#BOLBBALGAN4

[no1boa]

bol4 𖤣𖥧

lips (special clip)

[emotionallychargedtowel]

shuffled (sort of)

I was tagged for this by @lurkingshan and it looked like fun, so I made up a way to participate even though I don't listen to music on any of those services that people tend to use for these things. The closest I get is listening to things on youtube so I made a list of songs the YT algorithm suggested to me. That list was a bit long so I used a random number generator to pick ten. Well, I really hit paydirt. I couldn't have come up with a better list if I had chosen it all myself.

And then weeks went by and I sat on this nearly-finished post for no good reason! Now I'm dusting it off and getting it out of my drafts.

I'm never big on tagging people on these things, it makes me incredibly anxious. But after this much time has passed, I really can't imagine doing it. That said, if anyone reads this and feels inspired to do it too, please consider yourself tagged.

Orange Juice - I Can’t Help Myself

One of the best tracks on my favorite Orange Juice album. This is a really good distillation of their sound that shows their influences really clearly (postpunk, classic soul, the Velvet Underground, Chic, the Buzzcocks, etc. etc.) while showing how they did something with them that's completely their own. It doesn't hurt that no one sounds quite like Edwyn Collins.

SZA - Ghost in the Machine

For a couple of years now I've been trading song recommendations with a close friend of mine. In other words, we take turns giving each other a song to listen to. It's been great, in part because our tastes are pretty danged different (though with enough overlap to have common ground). I've found out about a lot of amazing stuff through her but I don't think there's a song that has stuck with me more from this project than Ghost in the Machine. This song just keeps giving me goosebumps after...it's been a year and change, I think.

Taemin - Criminal

Years ago I asked my old internet friend Kate (who I've been interacting with since our livejournal days) about kpop. She has always been better than I am at keeping up with new music and I knew she knew a thing or two about it. She gave me a short list of songs to check out and Criminal was on it. It didn't quite click at first but it stuck in my brain somehow. I came back to it later and boom. It clicked big time. It reminds me of a few things. The la-la-la part definitely has a debt to Kylie Minogue's Can't Get You Out of My Head and the lead-up to the chorus reminds me of Roy Orbison's I Drove All Night. It has a retro quality that probably makes it more palatable to a middle-aged listener like myself but when I hear the synthpop tones of my childhood through a contemporary filter I don't get nostalgia so much as a distorted time-warp feeling (in a nice way).

Brave Girls - We Ride

A while back I was emailing back and forth with another friend of mine who I talk to about music a lot--wow, I didn't know that was going to be such a theme here, but I love it--and we were talking about new and old East Asian pop genres. He made me a list of a few recent kpop and jpop songs that he thought were reminiscent of city pop, an 80s genre out of Japan that's a favorite of his. There were quite a few winners on that list but this song is the one I've listened to the most. There's another theme: sounds from my formative years filtered through a contemporary lens. I can see why my friend associated it with city pop. The combination of disco/funk elements (like that choppy Nile Rodgers guitar part) and soft pop (the harmonies, the synth strings) fits right into that category. These elements were everywhere when I was a kid but they didn't get put together in this way.

Tsunami - Be Like That

This song about a has-been ex-boyfriend is more relatable to me in my 40s than it was when I first heard it in my 20s, but that's how old Jenny Toomey was when she wrote it. I've never gotten super into Tsunami despite liking a couple of their songs quite a lot (this one, and Valentine, from their album Deep End). I should probably revisit them. They always had a way with washy guitars and interesting chords, and Jenny Toomey's voice is legendary for a reason. (The version of I Only Have Eyes for You that she recorded with Grenadine, her side project with Mark Robinson from Unrest and the drummer from the Eggs, makes really good use of that voice. It's fucking exquisite and literally gives me goosebumps.)

Spoon - Me and the Bean

This one's a bit personal. I was active in the indie rock scene in Austin in the early 'aughts when Spoon was transitioning from their status as a cautionary tale of major label abandonment* into the period where they reached greater heights on an indie than that major label ever would have allowed. That scene wasn't very big so it's not surprising that in addition to Girls Can Tell-era Spoon being nearly omnipresent for a period of my life, I also have some personal connections there. Anyway, people seldom notice that this song is a cover. I never saw the Sidehackers, the band who originally performed the song (I'm not sure if they even managed to record it). But if this song ends up being what people remember most about them, it would make a respectable legacy. I don't know the later Spoon stuff as well as this era, but back then, there weren't a lot of Spoon originals that were as overtly emotional as this one. (You didn't typically hear a line like "I have your blood inside my heart" in an original Spoon song.) Britt Daniel may not have written this, but he doesn't hold back in his performance. So I always appreciated how it balanced out the more emotionally reserved style of the other songs on Girls Can Tell.

