#( * fr the bass on this album is SEXY

[catty-words]

@continuallyunexpected babygirl, i have too many thoughts on evermore (2020) to fit in my brain, but bless you for asking:

- enchanted by the way the album feels cohesive because of the way it’s fifteen songs reflecting on selves and people lost to time that all evoke wintry sparseness in both the music and lyrics

- relatedly, i got into this album at exactly the right time. it complements the liminal space feel of the week between christmas and new years and i was in exactly the right headspace to be utterly decimated by its interest in the feminine urge to callously move through time with little regard for the people who fall victim to you being so goddamn occupied with the narratives you’re constructing in your head

“willow”

- originally found the refrain of take my hand, wreck my plans, that’s my man annoying and undeserving of their hype but you know what? the rhythm of it wins i understand now that this is a brainworm from which i cannot escape

- i will Not come around on i come back stronger than a nineties trend though. i just won’t.

- verse three goes so fucking hard oh my godddd

- the underlying sultriness just works, man i dunno what to tell you except my hips love this song

“champagne problems”

- the diction of each repetition of champagne problems contains such an understated bitterness that is very sexy of the narrator considering she just left a dude mid-wedding, her being like ‘your problems are not that deep ok? grow up.’ is HOT. ruthless and HOT.

- and the flipping of the script to the narrator being the one who has not-so-deep problems they have to grow up about is just good writing. which is also hot.

“gold rush”

- this song often makes me think about you!! so, an honest answer to the question “what are your thoughts on evermore?” is “you, bestie” 😘

- the way this song is an Experience, though. like, the percussion and the bass et al make you feel your own anticipation-sick heartbeat and the lyrics of the chorus tumble down down down into the feeling they’re describing and “gold rush” is falling in love i will not elaborate further

“‘tis the damn season”

- in a bit of a love affair with this song right now it’s the latest to mash the 'think about d/b’ button in my brain and i’m feeling very

about it, y’know?

- ooohhoohoo the lyrics if i wanted to know who you were hanging with / while i was gone, i would have asked you / it’s the kind of cold fogs up windshield glass are a prime example of the wintry sparseness and the feminine urge to live up the ass of your own perspective and i feel very normal about them as a result!

- something about the instrumentation of the chorus makes me feel like i’m standing in the gently falling snow. which?? that’s witchcraft

“tolerate it”

- it’s a well-constructed story powerfully and emotionally evoked through music but my primary reaction to it is always something along the lines of: girl, get help fr fr

“no body, no crime”

- 👏 GASLIGHT 👏 GIRLBOSS 👏

- the way she thinks i did it, but she just can’t prove it hits!!! that’s it, that’s my whole thought!

- at first glance, it might seem that this self-contained murder ballad is a bit of a detour for the album, but i’d argue that the narrative is cold and brutal in such a way that fits right in. “champagne problems” and “‘tis the damn season” and “ivy” and especially “long story short” all feature narrators who are self-involved, painfully aware of that fact, and never stop themselves repeating their harmful patterns. gaslighting girlbosses the lot of them. 😍

“happiness”

- letting go of something that treated you well enough but you’ve outgrown, being wistful for change but also for the past... this song is so thematically on point i find myself needing to stare into the void about it

“dorothea”

- another wistful exploration of bygone relationships and whole eras of life. theme once again on point.

“coney island”

- i totally feel like i’m walking through an abandoned theme park in the dead of january listening to this song. i taste the ocean, or perhaps my own tears,,,

- obsessed with the lyric sorry for not making you my centerfold for the way it captures so succinctly the downfall of the romantic relationships on this album, makes my brain buzz

“ivy”

- this pop-country ballad simply is a jam

- why is the rhyme scheme of oh, goddamn / my pain fits in the palm of your freezin hand so fucking satisfying?? i wanna bite down on it

- also, the palm of your freezing hand image/sensation is so simple, yet i find it to be one of the most striking lyrical evocations of winter on the album

“cowboy like me”

- i really enjoy the way this one turns the ‘end of an era’ motif on its head. in most of the other songs on the album with similar interests - “champagne problems”, “tolerate it”, “happiness”, “coney island”, “marjorie” - a relationship is coming to an end and the narrator has to grapple with how that changes them. in “cowboy like me”, a relationship starting is the change that requires reflection on what’s being lost and i think that’s neat!

“long story short”

- this song offers a meta-perspective on the whole album and i have it between my teeth and i’m gonna grrhgrhhrhhhgrhhhgrhj

- the whole chorus fucking. it offers a birds-eye view of the cycle we’ve been seeing different facets of for eleven songs now!!

