing, but whose unmistakable timbre is now prominent on virtually every cut. All of the voices on EXO are very individual, but they also work incredibly well in harmony, and they are almost peerless in this respect; it is precisely what made the hook of “Call Me Baby” such a delightful listen, and what now makes the acapella section of “Tempo” virtually inimitable. However exceptional their vocals, there is still no getting around the utter lack of personality that looms over the record. On many occasions, the songs sound like extremely polished demos, their voices merely a stand-in or a guide for others; at worst, they amount to little more than disembodied voices. EXO’s stunning vocals, among other factors, have always served as a sort of personal stamp, ensuring that EXO songs are instantly recognizable as EXO, but that is less certain for the lesser cuts on this album: Monsta X would have been a far better choice for “Damage,” and “With You”’s garage beat could similarly find a more fitting companion. It certainly does not help that the songwriting here feels particularly uninspired: the guy-gets-girl, guy-leaves-girl (or vice versa) motifs start to get exhausting three tracks in, let alone three albums in, yet that is what almost all of EXO’s songs have been about since Ex’Act, and the trend continues here to increasingly dull effect.

The few, brief glimpses of a human touch coincidentally (or not) appear on the strongest tracks of the LP. “Oasis,” the album’s closing track, features the members essentially singing to one another about moving forward no matter the difficulties (something they obviously have experience with): “And we go even further / On this road with a long way to go / Runnin', I'm runnin', chasing the sun.” Here we can actually feel the members reach further down than surface level, and they sound noticeably more earnest than they will ever do on the record, especially Baekhyun, who presents a career-best performance in the bridge. But the only truly memorable track on Don’t Mess Up My Tempo is “Bad Dream,” which begins and ends with a soft guitar riff, but whose main musical character is ordinarily horrendous Chainsmokers-esque synthesizers that work surprisingly well here. Rounding out the middle section, the song possesses the richest imagery of the album, evoking a sense of helplessness and even claustrophobia -- “I’m trapped in you as you rage around me” -- and its swooshing synths help depict the raging hurricane in the main character’s mind.

In an interview with Billboard breaking down the songs on Don’t Mess Up My Tempo (and its repackage Love Shot), Patrick “J.Que” Smith, who composed and arranged “Sign,” compared EXO to Clark Kent and Superman -- polite and mild-mannered young men who become titanic performers on stage -- and felt compelled to write songs for the latter. I might not be very well-versed in superhero canons, but it has long been common knowledge that things are a lot more complex than that; from the quintessential superhero story of Clark Kent and Superman to the recently critically acclaimed Logan, the best superhero stories have always been informed, at least in part, by their personhood, and its struggle with their powers. There would be no Iron Man without Tony Stark, no Captain America without Steve Rogers. It is a lesson that EXO and SM Entertainment would do well to absorb.

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Billie Eilish is pop’s newest wunderkind: WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? review

Billie Eilish is shaping up to be pop’s newest wunderkind, signed off on by the former titleholder herself. On a surprisingly well-crafted album, she makes a convincing case for herself as the voice of her generation. At its best, the album fine-tunes Eilish’s aesthetic and dismantles pop tropes, but the throughline of the LP is the often melodramatic teenage mind, which she approaches with consummate care.

★★★★★★★★☆☆

In a way, teen pop stars reflect the state of pop music of their time. The (largely female) teen music sensations of the aughts came from the likes of Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, and so they (or rather, their image) reflected the whims of corporations and industry big-leagues at the time: clean, unproblematic, uncomplicated role models. It explains why the narratives of these artists now, who have come to dominate the cultural zeitgeist, seem so incongruent with those from their past. Recent career-defining projects from Ariana Grande (Sweetener, thank u, next) and Demi Lovato (Tell Me You Love Me) render them unrecognizable from their earlier spotless identities; sexual liberation is a common theme, of course, but more interesting is their acknowledgement of cracks underneath the surface. The Jonas Brothers’ smashing comeback earlier this year is only made possible by the braggadocio that only sex can bring.

The pop machine remains entrenched to this day, but there are signs of a new force taking hold. Today’s rising stars come from YouTube and SoundCloud, predicated on actualizing the idea of freedom of expression, and altogether they reflect the democratization of pop music, if not of society as a whole, and the liberation that follows; without the presence of gatekeepers, they are forming their own image, completely unfazed by notions of commercial viability. Thus, Billie Eilish, the most recent SoundCloud find, mercifully relatively untouched by the machine, is nothing like the teen sensations of yore. For the past three years, she has carved out her own peculiar space, a space only those at the fringe would dare come close, and on her debut full-length LP, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, she fine-tunes that aesthetic with almost surgeon-like accuracy, but not by way of repackaging it more tastefully for the mainstream. It certainly sounds so at the beginning: most of “bad guy” sounds like a complete about-face, riffing on a melody that smacks of commercialized Halloween, almost like caricaturing her own aesthetic. But the album only properly begins in the song’s third act: a heavily slowed-down, bass-heavy, spoken-word section that is closer to her modus operandi. But it also works like a full-throated cackle -- “bitch, you thought” -- in the face of detractors, as if she can sense their sigh of relief (maybe she actually can). That stubborn self-assuredness and humorous self-awareness are just some of the things that make this album so enjoyable.

And so we enter the Billie Eilish Experience. The third act of “bad guy” acts as a lead-in but also a predictor of the album’s overarching style -- bass-heavy, largely guided by rhythm, otherwise sparse instrumentation -- and many of the album’s highlights follow this formula. The formula finds its most undiluted expression in “xanny”: the song never achieves anything close to a melody except the bridge, and its drop entails the most aggressive use of bass in recent pop history, probably blowing out most earphones in the mass-market range and rendering Eilish’s vocals totally unintelligible. But parts of the formula are scattered everywhere: bouts of very pronounced bass pop up in the middle of songs; sometimes there is a sole piano or guitar or ukulele, whatever seems to be her preference at the time; other times she hums out her own backing melody. There are also occasions where the tempo slows down way into ballad territory, especially towards the end of the album, and those moments are relatively less successful, particularly the closer “i love you,” which comes dangerously close to becoming a sobfest.

