November 2020: Highlights

It’s been a pleasure spending the first Monday of every month going over some highlights with you all, but it’s also been a personal lifeline this past year. We’ve never been luckier to have hard-working, passionate, talented people who, despite the events of the last eleven months, have continued to entertain us, distract us, and make us think. I’m happy to think anyone might have discovered some new music through this site, or looked at something in a new way, and I hope the year-end wrap-up to come will cover some more of the hundreds of releases I didn’t have time to write about or listen to deeply enough to feel comfortable writing about. So without further ado, here is the (slight, but heartfelt) last of the monthly highlights for 2020, and I’ll see you all at the end of the year!

Kylie Minogue: Disco
(2020.11.06)

Like a lot of labels, Kylie Minogue’s decided to start promoting its legendary star’s newest album back in July with the most radio-friendly and least-representative song of her new album Disco. “Say Something,” an otherwise halfhearted shrug of a song, did little to ramp up excitement for an album with such campy cover art promising a no-holds barred, mirror ball, leisure suit, Studio 54 fantasy extravaganza. Luckily, the rest of the album, while emphasizing the pop, mostly delivers on its tantalizing premise. What’s Your Pleasure? this is not: Kylie Minogue is first and foremost a pop star, not a disco diva, and the structure of each of these bubbly baubles keeps her rooted in very familiar territory. Its an album that joins a long list of club-ready hits from the aforementioned Jessie Ware, Dua Lipa, and Roisin Murphy, but besides Lipa’s, Minogue’s boasts the most accessible and the least experimental approach to its revival, a disco album for a general audience content to dabble rather than immerse. It’s an achievement nonetheless, banking on its ability to offer escapism and help put out the dumpster fire that was 2020. Most importantly, it is not Golden.

FANTASTICS from EXILE TRIBE: “High Fever”
(2020.11.11)

The female-side of the EXILE family has suffered tremendously this year with the loss of E-girls, one of the greatest J-pop girl groups of the last decade. I say this with no exaggeration — we will be waiting a long time for a group as remarkable, talented, and inclusive as E-girls to appear in J-pop again. Until then, we will have to make do with their closest male-counterparts, FANTASTICS from EXILE TRIBE, who are now tasked with carrying the dance-pop torch. The trick will be avoiding the temptation to fall into boring ballad territory, which the group has already flirted with this year. Luckily, “High Fever” takes a page from the “Blinding Lights” playbook, feasting on a spread of lightweight 80’s synths and groovy tension, all in service of showcasing an endless parade of ooh-and-ahh parlor tricks and choreography amidst a sea of eye-popping sartorial patterns. The song is in desperate need of more heft, but is otherwise one of the most focused boy band songs of the year, with a clear, noble purpose: piping in a constant stream of simultaneous activity from eight different corners to keep us as distracted as possible.

aespa: “Black Mamba”
(2020.11.18)

aespa is SM Entertainment’s newest girl group, the next in a long line rumored to be all but replacing its predecessor Red Velvet, much as Red Velvet replaced f(x), one group trumping the next in an endless and increasingly bizarre one-upmanship that continually suffers in quality, like a copy of a copy of a copy. Unlike groups like SNSD or f(x), aespa, with its “modern” gimmick of virtual members, spends less time proving they’re in it for the long haul, than that they are very much here to compete in the here and now with BLACKPINK, the world’s current reigning girl group. Thrust onto the world stage, K-pop groups no longer have the luxury to make the gradual journey with fans from neophytes to seasoned professionals, instead storming out of the gate with their “I Got a Boy“s like experienced veterans on their fifth comeback. So goes “Black Mamba,” with its technicolor PV evoking almost every saturated, holographic, Y2K-rainbow trend in visuals this year, from “How You Like That?” to Kalen Anzai’s “FAKE NEWS REVOLUTION.” It has a killer chorus, a dazzling hook, and arresting choreography, made instantly iconic by belly-up angles and abrupt camerawork. All of these pleasing elements make the song hard to hate, but also rob the group of what should have been its most important hallmark: the unique and instantly recognizable feel of an SM group. As SM’s least-SM group to date, it will be interesting to see where they evolve from here when this debut feels less like a prologue than an ultimate finesse.

RAYE: Euphoric Sad Songs
(2020.11.20)

There’s nothing that captures my attention faster than a throwaway Eurodance sample, as RAYE incorporates into “Regardless,” her bouncy collab with Rudimental that references Nadia Ali’s iconic trill for iiO’s “Rapture.” Euphoric Sad Songs relies a bit too heavily on this kind of tongue-in-cheek homage, tailgating on the 90’s dance trend that has consumed Brit-pop on and off over the past decade, but not without an endearing earnestness and genuine appreciation for the source material. There’s not much of long-term career in this kind of largely niche sound, one that relies on a very of-the-moment retro callback that won’t age well when the inevitable dub step revival commences, but a lot of this year’s best pop music has been predicated on successfully working within the confines of a less than ideal environment and limited shelf-life, and this one, without having much to say, says it all.

The World Standard: What’s “standard”!?
(2020.11.25)

With Avex in the middle of its dark night of the soul, any of our favorite groups are fair game for the chopping block. Among others, I’m preparing myself for the inevitable end of TOKYO GIRLS’ STYLE, FAKY, possibly even FEMM. None of these groups have had the kind of popularity that could possibly justify continual investment from a company that is now bleeding profit. The worst of these would be Wasuta, rather than TOKYO GIRLS’ STYLE, because we’ve been prepared for years to bid farewell to a years-in-the-making footnote that has long since ceased to play on any relevant field, while Wasuta has proved through their newest EP What’s “standard”!? that while they may be removed from their most inspired material, they can still churn out idol-pop with the best of them. While a lot of the charm of this EP relies on a long-term connection with the group, I can still imagine a casual listener finding a reason to explore their back catalogue with this as an introduction. Unfortunately, the upcoming single releases and scheduled lives don’t mean we’re out of the woods, yet, and I’m reluctantly prepared for the worst.

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