After the release of many sub-unit projects, tripleS are back with their newest full group album. Coincidentally, the name of their title track is the same question I’ve been wanting to ask the K-pop industry for most of this year. Are you alive? This song does exactly what we’ve been conditioned to expect from tripleS. Fans will likely be pleased, but anyone hoping for something different will need to look elsewhere.
As soon as Are You Alive (깨어) opens with its “la la la” chant, I swear I’ve heard this song from tripleS before. While not exactly the same melody, the cadence and performance seem to reference last year’s Girls Never Die. I’m all for groups having signature sounds and melodies as long as they’re enjoyable enough to warrant repetition, but I found this chant pretty limp last year and even more so today. For a group with twenty four members, I guess I expect something that sounds bigger, more energetic and definitely more ambitious.
Making matters worse, this “la la la” chant basically is the song. Fragments of melody swirl around it, alongside plenty of sing-talk that goes nowhere. This leaves listeners grasping onto a rather monotone, repetitive centerpiece. A lovely bridge adds welcome texture and offers a glimpse of how tripleS’s music might sound if their producers fully took advantage of the group’s large configuration. We really should be getting entire choral moments from a group like this. They have enough voices for a choir, but instead they’re playing by K-pop’s lame rules. I mean, their producers have Japan’s Sakamichi Series and 48 Group all over the internet as inspiration. Imagine what they could do with that sprawling sound as filtered through K-pop’s perfectionist prism? The fact that they won’t break out of their constrained box is extremely frustrating given their potential.
Hooks
7
Production
7
Longevity
7
Bias
7
RATING
7