Kara, Brown Eyed Girls, and Jay Park reviewed on the Jukebox
Click to viewKara's "Step," Brown Eyed Girls' "Sixth Sense," and Jay Park's "Demon" were all reviewed recently on the Jukebox (here, here, and here). The big "Step" issue for Jukeboxers was how crowded the sound was, some liking it, some not. I'm definitely in the liking-it category, think producers SweeTune make it feel effortless, a full-throttle but easy flow. My only reservation is that the tune isn't up there with SweeTune's best. I don't have much to say about "Demon": a functional Teddy Riley track, an OK melody, needs a snap that it once could have gotten from a Bobby Brown or a Ralph Tresvant, not to mention a Michael Jackson, but isn't getting from Jay Park.
Got home too late to do a Jukebox writeup on "Sixth Sense," but the Jukebox crew did great without me. The song is ambitious and baffling and the reviewers didn't pretend that they had a bead on it. Still don't know what I think of the music. Jer's pan and Iain-Anthony-Doug's praise all make equally good sense. There are so many shifts that the groove doesn't take hold, and no melody soars. But I'm stirred by the massiveness and experimentation. If I give it a chance, maybe it will take hold.
Am just as ambivalent about the video: provocative images thrown in our face, an attempt to connect democracy and sexual liberation, seems facile but that doesn't make the images less arresting. The three oldest Brown Eyed Girls were already in elementary school before South Korea had its first genuinely free election. So riot shields and cults of personality and the state closing in wouldn't pertain only to some countries to the north and to the east.
The teaser single "Hot Shot" that came out a week before this is just as ambitious and swings better for me, big-band Latin ramping into soundtrack funk and the Brown Eyed Girls doing the girls-will-be-boys thing on TV.
Was disappointed that the "Sixth Sense" video contains no murders, suicides, or murder-suicides. Along those lines - along any lines - Brown Eyed Girls' "Abracadabra" and BEG Ga-In's "Irreversible" are two of the best music videos I've seen in the last several years. Mysterious but decipherable plots that netizens spend months on YouTube figuring out. [Click CC if you're not getting English subtitles for "Irreversible."] Also, great accordion. Last February I tried not very successfully to start a conversation about "Abracadabra." I'll make the effort for "Irreversible" sometime in the future (tried once on poptimists, but of course that failed too, an experiment the purpose of which was to confirm that Mat and I are alone in the world).