It has become pretty clear that most pop artists who claim to be anti-pop are bullshit, but judging by the way Eilish pushes back against pop tropes here, she may be one of the first true anti-pop pop figures (which is totally a category that exists), even if the musical structures she employs here are purely pop. On “xanny,” she refuses to succumb to the appeal of recreational drug use, while “bad guy” is a wholehearted embrace of villainy à la Taylor Swift, though Eilish’s attempt definitely carries more bite. Elsewhere, “wish you were gay” begins with an acoustic guitar, the epitome of pop authenticity, but subverts that with sounds of an audience -- the pitiful aww’s, the slight chuckles, and of course, the applause; she knows all of this is fake, and the broken fourth wall is a delightful sight (the subject matter is quite a misstep, however). But she is not always so proficient. The “good girl vs. bad girl” trope makes an appearance on “all the good girls go to hell” -- needless to say, she’s an advocate for the latter -- but it keeps the false dichotomy in place, instead of doing away with it entirely. Perhaps the biggest misfire here is “my strange addiction,” a mindless perpetuation of the equation between intense romantic attraction and a drug-induced high, entirely antithetical to Eilish's adamant rejection of the latter. (It is rather telling that the album’s biggest misfire is one of only two tracks Eilish did not take part in writing, but it is also surprising that she did not scrap it the moment she saw it.)

The common thread throughout the LP is the often melodramatic teenage mind, which Eilish approaches with consummate care. There is the inflated ego in “you should see me in a crown,” the quiet fury in “xanny,” the hopeless romantic in “wish you were gay,” the emotional confusion of “i love you,” or even the paranoia in “ilomilo.” But what Eilish arguably captures the best is teens’ often misguided self-loathing, particularly in the aftermath of a romantic break-up: “8” is Eilish’s “Liability,” a masterful treatise on low self-esteem, written by the perpetrator in the perspective of the sufferer. There are countless other brilliant songwriting moments like this on the album; thus, it is quite a feat that the entirety of the record’s writing is done by a grand total of two people. But “8” may count as some of Eilish’s and FINNEAS’s (brother and co-writer) career-best writing: melodramatic, yes, but tentative enough that the drama flies just under the radar (though that is also partly the credit of Eilish’s vocal performance). Most of the experiences on WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP might be universal, but some moments feel specifically informed by this day and age. “all the good girls go to hell” reflects generational anxieties about climate change, while “listen before i go” prompts hard questions about how we talk about suicide and depression (my own contribution: is there an acceptable way to talk about it in a public domain?); on a lighter note, “my strange addiction” faintly projects the millennial obsession with The Office.

It all culminates in “bury a friend,” the crown jewel of WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP and the musical apex of Eilish’s young career, where the best attributes of the album all converge. Its music video looks like a miniature horror movie, but the song itself sounds like it, too. The track’s staccato beat evokes horror’s signature flickering lights. Eilish’s hushed tone, whether alone or accompanied with backing vocals, makes the eerie atmosphere of the song, the background voice sounding like it is lurking directly behind her, waiting for a jump scare when she least expects it; her distorted screams would also make for a great jump scare. The errant sounds on the track -- the dental drill, the staple gun, the broken glass, the Easy-Bake Oven -- resemble things that go bump in the night. The song is written in the perspective of the monster under your bed, but not so much in the sense of the bogeymen of childhood as in the sense of one’s personal “monsters” and how we can all become paralyzed by them. The line between the person and the “monster” is never made clear, and by the end of the song, there really is no telling between the two; we are our own worst enemy, Eilish seems to point out.

What does this all mean, in the context of this new era of pop music? There are certainly many sweeping observations to be made: that Eilish signals a major shift in how pop stars are made, that she is reinventing teen-pop stardom, that her success represents an era where adolescents are finally taken seriously. But perhaps the most apparent conclusion is that Billie Eilish is shaping up to be pop's newest wunderkind, signed off on by the former titleholder herself, evidenced by a body of work uncompromising in its premise and surprisingly well-crafted in its substance. Perhaps our first taste of the album, the audacious yet clairvoyant “you should see me in a crown,” put it best: watch her make us bow, one by one by one.

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Ariana Grande’s thank u, next is a formidable display of self

In many ways, thank u, next feels like a sequel to its predecessor, but where Sweetener was a study in optimism and musical daring, thank u, next is a formidable display of self, centering on Ariana Grande the personality and the artist, marked by not only her contradictions but also her musical sensibilities. One is left with an admiration for her self-assuredness amidst such harrowing times.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ - a Reese’s Pick

The universe has a cruel way of functioning: five and a half months ago, Ariana Grande was coasting on the highs of the release of her fourth record, Sweetener, and her whirlwind engagement with comedian Pete Davidson, following her exit from a “toxic” relationship with Mac Miller. Sweetener itself, which contains 2018’s best song, was a masterful display of relentless optimism and musical daring, featuring a smile that never slips and some of Grande’s career-best work (with help from Pharrell, who was perhaps cleaning out his hard drive).

In the next two months, that would all change: Miller would die of substance abuse in September, and Grande and Davidson would dissolve their engagement the following month. Both men are haunting presences on thank u, next, Grande’s new album, whose title track, an ultimate ode to self-love, has already been considered mythic. In many ways, thank u, next feels like a sequel to its predecessor, but where Sweetener was relentlessly optimistic in its subject matter and remarkably audacious in its production, thank u, next is a formidable display of self in both senses. The record puts her front and center: a woman of human contradictions and precocious musical sensibilities, buttressed by fellow musical talents with a knack for capturing the times.

Not only is thank u, next an account of the next chapter of Grande’s life, but it also feels like a logical next step musically: after having help exploring the various facets of her voice (and, by extension, herself), she – still a relative novelty among her competition – is making her own Ariana Grande record, bearing a writing credit on every one of the record’s 12 tracks, on which she is also credited as an executive and vocal producer. It is her personality that the record orbits around, which somewhat accounts for the staggering thematic and tonal differences between some adjacent tracks: she confesses to constantly wanting companionship (“needy”) but later asks her beau for some space (“NASA”); she verges on manipulative on one track (“make up”) but earnestly apologizes on the next (“ghostin”); the vulnerable tone of the title track stands in stark contrast to the flippancy of “break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored”. These conflicting traits aren’t particularly endearing, but their appearance on the album humanizes the woman behind them, peeling back the curtain a bit, if only briefly.

In Grande’s company are some of her closest friends and most longtime collaborators, namely songwriters Victoria Monét and Tayla Parx, producer Tommy Brown, and Max Martin et al., who turn Grande’s ideas into clever turns of phrase and accompany them with up-to-date melodies. Standing next to Pharrell creations on Sweetener, the Max Martin half of that record always felt sort of inferior, never as risky or as smart as its counterpart, and while his tracks on thank u, next aren’t much different, the slick productions on highlights “bloodline” (brass section!) and “bad idea” (that outro!) are a reminder that we may yet see the end of Martin. Brown and Monét, who orchestrated some of Grande’s best songs (“Honeymoon Avenue”, “Moonlight”, “Be Alright” etc.), are instrumental in the making of thank u, next, making strange but intriguing wordplay in “NASA” and “make up” and turning therapeutic acceptance into chart-topper in “thank u, next”. Andrew “Pop” Wansel, who wrote Nicki Minaj’s stunning “The Crying Game”, helps pen the defiant thesis of Grande’s present M.O. (“fake smile”) and articulates falling in love with the idea of a person with equal parts grace and savagery (“in my head”).

