Music Assessment: Stray Children – Ceremony

Through the years, Stray Children have grown into one in all Ok-pop’s premiere teams. Actually, their reputation is so international that it virtually feels as in the event that they’ve transcended the business altogether. As soon as upon a time, in addition they topped my year-end singles chart. Gosh, that looks like lifetimes in the past. The group is again as we speak with their fourth Korean full-length album and the appropriately-titled Ceremony. In any case, this feels very very like a victory lap.

Sure, it’s one other Ok-pop tune about how nice and well-liked its performers. By now, you all know the way drained and unappealing I discover this lyrical trope, however even probably the most overused themes might be salvaged by killer songwriting and compelling manufacturing. Stray Children have proven they’re able to each previously, however oftentimes their must be catchy and intelligent in a sloganeering manner will get them into hassle. A lot of Ceremony looks like a meme, from the repeated “hip hip hooray” to the (annoying) “we’ve obtained good karma” catchphrase. There are enjoyable moments buried inside the tune, however they’re about as brief as the eye span wanted to take pleasure in a humorous web joke.

Wanting on the positives, Ceremony‘s woozy manufacturing is fairly attention-grabbing. It retains the listener off stability all through and the percussion in the course of the verses has an addictive texture I haven’t heard a lot of in Ok-pop. I want I may fuse it to a distinct tune totally, as a result of a lot of Ceremony is just repeated retorts flowing by means of the identical hip-hop phrasing we’ve heard time and again these previous few years. The refrain is kind of limp, centered round a feeble beat drop and a few errant shouting. There’s no melodic point of interest to tug every part collectively the way in which S-Class‘s pre-chorus did a pair years in the past. Wanting again at a fair older touchstone, it’s as if Ceremony took probably the most polarizing elements of Bigbang’s Bang Bang Bang (ie: its iconic lure refrain) and tried to construct a whole tune round it. It’s an ear-catching experiment, however not one which works for me. Worse but, I concern its extra gimmicky moments will age poorly.

Grade: C