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A ranking and review of the best new releases from Korean and Japanese artists! View the Substack version of this piece here! Read part one here! #5: natori, The Abyss The Abyss is a mind-boggling, madcap marvel! The best metaphor is a circus, because as soon as the audience gets the gist, they both know and have no idea what to expect from the rest of the act! He puts on a circuitous show, finding countless ways to repeat the same bottom lines. The Abyss does what he wants it to: create an endless distraction from what he considers the bleak, brutal emptiness of reality. Listeners join him on a bustling, breathless ride that takes a “more is more” approach that works far more often than it doesn’t! He does occasionally lose his balance on the musical tightrope between “too much” and “extra in the right ways” - he most clearly finds and pushes that limit in “infection” - but he quickly regains his footing and restarts a winning spectacle! natori would rather convince himself that a hallucination or distorted memory is real than stare at a hard truth, so he sings about editing his own recollections (in “EAT,” “FLASH BACK,” “Thread That Connects Us,” and more), sings favorably about “betrayal and secrecy” if he can “come to believe” it (in “Serenade”), and repeats that some things are better left unknown (in “Just Between Us”). He also uses the metaphor of being on a stage to describe ignorance as bliss (in both “The Abyss” and “Serenade”). He has disgust and disdain for almost everything about life, like society’s commitment to black-and-white thinking (“HELPMETAKEME,” “EAT,” “FLASH BACK,” “Absolute zero”) and having to grow up (“FLASH BACK,” “Just Between Us,” “IN_MY_HEAD,” “Birthday Song”). Dreams are “rotten” (“FLASH BACK”) and “wretched” (“NO EMERGENCY DOOR”), angels are muffled (“An angel who… has no voice,” he mentions in “FLASH BACK”), and wings are “ugly” (“Birthday Song”). He is the most overtly defeatist - if not downright masochistic - in “EAT” (“There is no salvation, I already knew it!”), “Serenade” (“give me my punishment”), and “Birthday Song” (“I wanted to be broken by your words” - perhaps following up on “I have been born - or should I say I have been broken?” in “Serenade”). To paraphrase, natori’s mindset is, “This world is awful and overwhelming, and since I only stay in it for you, the one I love, let’s just go live somewhere else! Let’s make up our own world to exist in, so I can keep the one good thing about life and ignore everything else! And it’s fine if this world we make up is an illusion; I will wholly buy into it!” He urges in “SPEED,” “Just squeeze your brain to the point where you can see… Drink this moment and dance again.”
Although the songs are despairing around 90 percent of the time, there is a key 10 percent of time when natori’s inner optimist shows proof of life! For example, he assumes his proposal will end in disaster in “Propose,” but he does still plan to propose! In “Just Between Us,” he says he “like[s] the dazzling future somewhere” - he just knows that “somewhere” isn’t here! And in “Birthday Song,” he sings, “I just want you to bear with me,” implying he’s ready to survive a struggle as long as a companion joins him. The Abyss is confounding, creative commentary on how a superficial society can leave one pessimistic and how far some will go to mentally escape it. #4: CHUU, XO, My Cyberlove While CHUU’s playful presentation of a love story is open to interpretations as wide as her imagination, here is one theory: XO, My Cyberlove is an ode to a snowman! The strongest supporting evidence comes from the lyrics about cold nights being the best time to reunite. In “Loving You!,” she sings, “Midnight… check the temperature… it’s so cold, my nose tingles… but it’s perfect for meeting you.” She also mentions “round button eyes [that] turn into hearts” and “a carrot-made nose and twig eyebrows.” Relatedly, she feels that time is of the essence: “Why take so long?,” she asks in “Love Potion;” “I can’t wait no more” and “At this rate, I might disappear,” she frets in “Hide & Seek.” She is apprehensive about the asynchronicity of their timelines, preoccupied with the different paces of their lives: “Your clock runs so fast / I move slowly…” (“XO, My Cyberlove,” which has slow-motion running in the music video); “Slow the tempo” (“Limoncello”); “[Y]ou’re slowing down…” (“Love Potion”). She wishes she could freeze time, so her love would never melt away. She ends the album with a pledge: “If it snows, we’ll meet again.” The sounds do both CHUU’s joy and nerves justice. She sometimes has a talk-like and joking tone, sometimes sounds more concerned and serious, and other times channels her “fluttery” feelings through details more than overall tone, like through sounding extra close to the microphone or repeating certain syllables for emphasis. Other emphases come from lyrics that make it seem like CHUU is playing a game with a word bank, seeing how many times she can connect one of her song’s references to other ones! She sings about “crying” in “Heart Tea Bag” and “Cocktail Dress,” a “lonely island” in “XO, My Cyberlove” and “Canary,” “blooming defiantly” in “Canary” (“at the edge of a great cliff”) and “Cocktail dress” (in a “Barren