- relatedly, the line i always felt i must look better in the rear view shines a spotlight on why the speaker stays trapped in this particular cycle and i am unwell about it!!!

- looking at the song through this lens, the CHEEK of now i’m all about you!! (for how long, taylor? yeah, that’s what i thought, see you in the review, babe!!!)

- in any case, i find it delightful that even the album’s meta-narrative contains a flipped-script moment that’s powerful as all hell. long story short, i survived indeed!

“marjorie”

- it really gets to me that in the outpouring of the bridge, the speaker says i should’ve asked you questions / i should’ve asked you how to be in such a panic, yet the verses are proof that the speaker picked up on marjorie’s advice all the same!! heart-wrenching.

“closure”

- the lounge piano layered over the static gives the song a disjointedness that really works for me and somehow perfectly captures the chaotic emotional state of being suspended between letting something go (a relationship, a year of your life) and still being stuck with that something a little while longer. i.e. the perfect penultimate track to this album

- the petty delivery of it wasn’t right, the way it all went down / looks like you know that now delights and amuses

“evermore”

- album closers to sink into a fit of despair to!!! because this is the perfect album to sink into a fit of despair to and this closer is the perfect concluding statement for its album!!!!!

- truly, the way this song ends with the faintest whiff of rebirth yet is still melancholy the whole way through... name a better love letter to winter. you can’t do it. ❄️

[danielxrk]

    ✞ DID THE HEARTBREAK CHANGE ME? *      MAYBE

sure, the evaluation proves distracting as always, but daniel needs something different. first, it was putting together the arrangement for the evaluation, but after, all that was left was singing, no dancing required this month, therefore easily skipped. it requires less work than usual, singing coming more easily to him than anything else. no, that’s a lie; what comes easiest is his fingers on strings, fret boards, recording studios, and music so loud and heavy that it shakes the entire stage.

well, he wouldn’t know if that last part comes easily anymore. judging by the state of his band, now officially crushed into a thousand pieces with their lead singer enlisting in the military, it wouldn’t be easy at all. it hurts too much to play any music with the members that remain, and hurts too much not to. everything hurts. 

it’s why he knows he needs something different, and in the end, he always falls back to writing a song, or playing an instrument, or both. bass is where he started, and he wants to think bass is where he’ll finish, if he’s ever done with music. it seems a fitting choice now, when it feels like the end of the world. 

dua lipa’s album is groovy, full of synths and disco beats, but more importantly, bass. he got hooked on it for that reason, such dominant and important bass lines more of a rarity in popular music these days. he managed to listen to it frequently in the early part of april, but since sungwoon’s enlistment, it felt too happy, like salt in wounds that couldn’t heal fast enough. 

he wrote a song, listened to songs about heartbreak, lamented over failing an audition, likely due to the build up of stress from the month. he tells himself it’s time to move on in all meanings of the phrase, even though he knows it’s easier said than done. he doesn’t know if he’ll ever move on from sungwoon, but he also knows he has a tendency to be dramatic. at least it’ll be more fodder for songs he can write-- songs about heartbreak, songs about being in love forever, songs about not moving on, and then eventually, maybe, songs about moving on too. the part of him that loves songwriting almost looks forward to seeing that evolution. 

he wonders what his life will look like in a year. will he still be heartbroken? will he still be a trainee? will he still have the friends he does now? daniel of a year ago-- daniel who just released an album with his band --couldn’t have imagined his life ending up like this. 

worse. it’s so much worse. why did he ruin all of it? why did he insist they sign up for the mgas? why did he put everything on the line for greed? they didn’t need more fans. he would’ve been happy performing their songs to 30 people in underground clubs if he had to; they all would’ve, he knows. they could’ve promoted their album all summer, and started working on more songs, and released another one in two more years. maybe sungwoon would’ve been so happy with them that he wouldn’t have enlisted. maybe, maybe, maybe.

he wonders if he’ll ever forgive himself for it. he wonders, too, if they’ll ever be friends like they were again. sometimes he hears hyunggu’s voice saying maybe it’s a way of the world saying you need to branch out and not only rely on the same four people for your entire life, and then he remembers all of the people he started relying on leaving, hyunggu included, and it all turns bitter.

sometimes he hears woong’s voice saying god never gives you more than you can handle, too, and he has to believe there’s a reason for it all. he remembers the people that are still here: haknyeon, woong, eunwoo-- some of the most important ones, but not the only ones.