Despite this number of people working on this album, thank u, next is easily Grande’s most sonically cohesive and consistent full-length effort. The album frequently toggles between tempos, temperaments, and musical schools of thought, but its soundscape is decidedly and reliably current with trap at the center, sprinkled with instantly recognizable references (“Highlight of my life, like that Fenty Beauty kit”) and Instagram-worthy lines (“You could say ‘I love you’ through the phone tonight”). This speaks to Grande and her team’s ability to capture the zeitgeist, in ways that most of today’s female pop frontrunners cannot. Also contributing to the of-the-moment nature of thank u, next is the comfort with which Grande moves between various vocal modes and ways of delivery, which she inherits from Sweetener and further hones on this record. Her usual acrobatics can be found on “imagine” and “fake smile”, but most of her performances on thank u, next feature her voice coasting lightly just above the production, a sort of weightlessness achievable only by an artist who, in her words, no longer has much to be afraid of. What truly places her in the new pop landscape, however, is her proficiency in styles previously inaccessible to vocalists of her ability, particularly rap, her capability of which she showed tentatively on some Sweetener cuts and which she shows with aplomb here. “7 rings” sounds like a rap song with a featured vocalist, Grande’s performance immediately drawing comparisons to Soulja Boy and Princess Nokia (rousing plagiarism accusations from them as well). Throwback or theft, that her rap is so convincing is a testament to her abilities. Elsewhere, “fake smile” uses the same sample as Wu-Tang Clan’s “Tearz” – Wendy Rene’s “After Laughter (Comes Tears)” – to preface a personal but presently universal refusal to hide one’s unhappiness.

Unsurprisingly, the cuts that feel the most weightless end up being the most harrowing. “needy” sounds almost like it’s designed to be fleeting. Done and dusted before the three-minute mark, the album’s second track is, in many ways, a micro-transgression unto itself: it’s a forthright admission of a want for emotional connection that society considers damning, but it argues that to criticize that craving would be a self-own (“I know how good it feels to be needed”); not least of all, it knows its job and that it’s achieved its objective, so it does away with the final third of the song entirely. Still, nothing on this record beats “ghostin”, where it feels something has clicked in Grande’s head. To an extent, “ghostin” is the converse to “needy”: “ghostin” almost purposely crawls through its 4 minutes and 31 seconds, and it seems designed to linger. In a particularly Swiftian move, the Mac Miller sample at the beginning of the track tells you all you need to know. With not so many words, Grande begins to break down her feelings of guilt for her still harboring feelings for another one and at one point even suggests feigning ignorance, which we all know now is impossible. The song’s emotional climax comes at the final minute, where words are long forgotten and we are left with the auditory equivalent of a bed of clouds that keeps ascending until it disperses, as if mirroring Grande’s own moment of catharsis.

Wrapping up thank u, next is the cheekily, instantly memorably titled “break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored”, whose position on the album closely mirrors that of “Formation” on Lemonade. But rather than taking on any social commentary, the former offers Grande’s own commentary on the preceding chapter of her life and a window into her humor, and might even serve as more fitting a conclusion to the record than the title track would. It is rather unexpected that after such a harrowing time in her life, she would be eager to jump right back into the game (with such a dangerous premise at that), but upon another look, the track’s appearance reveals Grande as remarkably self-assured, confident that she will never fall down such a spiral again – or maybe she will, sad as that sounds. Nevertheless, there’s not much she’s afraid of anymore.

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Seventeen’s You Made My Dawn, a ranked track-by-track review

The sixth mini-album from the 13-member boy group isn’t without its failures, but it has its fair share of pleasantries, from both expected and unexpected sources.

6. “Home”

The overwhelming feeling that comes over you once “Home” ends can be summarized in one sentence: We’ve all seen this before, and not only because it sounds eerily like a retread of “Don’t Wanna Cry”. Rather, it’s the realization that “Don’t Wanna Cry” came out about 20 months ago, during which time its sound has evolved from novel to generic to outright dated. After three years, it is perhaps unavoidable that the search of ideas might come up dry, but it certainly says something that they decided to revisit what was possibly their worst idea ever. To make matters worse, while “Don’t Wanna Cry”, and its superior sequel “Without You”, were a bad idea executed rather well, the work on “Home” is just messy. The fake-out is ripped straight out of “Without You”, but whereas that song’s vocals were a great fit for it, those parts on “Home” just sound misplaced. It’s a frustrating setback for the 13-member group, whose last title track was so fantastic a return to form.

5. “Chilli” – Hip-Hop Unit

For a unit that produced such gems as “Can’t See the End” (with main vocalist DK) and “If I” (on Al1, where everyone else faltered), “Chilli” is, in a word, confusing, but the reason for it might not be as indecipherable as the track itself: the lack of restraint, refinement, and a controlling factor. Seventeen’s resident producer Woozi is conspicuously absent from the credits, as well as Prism Filter, who produced some of the best K-pop tracks of late, not least of which is NCT 127’s lightning strike of brilliance “Back 2 U (AM 01:27)”. Instead, the Hip-Hop Unit members are credited as the sole songwriters, the youngest of whom – Vernon – also receives a composer credit alongside Pop Time. The result is a song seemingly designed around Vernon’s hook, where his delivery is rather lackluster; the other members’ verses aren’t as sharp as they used to, either – even S.Coups, who has until now always been a reliable rapper.

4. “Good to Me”

“Good to Me” is the group’s first pivot into anything remotely hip-hop-sounding, yet it fits the current moment so well, where the line between rapping and singing is so blurred that the distinction between rappers and singer is almost unnecessary. The definite stand-out is youngest member Dino, whose rapping continues to impress, despite his “official” position as one of the main dancers. Beyond that, however, it sounds like business as usual regarding line distribution, which is a shame considering how well they did on “Oh My!”, and the “Ah ya ya” refrain sounds like they grasped at their first choice of sounds and just went with it. The golden moment on “Good to Me” comes early in the song, where Seungkwan sings, “This feels so right/If there were only you, everything would be alright,” inexperience nowhere to be found in his voice.