city”), and much more. Some of the references are akin to a dialogue with herself, like when she sings about “Dancing under the streetlights” in “Loving You!” after addressing critics in “Teeny Tiny Heart”: “People blame me for no reason / Even though dancing all day is originally my job”! She alludes to the apple-symbol-focused “Heart Attack” era with an arrow striking the apple above her head in the “XO, My Cyberlove” music video - not to mention the “ringing heart attack” she mentions in “Teeny Tiny Heart”! She uses underwater descriptions like in the Howl era: “Feels like an ocean dream” (“Limoncello”); “That day we were swimming through the blue forest” (“Canary”). Lastly, she returns to color references in symbolic ways, describing red lipstick (“Cocktail Dress”), a pink “Love Potion,” and a red scarf and orange traffic lights (“Loving You!”). Mentioning a lack of color is also symbolic, and she mentions a “transparent cup” in both “Limoncello” and “Love Potion.” Plus, she sings about seeing herself “clearer” in “Heart Tea Bag,” after “colors were erased.” The flashback-themed “Canary” music video sends this message home. After digging up the once-buried monster plushie (the one who came alive and befriended her in “Howl”), CHUU ends the video with a long close-up, just staring at the camera, as if letting the fact sink in that this is who she is. Revisiting the friendly monster who helped her gain confidence in the Howl era gives her the necessary comfort and confidence now to spend time alone - when it is not the right season to reunite with her beloved snowman! Like how CHUU emphasized the friendly and courageous traits that an era titled Howl could represent, she emphasizes a less-anticipated angle in this era about “cyberlove,” focusing on the aspect of time more often than distance. The “XO, My Cyberlove” music video does have a typical interpretation of “cyberlove,” featuring a video chat with a human love interest. But CHUU spends much more time throughout the album addressing a different defining trait of “cyberlove”: a sense of permanent preservation. CHUU can handle the seasons alone, when her partner melts away, but her favorite time of year will always be when she can feel like their status is frozen in time. XO, My Cyberlove proves that CHUU’s best eras are those in which she uses surprising and silly avatars to explore less-obvious emotional states. #3: DxS, Serenade SEUNGKWAN made comments on a comeback live-stream about “Dream Serenade” that touched on this project’s overall message: “Could putting an end to love not be a failure, but a way to complete something? Could this emotion be explained as maturity?” That is exactly what makes Serenade and its corresponding videos a different kind of breakup story, one in which the happiest possible ending is one that feels unfinished, one in which a heavy silence is actually appreciated more than a light air of contentment could be, and one in which love burrows itself the deepest not in the grandest gestures as much as the humdrum of daily life. After all, mundane days are when that love is the most top-of-mind, so it makes sense for it to be harder to extract love from those types of memories. Those moments with love on the brain and not much else are honored throughout Serenade, which stays reflective on purpose. Long-time SEVENTEEN listeners know that this subunit is capable of full-fledged powerhouse performances; it is a purposeful choice to not go all-out this time. DK and SEUNGKWAN hold back, and instruments and pauses between them carry the weight of what is unsaid. For example, “Blue” is about a widened emotional distance, which suits the way the duo’s harmonizing fades out at the end to leave the piano alone. And in “Guilty Pleasure,” DK’s and SEUNGKWAN’s voices offer a juxtaposition that is heightened by the spaces the rhythm leaves. While Serenade is about people moving in further and further circles, it also closes one main loop. The album starts and ends on a hopeful note, starting with “Rockstar” and ending with “Prelude of love.” As SEUNGKWAN put it, what was disguised as a story’s end is actually just a chapter’s end. The only thing that can be certain to remain in future chapters are the intangibles, like a heavy silence upon facing a harsh truth (the subject of the song “Silence”), or a wistfulness triggered by one’s habits. Examples of the latter are in the “Epilogue Version” of “Blue,” in which the little things carry the greatest meaning: flowers in a vase, which are a notable difference from the wilted ones in the preview video, representing an ending becoming a beginning again; the fact that a second toothbrush remains in the bathroom; DK leaving the windshield wipers on despite clear skies, as if he is reliving a memory of a rainy night with a loved one and cannot bear to disrupt any detail from that night that is making the memory clearer… The small things that are magnified in “Trailer : An Ordinary Love”: a phone that says it is 00:00 AM, the start of a new day; wilted plants versus fresh roses that a former lover carries when rushing past DK; a carpet with scattered, burnt-out matches from a matchbook that bears a description of inducing a “dreamy languor and forgetfulness;” and more. Lastly, what is largely unseen is what