The Music Dispatch: July 12th, 2022
Inside: FLO, aespa, VIVIZ, Rina Sawayama, Cardi B, Daft Punk influences, and Don't Start Now when you're bored of Don't Start Now
Welcome to The Music Dispatch! This is a weekly part of this Substack where I shortly review every new(-ish) release I listened to. Out every Tuesday. All mentioned songs are available on your streaming platform of choice unless stated otherwise.
If the impressions don’t make sense this time around, don’t blame me, blame the fever.
EPs and Albums
Kid Cudi released his best of compilation on Friday. If you haven’t heard of Kid Cudi besides Day n Nite, this is a good starting point!
FLO — The Lead Every song here is better than the first single Cardboard Box and thankfully avoids being a simple recreation of 90s r’n’b. I liked every song better — be it Immature, Summertime, and Feature Me. This is an exciting start for a rookie group. and I’m perched to know what they'll come up with next!
Chungha — Bare & Rare Pt. 1 This is American pop music sung in Korean. You’ve likely heard it before, unless K-Pop is all you’ve listened to, in which case it’s well produced, sounds clean, and never tries something else midway through the song and the vocal melody is pretty much the same as the production. Sparkling is a more competent You Can’t Sit With Us, but that also means within the K-Pop sphere you’ve heard it before. The most interesting song on here is the tropical pop throwback Louder because it actually sounds like a K-Pop song.
aespa — Girls The title track is a safe Savage rehash for the US, with good moments but the sum somehow less than its parts. The b-sides are at least decent — Illusion sounds better in an album context, as I suspected, and Life’s Too Short grew on me immensely since. But ICU. Really? We can shelve the SM ballads for the upcoming boyband. This group doesn’t need it. Anyways, if you want a good starting off point for aespa, either listen to this and check out Savage if you want to venture out to more K-Pop, or you listen to Savage and skip out on this.
VIVIZ — Summer Vibe All killer, no filler applies to this mini album. And unlike Bare & Rare earlier, this is very K-Pop. Listen, for instance, to Party Pop, which delves into retro with its synths but also keeps things modern throughout with its bass at the back. The melodies are still very standard for kpop however. The lead single, LOVEADE, is the kind of summer song that is both high tempo and pleasant, similar to Wonho’s BLUE mixed in with synths that seem ripped straight out of Foxes’ Sister Ray. My personal highlight is #FLASHBACK, which starts off with this 00s game variant of mall shop music and makes a very solid b-side, but I suspect Love Love Love will be the one to win most over — it starts out with a breakbeat only to abandon it midway through for straightforward piano in the pre-chorus and delve in these MIDI synthesizers. This is a very exciting step for VIVIZ, who stray more and more from GFriend’s path and carve their own way in club-ready K-Pop music. In either case, this is currently the K-Pop mini of the year. It’s just so good.
Moise — We Survived The Storm Vol.1 This record is firmly quirky rnb mixed in with electronic and often poppy music. If you like Aminé, Kaytranada, and Anderson.Paak and need somebody to listen to that is not one of the three, you'll enjoy this album. Moise isn’t quite the magnetic, gravitational presence that the three others are, though. My personal highlights were Burn You Out (which is Anderson.Paak produced by Kaytranada), and album closer 1st.
Singles
Rina Sawayama — Catch Me In The Air This second single has a huge sound, and it’s very cathartic as well. I’m surprised she released this second and went with This Hell first? This is much more immediate with Sawayama’s love for 2000s paired with actual 2000s sounding arena-rock rather than a nostalgic recreation of it that This Hell was. No idea how I feel about the two singles yet. It’s not going to be SAWAYAMA. And certainly her pop star ways stray her farther away from the Rina EP. We’ll see.
Cosmic Girls — Sequence This single off the heels of the Queendom 2 win is good and well-produced, although just three songs is obviously not going to be enough to form a full opinion. Last Sequence is quite smartly done and an exciting new angle for the girls after years of whimsical, magical pop music and whatever you wish to classify UNNATURAL as. Stronger is a strong (lol) ballad, but Done is the one track to watch for. Excellent club pop music here.
Raye — Hard Out Here This is a very angular song — dare I say edgy? But more in a neutral descriptor than dismissive. I like it, though lyrically the song’s a little too straightforward? Maybe that was the point. “I told my lawyer stand by (War), there is no wrath like a woman scorned” as a line just feels clunky to me though.
Cardi B — Hot Shit (feat. Kanye West & Lil Durk) So this is finally the lead single to Cardi B’s upcoming second album. It feels like ages since Invasion of Privacy, and in the time since, Cardi has improved massively in rapping. The beat is by Tay Keith and deliciously mean. Cardi puts on her best Tina snow-era Stalli performance for this, Lil Durk sounds very spirited, and Ye is at least not phoning it in for once. But why is he saying Me and Pusha kill your man? Oh please. With the way he’s crying over the divorce? I don’t know about that.
Mabel — Let Love Go (feat. Lil Tecca) When you miss Don’t Start Now but don’t want to listen to Don’t Start Now again, put this one on, it does the same thing.
Julien Baker — Guthrie The lead single from an upcoming bsides collection of 2021 album Little Oblivions, this actually sounds more like something from her debut Sprained Ankle, really sparse.
The 1975 — Part of the Band I basically only checked this out because Jack Antonoff, Producer Man Du Jour (and the unserious man headlining that Minions soundtrack — be serious, I was never going to cover that one), worked on this and that multi-hyphenate Michelle Zauner did background vocals. So this is just Jack Antonoff doing something for The 1975, like a reject for his own project Bleachers. It’s an "indie rock band single" single. Very understated for this group with, who’d have thunk it, unserious lyrics. This was the first and last time we cover this band around here.
SG Lewis — Missing You / Something About Your Love These are two very 80s drenched songs, something for the club, but also plain enjoyable on their own; Missing You is the more straightforward Blinding Lights inspired track, while Something About Your Love is the stunner here, with its bridge section recalling Daft Punk's Digital Love, which is an extremely exciting reference point. Seated for the next album!
My finishing section? Um. Right. In two weeks Renaissance Act 1 will drop. It’s a trilogy! She’s going kpop, y’all!!! That means there’s plenty time to be relistening to her discography! Not me, though, because I still have to finish up on that Mariana Trench dive that I did on Trent Reznor aka Nine Inch Nails aka one half of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Not much left before I can finally work on the Notes on a Discography! Hopefully…
It's great to read your thoughts on Rina Sawayama's latest single! VIVIZ's summer vibes is a cool one too. Hope the fever eases up soon.