3. “Getting Closer”

Released a whole month before the EP, “Getting Closer” would prove to be a red herring after all, but I would argue it is perhaps the most title-track-worthy song on the record, if Seventeen suddenly woke up one day and found themselves turned into, say, EXO. It is certainly more fast-paced than anything the 13-piece has attempted before, which isn’t exactly an unwelcome change of tempo, with vocals as rapid-fire as raps. The best moment on the track, and possibly of the entire record, is the thankfully voiceless breakdown, but Woozi’s turns in the hook, his most convincing performance so far, is a close second. If there is one gripe against the song, it’s that the “I want you breathlessly” refrain is a bit too abrupt for the song’s flow. One more gripe: the Hip-Hop Unit’s insistence on Auto-Tune over their singing parts remains incomprehensible.

2. “Shhh” – Performance Unit

Following the generic-sounding “Highlight” and the disastrous “Swimming Fool,” it seemed as if there was no other way but up for the Performance Unit, who proved us right with the stunning “Lilili Yabbay” from their second album (however weird its name) and now continues to impress with “Shhh.” The Teen, Age highlight already showed the Performance Unit’s ability to navigate EDM, and “Shhh” only reinforces that fact, perhaps doing so even better than the mother group itself; the track uses the same fake-out technique as “Home,” yet here it is so much more effective: the vocals don’t sound like they’re in the wrong part. Unit members Dino and The8 have proven to be the most versatile members of the group throughout their four years as a group, and it shows here, where their rapping could easily pass for that of the Hip-Hop Unit.

1. “Hug” – Vocal Unit

You Made My Dawn’s most vocals-oriented song, “Hug,” is the shortest song on the EP, clocking in at 2 minutes and 39 seconds, but it only leaves us wanting more. It is the first K-pop song that actually manages to do exactly what it is described to do: a song fit for the winter so warm that it literally wraps you in a blanket of smooth vocals. Stripped of all instrumentation, except for a lone guitar, the song finally allows the unit members’ voices to shine, just as they should have since the one-song-per-unit tradition began. The more subdued mood of the song makes for gentler timbres from DK and Seungkwan, which might be a relief for both of them: for main vocalists, they are unusually unskilled at the top of their ranges. Nevertheless, their restraint makes it finally feels like all five members are playing on the same field. It is a pleasant surprise from the Vocal Unit, whose earlier tracks have only missed the mark.

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Ariana Grande’s “no tears left to cry” is 2018’s best, most transcendent song

★★★★★★★★★★ -- a Reese’s Pick

The story of the Ariana Grande concert bombing does not need to be told again, as it has been told over and over both in the immediate aftermath and in the run-up to the release of “no tears left to cry,” the lead single off of her fourth album, Sweetener, one of the most highly anticipated albums of the year. However, as she would show you, the song is not about what happened, but how she reacted to it and how she would want us all to react to it, akin to one of the many self-help quotes we have come across over the years. Far from being preachy, “no tears left to cry” is victorious at its core, and becomes 2018’s best, most transcendent song in the process.

Grande’s optimism in “no tears left to cry” is not without musical context; most of her songs up to that point had pointed to a certain brand of self-assuredness, either on an early cut like “Piano” (justice for Yours Truly) or the EDM throbs of “Break Free.” Even without an ostensible tragedy, “Be Alright,” one of Dangerous Woman’s several highlights, is almost a spiritual predecessor to “no tears,” containing the couplet, “But the hard times are golden/’Cause they all lead to better days.” But while “Be Alright” kept that optimism under a tempered deep house melody, “no tears” makes it explicit both lyrically and musically. It is the best kind of trickery, actually: a sorrowful ballad-like opening bursts into a thumping beat that does not let up until the very end of the song, a garage beat that pays homage to Manchester, the 2017 bombing at which serves as context for the song. (The song does not even slow down for a bridge; instead, it recycles the pre-chorus and keeps the beat going for the final climax.)

Four years may have passed since the diva-EDM showstopper “Break Free” was released, but the music industry circumstances have not really changed: although rather than EDM the scene is now dominated by rap, the industry still has not circled back to its preference for big voices, to which Grande serves as the perfect counterpoint. The garage-infused instrumentation of “no tears” is buoyed by Grande's unsurprisingly outstanding vocal performance, which is such a wonderful companion to the production that it is almost impossible to imagine a rapper ever doing it justice. As “Break Free” did back in 2014, “no tears” helps reassert Grande’s position as a pop character who is here to stay, a standing to be reinforced again and again throughout 2018.

I am hesitant to say that the Manchester bombing needed to happen for “no tears” to be created. No such tragedy ever needs to occur, for they are all the result of a sequence of avoidable events. But the fact that “no tears” exists, the fact that Grande emerges triumphant rather than despondent and that she opted to share it with us is as much evidence of her admirable character as proof of her musical sensibility. You may find no other pop artist who so dominated 2018, and it all started with this song, a symbol of triumph and transcendence.

[reeses-picks]

Troye Sivan: Bloom review

Author’s Note: This review was supposed to be posted after another piece announcing my return, but I felt that at a time when queer content creators’ intents to healthily create characters that represent their community can be trampled by those of higher-ups to prevent those efforts, it was vital to support and celebrate works created by and for LGBTQ+ people. I had made a point in this review that we too often tended to reduce queer romance to its vulgarities, which I felt was particularly topical. For all Bloom’s shortcomings (mainly that it makes the same mistake Blue Neighborhood did: by the second half of the album, the instrumentations sort of blend into a satisfactory-sounding jumble -- unfortunately, this is not mentioned in the actual review), it is a seminal piece of work that cuts through all the noise and tells gay love stories as they are, something LGBTQ+ artists have tried to do for ages, but others just won’t bother to take a look.

If Blue Neighborhood could be Call Me by Your Name’s soundtrack, then Bloom would most probably be that of Elio’s epilogue, equipped with more self-confidence, but not the loud kind. But for the most part, Troye Sivan is simply not interested in “lights, camera, action.” In the canon of Bloom, queer romance doesn’t have to be so devastating as Elio and Oliver, nor should it be reduced to its most primal acts. With Bloom, Sivan tells it like it is.

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Once you see Troye Sivan, the Elio comparisons are inescapable. Even Sivan thinks so himself; in a February interview, he revealed Elio was the first film character he could completely relate to. It’s most likely a coincidence that Sivan’s stellar but often exhausting debut, 2015’s Blue Neighborhood, is just about as angsty as Call Me by Your Name, but it’s easy to see the album serve as the film’s soundtrack; “Wild” could accompany Elio and Oliver’s emphatic consummation. (Though, there is no worthy replacement for “Visions of Gideon,” which is why it should have been nominated for -- and won -- an Oscar instead.)

