yunha - yunha

Released: August 29
 

From the very first track, I was taken aback by how very novel the musical approach for yunha’s eponymous album was. It starts out with seemingly predictable modern pop sensibilities in both the vocals and the synth arrangements. But it quickly starts getting very weird as the vocals distort and bend like a malfunctioning auto tune while the arrangement warps and wobbles into something with an only a passing semblance to its start. It’s a very wild approach especially considering the lyrics themselves wouldn’t seem too out of place in a radio ready type of pop track. And it’s pretty much this same aesthetic that carries through the entire album - pop stories and sensibilities that smash headfirst into complex textures and mind-warping arrangements. 

As for the lyrics, they tend to tread some familiar ground. Parties, fights with friends and lovers, musings about finding love - all of which are gently sung by yunha’s sometimes breathy vocals - find their places in the album. There’s the odd “Goop, which is totally diverse and wild but also has some maybe questionable lyrics. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I can’t help but feel like this is definitely an innuendo. “Lipstick Stains” stands out as one of my absolute favorite tracks of the album as it maintains some smooth downtempo to deep house vibes for a big chunk of the track but also has this bizarre and hyper-textured middle part in which it almost devolves into noise with only the vocals keeping things together. 

Overall, it’s a delightfully weird album. I really enjoy the ways in which it kind of subverts the pop genre’s conventions in weird ways. Taking steps in the direction of something that sounds pop only to turn it on its head in strange and wonderful ways. It’s texturally odd, vocally haunting and beautiful, and all around inventive.