matters most in the “Cinema Version” of “Blue.” In that short film, the female main character acts on her protective and nurturing instincts long after her ex stops reciprocating. In the final scene, every little detail adds to the devastation: how long it takes him to look like he too is crying as she walks away from him; how she walks back in the direction they came, as if to honor the memory of their time together, whereas he walks in the direction they did not walk together… Serenade prompts pondering about what is worth preserving regarding relationship memories, and the answers are found in the ordinary (which is why “Ordinary” is a word applied throughout this project: in lyrics, in a behind-the-scenes video series called “Ordinary Notes,” and in a comeback live-stream segment called the “Ordinary Counseling Center”). #2: JOOHONEY, 光 (INSANITY) Despite its anti-overthinking ethos, JOOHONEY has clearly put a lot of thought into 光 (INSANITY)! It fully represents what it means to have a fighting spirit, from the body language that shows he is ready for a fight (in his album concept photos and in the “STING” music video) to fight-related lyrics (life is “a bloody war with myself,” he says in “Fear;” “Face your reality and fight. This is a war,” he says in “Touch the sky;” “I never dodge a fight,” he states in “Bite”). He commits to the topic of keeping eyes on the prize, reminding himself to stay the course and trust his gut. He says “Don’t think too much” in both “NO BRAIN NO PAIN” and “Touch the sky,” and he says “keep moving forward” in both “Bite” and “Gwang.” He dodges distractions in the songs themselves, too, rapping and singing despite a squeaky noise throughout “Push,” despite glitches and ad libs in “Bite,” and despite other potential disruptions. While 光 (INSANITY) makes pride seem to come to naturally to JOOHONEY, this era’s many connections to LIGHTS are reminders that it has been anything but easy. In the LIGHTS-era song “FREEDOM,” JOOHONEY sang about “burning” with “no pride,” being a “dancing loner,” and being in a “cage” and a state of “burning rage.” Now, in “NO BRAIN NO PAIN,” he sings about embracing being alone: “Let me go now / Leave me alone now / I want to go crazy, I want to shine / I want to clear my head now.” “Gwang” is the Korean word for both “shine” and “to be crazy,” and 光 (INSANITY) takes the premise of LIGHTS to the next level, by transitioning from singing and rapping about finding light to singing and rapping about immersing himself in it. When blinded by the lights, one’s troubles are also out of sight and mind, akin to the feeling after boiling rage when one suddenly feels fatigued or even calm, with no more energy left to exhaust. If not a moment of calm clarity, the moment one “goes mad” might be an artistic breakthrough, which also makes it worthwhile! JOOHONEY supposes that “going mad” when the lights go on is a breakthrough, not a breakdown, and when the word “gwang” applies to his scenario, he is in his prime. As he put it in the LIGHTS-era song “Monologue,” he was hiding “like hope in the dark,” and now, in “NO BRAIN NO PAIN,” he says, “I will step out confidently in front of this frustrating dream / In that light within the pitch-black darkness.” Sweetening the insightful connections JOOHONEY draws between “shining bright” and “going crazy” are the many references to his own story. He mentions older parts of his discography: “First album, freedom… Wing suit rather than… armor,” he says in “Gwang,” referring to both the songs “FREEDOM” and “WING SUIT.” He focuses on the color red now, whereas yellow and blue - his other “primary colors” - were the focus of the LIGHTS era. He also honors each chapter of his journey through references to his membership in MONSTA X. He jokes about his reputation as the member with the most “persistent aegyo[,] going strong 10 years later” in “Bite,” in which he also says, “Don’t cry about a seven-year curse… Look back at the path you’ve wandered and your glory days.” His inspiration for one song title, “Touch the sky,” comes from a MONSTA X concert mantra, “Let’s jump until we touch the sky.” And “STING” samples a Muhammad Ali quote: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” This sums up his mindset in so many ways: his desire to “float” through life now that he has earned mental freedom, the “wing suit” he is finally wearing, his duality overall, his fighting - aka “stinging” - spirit, and his nickname “bee”-ing “jooHONEY”! 光 (INSANITY) is ultimately about finding clarity in chaos, strength in struggles, and grit through grief, and it is a satisfying sequel to an era in which JOOHONEY put himself down: “In the dark sky / Was left like a fool… afraid to go out,” he admitted in the LIGHTS-era song “Evolution.” He scolded himself again in the LIGHTS-era song “HYPE ENERGY”: “Stop being alone in front of the mirror.” Now, in the “STING” music video, he plays chess in front of a full-length mirror. He remains “alone in front of the mirror,” but he is ready to outsmart his inner critic - to defeat the part of him defined by fear, the part that did not make daring game moves and did not face the light. #1: ENHYPEN, THE SIN : VANISH Stay tuned for a separate write-up all about this release!
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