Bloom strikes a different tone: if Blue Neighborhood could be Call Me by Your Name’s soundtrack, then Bloom could most probably be that of Elio’s epilogue, equipped with more self-confidence, but not the loud kind. On Bloom, Sivan possesses a quieter confidence, something one might not say about a male pop star of this age. But for the most part, he is simply not interested in “lights, camera, action.” In the canon of Bloom, queer romance doesn’t have to be so devastating as Elio and Oliver (though the stakes do seem so high at times). Nor should it be reduced to its most primal acts, which, regrettably, is too often our tendency. With Bloom, Sivan tells it like it is.

Bloom opens with “Seventeen,” almost a cautionary tale about having anonymous sex in the digital age. We could search the entire song for clues, but as a true follower of pop, Sivan condenses it all in the chorus: “I went out looking for love when I was seventeen/Maybe a little too young, but it was real to me/And in the heat of the night, saw things I’d never seen/Oh, seventeen.” The pre-chorus also carries some heavy stuff, but it only takes one pronoun change to make it happen, hinting at how easily and quickly such an encounter can go awry. (The swift execution is at least a sign of things to come for Bloom’s songwriters, most of whom also crafted much of Blue Neighborhood, if not indisputable proof of their precocious prowess.) Sivan says he’s trying to cast neither a positive nor a negative light on the experience, but it’s hard to ignore the predatory undertones.

But that’s as dark as Sivan would go for the entire record. Instead, what mostly informs Bloom is his relationship with model Jacob Bixenman, whose presence can be felt all over Bloom and whose photos of Sivan appear on the cover art and booklet. This is where Sivan’s quiet confidence shines through, most conspicuously during the lead single, “My My My!”, where he is done beating around the bush and declares, “Should be the last night ever/Should be the last night we’re apart,” but also on a track like “What a Heavenly Way to Die,” where Sivan is adamant about a relationship that can stand the test of time, using a line from The Smiths’ “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” to drive the point home. It is also present in album closer “Animal,” a doozy of a song on whose bridge you can almost taste the Frank Ocean influence, which is, in Sivan’s words, “an ode to the boy I love,” as if we needed further explanation.

All of this is not even touching on the brightest gem on the record: the piano ballad “Postcard,” which ironically is most reminiscent of Sivan’s tone on Blue Neighborhood, one of whose most dominant themes is insecurity. But while Blue Neighborhood’s insecurity is rooted in bigger issues -- finding one’s identity, living with an identity that isn’t easily accepted in a conservative space -- the insecurity on “Postcard” feels much smaller: his boyfriend didn’t get the postcard he sent from Tokyo, an event which he extrapolates to mean he is “nothing to [him].” It’s a different sort of self-doubt, the sort that questions one’s place in someone else’s world, rather than the world itself. The shift illustrates the solid footing Sivan has found himself in the three years since Blue Neighborhood, and you can’t help but swell at the progress he’s made.

There are a few adjectives that come to mind when it comes to Bloom, something along the lines of “revolutionary,” or “groundbreaking.” That is what makes this somewhat sad: this is all normal. There is nothing remotely revolutionary or groundbreaking about what happens in Bloom; we, the gay community, have lived and died the stories on this album many times over. What is surprising about this is how long it took for mainstream pop to have a record like Bloom, one that tells stories of life as a gay person as they are, without the lens and filter of Hollywood, without promotional campaigns that bank on the “universality” of love stories. It isn’t fair to call Bloom “the essential gay pop album,” or to call Sivan “the essential gay musician;” he would stop you right there to rattle off other gay/bisexual artists who have been doing this for far longer than he has, some you might recognize. But with Bloom, may the floodgates finally open for stories like those Sivan tells. 

[reeses-picks]

Charli XCX: Pop 2 review

After releasing the commercially underwhelming Sucker, it seems Charli XCX has found that there simply is no point in appealing to the mainstream, whether in terms of her sound or even the form it takes. This culminates in Pop 2, her second mixtape of 2017 and the strongest full-length effort she’s ever put out. Its mid-December release date renders it absent from most publications’ “Best of 2017″ lists, but considering the quality of the material, its absence feels like the critics’ fault.

★★★★★★★★★☆ - a Reese’s Pick

In the summer of 2014, Charli XCX’s crossover breakthrough felt like it was going to happen at any minute: the listening public was still skeptical after her turn at the hook of “Fancy,” but after she scored her own hit with “Boom Clap,” everyone was convinced. So it was baffling that Sucker, the inevitable follow-up to the song of the summer, which was way smarter than it had to be, didn’t turn out to be the biggest album of 2014 (although it would have been hard to top Taylor Swift, whose 1989 would become not only her best-selling album but also her best album).

In her subsequent releases, it seems she has found that there simply is no point in appealing to the mainstream, whether in terms of her sound or even the form it takes (in the four years since Sucker, she has refused to release a proper album). All of this culminates in Pop 2, her second mixtape of 2017 and ultimately the strongest full-length she’s ever put out. Even the release date of Pop 2 feels like a rebellion: it was released in mid-December when most of the media has already settled on its “Best of 2017” lists, and its conspicuous absence on those lists makes it look like a fault on the publications’ part.

With Pop 2, Charli finally decides to wear the mantle of pushing pop music forward. Not that she hasn’t done it before, even when she was dousing herself in the pop-punk of the 90’s, but it’s the first time she’s made her efforts so explicit, with the daring number two. (She doesn’t completely disengage with the mainstream, though; as far as the title goes, it’s clear she sees it as a sequel rather than a reboot.) The mixtape’s use of Auto-Tune is over-the-top, which may be serving as a warning to those who constantly use it. Charli also opines on the figures who she thinks will take over the music blogs one of these days, if not pop music as a whole, with a plethora of collaborators, ranging from the more familiar Carly Rae Jepsen and Tove Lo to the practically unheard-of Tommy Cash and Pabllo Vittar. Charli remains at the center of this work with her manipulated robotic vocals, even though at times it’s not until the second verse that we hear her sing.

Underneath the forward-thinking sound, however, is a simpler narrative: a distrust in and debunk of the rose-colored stories of love and romance. Most characters of pop would accomplish this in one track, and, indeed, the mixtape’s spirit is probably most evident in “Backseat,” a collaboration with Carly Rae Jepsen (almost like a pop connoisseur’s fan fiction) about, among other things, the grey areas within a relationship and the havoc they wreak on all participants. Elsewhere in the mixtape is an indictment against a lover whose wrongdoing has become unacceptable and, right after it, a pleading for the lover to return before she comes to her senses and tells him to leave. (As all pop albums go, it’s never made clear if she’s referring to the same person, but the framing makes it a likely scenario.)