he starts writing lists of things he’s thankful for in the back of his notebook, working back to front. one day, the song lyrics and thank you notes will meet, and maybe they’ll combine into a song of gratitude for everything he still has in his life. he doesn’t want to wallow. he knows he’s done too much of it in the past year. 

somehow, this loss isn’t as bad as the loss of empty enigma, even if it brings the mourning back. maybe it’s because he knew for months, and had time to prepare-- time to love sungwoon knowing that time would run out, four months of loving as hard as he could and giving it the very best he had. that was one thing he could never regret. 

it still hurts, but eventually, he can listen to happy music again, and he falls back into the bass lines of the future nostalgia album. he needs something different, and he had absent minded thoughts of covering a song for this album before, so why not all of them? it’ll just be him on the bass, no vocals, no original rap-- a medley of bass, and that’s all. 

his face isn’t even included. it’s just his camera pointed at his bass and and his hands, so the chords he plays are more evident. it’s the names of the song each bass line is from popping up in the closed captioning each time he transitions between them. it’s just him, jamming out on his favorite instrument, not trying to be anything he’s not-- unapologetically the purest form of himself, and the part he likes best.

[chainreh]

okay me rambling about memeM bc i need to my thoughts OUT

• intro illusion

i really like this one it has a kinda creepy vibe which Fucks and the dance is cool especially the chaereh part! my only criticisms are 1. im pretty sure the dance fucked up dosies knees😭 2. only goeun yuki and swan are singing/rapping 😔and i get its a 1 minute long song so its not plausible for all members to get a part but it still makes me sad. And 3. ITS TOO SHORT. gdi but yeah👍good intro

• memem

ngl from the teasers i was pretty hesitant about it but i thought the "mem mem mem" part was really catchy😭and then the second mv teaser spoiled the whole chorus. Then there were articles about it being "experimental with bpm changes" and i went oh no. but GODDAMN it slaps. i watched the mv right after waking up and it felt really intense 😩and it really suits the theme of witches hypnotising you and getting inside your head. i think the bpm changes really aided into the intense feelings of the song, but despite being dark and creepy, it still manages to be somewhat playful in its sound? and its stuck in my head Indeed. i think overall i like zombie more as a tt but memem is still suuuuuper good.

• oh my gosh

jieun's voice in this song 🥺oh my gosh indeed. i really like it its a nice chill listen (especially if u listen in album order after how intense the previous two tracks are lol) and the outro to the song: everything from the "lalalala" is PURE serotonin!!! especially that second "purple on the top!" so cute 😭i love these girls sm

• freaky pu- i mean pretty psycho

this is probably the best track on the album. the bass, sooo sexy. freaky purky wasnt my favourite but i still liked it somewhat, and now. i mean that chant has become iconic in my head. i really love the lyrics in this song, the use of "pretty" to mean both "very" and "beautiful" with "im pretty psycho" and "im a pretty psycho" wowie. and the "maestro, maestro, im a pretty psycho" part is EVERYTHING. very pleasant to listen to I HOPE IT BLOWS UP🙏music or performance video of pretty psycho please

• joah

i really like (what im pretty sure is??) the guitar in this song, its very cozy and nice. joah, 2am, and period are all best friends. i dont have much to say about this track tbh😅but everyones vocals in this song are really nice and MAYBE this song contains my fav yuki rap ever??????

•hate me, hurt me, love me

me when the bside has a long fucking title🔥🔥🔥no but fr this is my fav track on this album its currently fighting with cast pearls before swine for my fav purki song. the intro instrumental bit sounds so pleasant??? and i really like that it opens with (what i think) is dosie's vocals bc she has a really sweet voice that suits this song so well🥺i love the chanting part at the end of the chorus i can just see them all performing this live with beaming smiles and its so 😭😭also does yuki sing in this song? i saw a colour coded lyrics video that said it was chaein singing this one part but i fr thought it was yuki, but maybe it was just the effects they added to her voice. anyway yeah this song is everything to me i love it so much

• cursor

uh oh its the sad song!! and its really good!!! i ADORE the build up of instruments from the intro to the chorus and the drop at the end and wow its so 👌idk what to say i cried my first time listening to this it was really an Experience. i dont think my explanation could do it justice u just have to listen to it

OVERALL

this album is so good holy shit. i think as a whole i like it more than hide & seek but like i said i think i prefer zombie as a tt over memem👍this is a call to action to go listen to memem rn it's very excellent. once again purple kiss do not disappoint