*They channeled the experience into songwriting to good effect. "The Agony of Lafitte," about the A&R guy that signed them to Elektra before the label screwed them over, is probably my favorite Spoon song.

the Chills - Pink Frost

I feel like so much has been written about this song that there isn't much point trying to say anything about it. It has a truly important place in the history of New Zealand indie music, and the events surrounding it are pretty interesting. But mostly it's just a really well-crafted piece of dark, sneakily poppy post-postpunk. Among people my age with similar tastes to mine, I can't think of a song that ended up on more mixtapes. (Though a friend of mine always used to say he regretted that he couldn't really put it on mixtapes for girls he was interested in because of the whole murdered girlfriend aspect of it.)

Veronica Falls - Misery

This song is obscenely catchy. It only takes one listen to get me singing it to myself in the kitchen for months. It's pretty fun to sing to oneself, in the kitchen or otherwise, but I'm sure it would be a million times more so if you could reproduce the harmonies with a partner. Veronica Falls really are unparalleled in the harmony department, and it's even more enjoyable because they usually use those pretty harmonies to sing about morbid, depressing things. And that juxtaposition never feels like a schtick to me, which it easily could in the wrong hands.

Bolbbalgan4 - Dream

I've gotten into quite a few songs because they were featured on kdramas, but this is the only song where it happened the other way around—I liked it first, then watched Hwarang because of it. There was a video for it on youtube with clips from the series and the song made the show seem more interesting. Not to imply anything negative about the series, I think there's a lot to be said for it. But it was this song that made me want to watch it. I love this kind of super emotional kpop song that's so plentiful in kdramas. Maybe it's because during the decades when rock music was de facto banned in South Korea the country's dominant genre was the ballad. Maybe it's because of that particular brand of despair that kdramas excel at so much, coming up in a slightly different setting. This type of song is just more emotional in a certain way that any other genre I've run across. And this particularly example is, to my mind, the pièce de résistance.

Shearwater - Breaking the Yearlings

This is one of the highlights of Animal Life, which is my favorite Shearwater album. It took me a while to warm up to Shearwater. The thing that really sold me on them was going on a whim to see Jonathan Meiburg play a solo acoustic set in front of a tiny audience at the Cactus Cafe. I think maybe some friends of mine opened for him or something, because something must have gotten me in the door. I ended up being really glad I went. Meiburg's set was downright mesmerizing, and I was sold on Shearwater from that point on. This particular song gets in my head a lot because the washing machine in my building puts out this one repetitive tone when you're starting a load of clothes that is really close to the opening notes of this song.

[prplocks]

COMEBACK: BOL4

🎄 merry go around 🎄

reblog if you save ▪︎

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[jongace]

favourite comebacks of 2023

[ohsharethekmusic]

Song : You(=I)

Artist : Bolbbalgan4

Album : Full Album RED PLANET

[mxlly143]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AHN JI-YOUNG

[day6source]

New video from HUP!

BOL4, Day6 Sing Each Other's Songs｜HUP Noraebang

[kpoptimeout]

K-Pop Debuts and Comebacks for the Third Week of April (Apr 10-Apr 16 2023)

Apr 10

Kep1er - Giddy

Girls' Planet 999 winners Kep1er are confident and edgy in this catchy comeback!

IVE - I AM

Popular girl group IVE returns with their retro dance-infused sound.

KARD - Without You

Talented co-ed quartet KARD is back in this fun electropop track!

Apr 11

X:IN - Keeping The Fire

Multinational girl group X:IN debuts in this powerful MV!

Apr 12

LEE CHAE YEON - KNOCK

IZ*ONE's main dancer Chaeyeon is back solo with a ridiculously addictive track!

n.SSign - Salty

The project group debuting through Channel A and Abema’s survival show, Stars Awakening/Youth Star, drops their first track!

Park Ji Hoon - Blank Effect

WANNA ONE's Jihoon returns solo in this mature performance!

Apr 13

DAWN - Dear My Light

DAWN sings about his feelings for Hyuna following their breakup.

Jang Ye-eun - Cherry Coke

CLC's YEEUN debuts solo in this fun and catchy song!

Apr 14

No release.

Apr 15

No release.

Apr 16

Bolbbalgan4 - FRIEND THE END

Popular indie act Bolbbalgan4 returns with its signature sound!

What is your favourite release of the week?

[no1boa]

bol4 ☆ 'snowball' behind the scenes

[prplocks]

COMEBACK: BOL4

🎄 merry go aroung 🎄

reblog if you save ▪︎

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[married-2-the-music]

Bol4: Growing Up Through Song

[busylazy]

To My Youth by BOL4

Produce X 101 cover version

[day6source]

New Video from HUP!

Young K - Romantic Cat, BOL4 - Love poem｜HUP Noraebang