But Charli XCX is not like most characters of pop, and it is rather unwise to reduce such a dense work as Pop 2 to its opening track; beyond “Backseat,” Charli insists that the topic need not be so dreary, that a lot more fun is due, even if it comes at a hefty expense. The protagonist of Pop 2 goes out partying (“Out of My Head,” ”I Got It”), has copious amounts of sex (“Femmebot”), and a string of short-lived rebounds (“Delicious,” ”Unlock It”). It probably goes without saying the worrying lack of care she has for her emotional well-being, and the expectation for most is an emotional catharsis, an acknowledgment that she is not (at least solely) at fault for the breakdown of her relationship, and that growing out of her old ways is most beneficial (we see a version of this in Lorde’s magnum opus Melodrama). "Track 10″ at least starts out this way, where the main character spends the first verse admitting to running away from commitment and wishing she could change her behavior. But on a mixtape that has made zero effort keeping to convention, that would have felt like a regrettable cop-out; in the end, she doesn’t change: in the chorus, the protagonist blames her new lover for how she feels, instead of facing her problems head-on. 

It’s difficult to escape the darkness of Pop 2, but the light isn’t so hard to find. Pop 2 is the newest addition to the genre of stories about flawed women, one that is growing but not nearly fast enough. The multitude of collaborators in Pop 2 also carries a more symbolic meaning: it makes sure the woman in the mixtape has friends surrounding her and sends out a hope that they’ll be there for her recovery as well. There’s probably a timely political statement to be made about Tommy Cash’s distinct Estonian accent in his turn on “Delicious,” about how diverse the team on Pop 2 is in general.

But pop music need not be so serious. Charli certainly doesn’t think so: in the middle of “Delicious,” someone’s phone goes on -- the ringtone: “Boom Clap” -- as if they left their phone on during recording. (This eventually leads to one of the brightest songwriting moments on Pop 2: an almost-rap verse that contains probably the best rhymes mainstream pop has seen in years.) When the music sounds this good, who cares? Who has to care, even? Charli once tweeted, “i [sic] might not be the biggest, but i’m [sic] definitely one of the best.” Pop 2 makes sure everyone listening knows it too.

[reeses-picks]

EXO: Exodus review

Looking back, it’s undeniable that “Growl” forever changed EXO’s musical trajectory. Afterwards, no matter if it was an organic creative shift or caused by the breakthrough success of “Growl,” EXO would never again make a song nearly as forward-thinking as their debut. Exodus sits firmly in the conventional side of the spectrum, yet it’s EXO’s best album. Even now, it’s the only EXO album that knows what it’s trying to be musically and aesthetically, and succeeds so brilliantly.

★★★★★★★★☆☆ - a Reese’s Pick

Looking back, it’s undeniable that “Growl” forever changed EXO’s musical trajectory. It wasn’t evident at the time, but, by that point, EXO’s songs had sorted themselves into two decidedly separate camps: the conventional fare of “History,” and the more experimental fare of “Mama” and “Wolf.” Afterwards, no matter if it was an organic creative shift or caused by the breakthrough success of “Growl,” EXO would never again make a song nearly as forward-thinking as their debut.

Thus, from a critical standpoint, Exodus occupies a strange place in the EXO canon: it sits firmly in the conventional side of the spectrum, yet it’s EXO’s best album. Of course, songs don’t have to be experimental to be good, and throwing everything at the wall doesn’t necessarily make it stick (the dubstep breakdown in “Wolf” is, for lack of a better term, just weird; the song mostly exists as a meme in the fandom now). What ultimately qualifies it as EXO’s best album is that, even now, it’s the only EXO album that knows what it’s trying to be musically and aesthetically, and succeeds so brilliantly. It is a refinement of the boyband aesthetic that the group has readily embraced through XOXO and Overdose that also contains better hints of where they want to be afterwards than those albums did.

Their eager embrace of the boyband aesthetic since XOXO proves EXO know their audience: mostly tween and teen girls (although that’s slowly changing). Exodus doesn’t stray far from their demographic, with the usual suspects in boyband songwriting: multiple confession songs, a boy apologetic to his lover for a past mistake, a boy hurt by the disappearance of a significant other. This is doubly true with the four new songs included in the repackaged edition, which include “Promise (EXO 2014),” an ostensible ode to a loyal partner that could also be a word of thanks to their fandom (how boyband can this get?).

But if XOXO was more One Direction (“3.6.5”), then Exodus is headed towards *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys, which is to say some of the writing and production on Exodus is more mature. Exodus follows Overdose in stepping away from the teen pop of their first studio album and into edgier productions. The subjects of EXO’s affection get increasingly scary to the members -- most evidently, an inscrutable woman (how scary!) and a “cruel queen.” In the context of EXO’s entire collection, these songs serve as precursors to the more electronic-heavy sound and adult vibe of their next two albums, Ex’Act and The War. “Transformer,” a song whose production feels too bare for the rap and spoken-word parts of the song (the remix for its live performance benefits from a beefier instrumentation), is basically the context for the entirety of Ex’Act, and would probably have fit better there too. Written by the late Jonghyun of Shinee, “Playboy,” which has all the hallmarks of and probably should have remained a Jonghyun song, feels like the background for the more seductive turns in EXO’s discography, namely “Artificial Love” and “Sweet Lies,” albeit only in a musical sense; the sensual factor in “Playboy”’s lyricism remains unmatched. For all their faults, these attempts towards a more mature sound are overall more successful than those on XOXO (the confusing “Let Out the Beast” and “Heart Attack”), which makes for a more consistent body of work through its fourteen tracks, which is mammoth by K-pop standards.

Then comes the outlier: right in the middle of Exodus is the deeply strange “El Dorado,” a track that neither fits the boyband archetype nor point to a future point in EXO’s discography. It has since emerged as a fan favorite for the incredible high note Baekhyun hits in the song (even live, though that’s questionable), but attempts to explain the song remain inconclusive. It’s unclear if the song refers to the actual myth of El Dorado or its more metaphorical meanings. A more cynical reading might refer to “Growl” and the overnight success it brought EXO and even bigger successes to follow, but it could also mean the satisfaction of a complete body of work. With Exodus, EXO may have indeed found El Dorado, in both of these senses.

[reeses-picks]

Seventeen: Oh My! review

You can find few acts who got it right so early like Seventeen. Their first four singles established them as one of the most consistent acts in K-pop, and so early in their career. Unfortunately, the last two years had Seventeen being, in chronological order, underwhelming (and once again later), disappointing, and forgettable. Hailing from their fifth mini-album You Make My Day, “Oh My!” is a return to form, a promise that they are still capable of greater things.

★★★★★★★★☆☆

You can find few acts who got it right so early like Seventeen. Their first four singles established them as one of the most consistent acts in K-pop, and so early in their career, culminating in “Very Nice,” the title track from the re-release of their first album Love&Letter with which you could find no fault. Unfortunately, the last two years had Seventeen being, in chronological order, underwhelming (and once again later), disappointing, and forgettable. Hailing from their fifth mini-album You Make My Day, “Oh My!” is a return to form, a promise that they are still capable of greater things.

In their early career, Seventeen constantly relied on a boy-next-door image that wasn’t too far from what GOT7’s “Just Right” era. Unlike GOT7, however, Seventeen were actually believable, and that’s why “Adore U” and “Mansae” were so appealing (it certainly helped that the music wasn’t half-bad). “Oh My!” is an attempt to reconcile this image with the more electronic leanings of their current sound. The fault of all their releases after “Very Nice” was that they were always weighed down by a requirement, self-imposed or otherwise, to be something they weren’t. These boys are goofs at heart, and the brighter instrumentation is certainly a nod at least to their peppier beginnings, if not to their personalities entirely. The group’s resident producer, Woozi, along with Pledis Entertainment’s own Bumzu, uses the oldest trick in the book on making pop songs: repetition. It’s most definitely not a bad thing; the song is an undeniable earworm, possibly more so than a Seventeen song has ever been. But the brightest moment in the song might not even have anything to do with it: the bridge’s first half, where the song slows down for Dino and Vernon to drive the point home in English: “I really like you/Better tell/I better tell somebody/That you’re all mine.”

Even while they’re revisiting their former image, the members find room to experiment. For one, the “hip-hop unit” is no longer relegated to rapping: “Oh My!” finds S.Coups and Mingyu trying their hand at singing. The group also strays away from traditional line distributions, which more often than not made them sound more like “DK and/or Seungkwan and Friends:” Chinese members Jun and The8 finally get more than one line, Jeonghan finds himself a spot in the chorus (usually exclusive to DK, Seungkwan and Woozi), and Joshua’s lines finally feel deserving for a member of the “vocal unit.” A part that actually made me go “oh my” is Jun’s part in the first pre-chorus: “What do I do with you/I’m looking at you but I’m thinking of you even more;” it’s been so long since I heard Jun’s singing that I forgot he sounded so good. “Oh My!” is no “Very Nice;” the latter is a flash of brilliance that so few acts get to experience. But it is on a level that the 13-piece haven’t been able to reach since “Pretty U;” more than anything, it’s a promising sign for things still to come.

[reeses-picks]

Tiffany Young: Over My Skin review

“Over My Skin” is Tiffany Young’s first release after her exit from SM Entertainment, which followed a long musical dormancy. Hailed by fans as a rebirth, it is unclear what is actually being reborn. It is simply an effort to return to her roots, her early years in California before catapulting to stardom -- a solid effort that could have been so much more.

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

“Over My Skin” is Tiffany Young’s first release after her exit from SM Entertainment, which follows a long musical dormancy after her debut. Hailed by fans as a rebirth, it is unclear what is actually being reborn: her collection is far too small to brand this one a musical rebirth, and the track’s lyrics definitely disqualify it as a reimagining of the artist’s image. It is simply an effort to return to her roots, her early years in California before catapulting to stardom -- a solid effort that could have been so much more.

Coming of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it's no surprise that Tiffany found inspiration in the singular pop star that so dominated her formative years: Britney Spears. Underlying “Over My Skin” throughout its runtime is a guitar riff that harkens back to “Oops!...I Did It Again,” and there's even a distortion effect that feels like a Britney rip-off. But Tiffany is much more of a vocalist than Britney ever was, and this song is perhaps more vocally challenging than the entirety of Spears’ discography. Tiffany has always been at her weakest when she's forced to enter her higher range, which was what SM Entertainment constantly did, so it makes perfect sense that she stops doing it the moment she leaves; in “Over My Skin,” TIffany spends much more time in her lower and middle ranges, which makes her sound better than she ever did during her time in SM. Nevertheless, it seems the temptation to go higher is hard to resist, and when she does in the choruses and the bridge, she never sounds like she's hitting the notes she wants to, and the song is less pleasurable for it.

For a song that is purportedly about being comfortable in one's own skin, Tiffany doesn't really sound like it; perhaps without SM’s guidance, she doesn't know what to do with her new autonomy over her voice. You can hear the difference in “I Just Wanna Dance,” her only previous solo release: under SM, she actually sounds inviting, even when she's singing at an uncomfortable range; here, her calls to a lover sound somewhat toothless. Having heard “Wanna Dance,” it's evident that “Over My Skin” could have -- and should have -- been so much more.

[reeses-picks]

Black Pink: Ddu-du Ddu-du review

Over the past two years, Black Pink have become a household name in K-pop despite their meagre five-song discography. Coming almost a year after their last release, “Ddu-du Ddu-du” - the title track off their long-awaited debut mini-album Square Up - was primed to be an explosive comeback of the hugely successful quartet. Unfortunately, “Ddu-du” turns out to be an underwhelming rehash of old ideas.

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

Over the past two years, Black Pink have become a household name in K-pop despite their meagre five-song discography. Coming almost a year after their last release, “Ddu-du Ddu-du” - the title track off their long-awaited debut mini-album Square Up - was primed to be an explosive comeback of the hugely successful quartet. Unfortunately, “Ddu-du” turns out to be an underwhelming rehash of old ideas, a disappointing turn considering the heights they’ve reached in the past.

Although it is hard to say from their relatively small repertory, Black Pink are evidently strongest when their songs are more energetic (“Boombayah,” “As If It’s Your Last”), but they have shown that they can hold their own in more minimalist tracks (“Whistle”). “Ddu-du” tries to find middle ground between these two realms, but it never seems to get on stable footing. Its structure is almost word-for-word the same as that of “Whistle,” as is its introduction of guitars during the bridge, but they don’t work as well when backed by the more uptempo instrumentation, whose energy doesn't even come close to what “Boombayah” achieved two years ago. Then comes that absolutely awful drop, which doesn’t fit into the song at all and even sounds jarring on its own. The song’s saving grace comes towards the end of the song, during the bridge where Rosé puts her lower range to good use (though the lyrics she sings don’t make much sense) and where the track gets a much-needed injection of adrenaline from a convincing dance break which feels too little too late at that point.

As are the other three songs on Square Up, “Ddu-du” is produced by Teddy, YG Entertainment’s resident producer, whose credits after 2016 show he has been slipping - indeed, last year’s summer mega-hit, “Gashina,” which he had a hand in producing, would have fallen apart without Sunmi’s stellar performance; even Sunmi herself couldn’t save her follow-up “Heroine” from that awful Teddy-produced drop. Maybe this was inevitable; after all, 2018 would signify his 20th year in the business. Nevertheless, it is worth remembering that genius cannot be replicated.

[reeses-picks]

Momoland: Baam review

It’s tough to score a hit in the crowded field of K-pop, but the real make-or-break moment is the follow-up. Momoland’s breakthrough came about almost six months ago with “Bboom Bboom,” a Shinsadong Tiger-manned sleeper hit whose production courted plagiarism allegations but which the public became obsessed with anyway. Returning with “Baam,” the nine-piece girl group elects to look back and pay homage to one of the former major forces in the industry.

★★★★★★★✰✰✰

It’s tough to score a hit in the crowded field of K-pop, but the real make-or-break moment is the follow-up: those who succeed make legacies, those who don’t get smothered by their own prior success. Momoland’s breakthrough came almost six months ago (has it only been six months?) with “Bboom Bboom,” a Shinsadong Tiger-manned sleeper hit whose production courted plagiarism allegations but which the public became obsessed with anyway. Returning with “Baam,” the nine-piece girl group elects to look back and pay homage to one of the former major forces in the industry.

Shinsadong returns behind the producer table for “Baam,” and begs the question: why fix what’s not broken? The similarities to “Bboom Bboom” are apparent from the first listen: the minimalist intro, the saxophone-laden hook, the refrain “why, why, why, why” that so closely mirrors “Bboom”’s “Hit it/Hit it/Hit it;” by the time you get to Daisy and JooE’s rapped second verse, you’re absolutely certain that you’re not just hearing things. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: the formula obviously still works so well. This time around, “Baam” has a less controversial reference point: T-ara in the late 2000s and early 2010s, for whom Shinsadong produced a string of hits that eventually made their name. That period was evidently Shinsadong at his creative prime, and the heavy use of synths throughout “Baam” -- à la “Lovey-Dovey” -- is what makes the track even more danceable, and more enjoyable.

Of course, none of this would come to mean anything but for Momoland’s vocals, which, at times, can feel like conscious creative choices on the girls’ part. The rap in the second verse remains as ineffective as “Bboom”’s was, but the more expanded use of the members’ middle range gives the song a subtle wink that “Bboom” could never manage. (Yeonwoo’s turn in the pre-chorus, and Jane’s and Taeha’s ad-libs during the final chorus are especially nice touches.) It’s clear that the members of Momoland have the potential for big hits; sometimes all you need is a good producer. Momoland might have just found their match.

[reeses-picks]

EXO-CBX: Blooming Days review

By the time EXO-CBX’s second Korean mini-album, Blooming Days, was announced in late March, it had already been almost a year since their most recent musical outing and a full year and a half since their debut. The time away must have helped immensely; what eventually materialised is the most stylistically cohesive body of work an SMTOWN act has produced since at least f(x)’s 4 Walls, and perhaps the most thematically cohesive one yet.

★★★★★★★★★✰ -- a Reese’s Pick

By the time EXO-CBX’s second Korean mini-album, Blooming Days, was announced, it had already been almost a year since their most recent musical outing (their Japanese debut EP, Girls) and a full year and a half since their debut (the solid Hey Mama!). The time away must have helped immensely; what eventually materialised is the most stylistically cohesive body of work an SMTOWN act has produced since at least f(x)’s stellar 4 Walls, and perhaps the most thematically cohesive one yet.

The seven tracks on the mini-album are meant to represent the seven days of the week. Most of them mention the day explicitly: on “Monday Blues” and “Thursday,” the days are in the title, while Friday, Saturday and Sunday are mentioned in the lyrics of “Vroom Vroom,” “Playdate,” and “Lazy,” respectively, and the title track, “Blooming Day,” gets its Korean title from the Chinese character for “flower,” whose pronunciation is similar to the Korean word for “Tuesday.” All of this feels a bit too on-the-nose, and it perhaps comes as no surprise that album highlight “Sweet Dreams!” doesn’t have a day explicitly attached to it at all, leaving the listener guessing what it means, although its position on the tracklist implies that it stands for Wednesday.

Sonically, the songs on the album are a combination of the old and the new: the throwback pop leanings of the sub-unit’s previous releases and the modern electro pop of EXO. And while those combinations work better here than on Girls -- their first attempt at this amalgamation -- the mini-album’s weakest moments are still when the songs skew more towards the present: the sound effects on “Monday Blues” sound like they were ripped straight from “Been Through,” and the EDM-adjacent “Blooming Day” feels out of place from the rest of the album. To the same degree, Blooming Days is strongest when it fully embraces the past: “Vroom Vroom” flirts with the charisma of the Rat Pack, “Sweet Dreams!” perfectly captures the racing hearts of 80s’ pop, and when “Monday Blues” stops beating around the bush and finally goes for doo-wop towards the end, the effect is magical.

Lyrically, the mini-album tells the story of a romance that progresses as the week goes on, which is not uncommon in K-pop songwriting, but what is striking about Blooming Days is how earnest the three members come across. The spirit of the entire album is encapsulated within this couplet from “Sweet Dreams!”: “When I just think about you, it feels good / Why am I feeling this way?” The lyrics on these songs allow boys and men to feel, to enjoying these feelings to the fullest, from the intrigue of meeting who could be the love of your life, to the nerves of the night preceding a first date, or just the languidness of a lazy Sunday afternoon.  Surely, the “cool guy” image of their prior work is still attempted -- most notably in the title track (“I want to show you a world you never knew [...] If you want, I can hand it all to you”) -- but on the whole, Blooming Days is less reliant on the traditionally masculine tropes of songwriting, and the album is all the better for it: you can practically hear the smile on the members’ faces recording these songs.

It all holds together by stellar vocal performances by the three unit members that overall do not entail much risk-taking. Ever-reliable main vocalists Chen and Baekhyun continue to form the backbone of the album’s tracks: Baekhyun’s vocals sleekly slink through the production, while Chen’s voice is dominant over the instrumentation. Xiumin is no longer the rapper by default, instead balancing Chen and Baekhyun out, but never risking fading into the background. It is a shame that the risks end there -- Baekhyun’s apparent knack for rapping does not make an appearance here (although the half-spoken, half-sung refrain of “Vroom Vroom” comes close) -- but the group make do wonderfully with what is left. There is also something to be said about how the production sometimes overpowers the vocals, how some of the songs end long before they should have, but these are minor gripes compared to the overall strength of the set.

If there was one word to describe Hey Mama!, it would be “loud.” Their debut began with the three members loudly goofing around -- a reflection, their fans say, of their silly personalities. Blooming Days never approaches the decibel of “The One” - the track on which the goofy intro appears - and ultimately, that is what Blooming Days is all about: proof that a little restraint can turn a record from good to great.