Tune Evaluate: tripleS – Are You Alive

After the discharge of many sub-unit initiatives, tripleS are again with their latest full group album. Coincidentally, the title of their title monitor is identical query I’ve been desirous to ask the Okay-pop trade for many of this 12 months. Are you alive? This track does precisely what we’ve been conditioned to count on from tripleS. Followers will possible be happy, however anybody hoping for one thing totally different might want to look elsewhere.

As quickly as Are You Alive (깨어) opens with its “la la la” chant, I swear I’ve heard this track from tripleS earlier than. Whereas not precisely the identical melody, the cadence and efficiency appear to reference final 12 months’s Women By no means Die. I’m all for teams having signature sounds and melodies so long as they’re fulfilling sufficient to warrant repetition, however I discovered this chant fairly limp final 12 months and much more so as we speak. For a bunch with twenty 4 members, I assume I count on one thing that sounds larger, extra energetic and positively extra formidable.

Making issues worse, this “la la la” chant mainly is the track. Fragments of melody swirl round it, alongside loads of sing-talk that goes nowhere. This leaves listeners greedy onto a fairly monotone, repetitive centerpiece. A stunning bridge provides welcome texture and affords a glimpse of how tripleS’s music would possibly sound if their producers totally took benefit of the group’s giant configuration. We actually needs to be getting whole choral moments from a bunch like this. They’ve sufficient voices for a choir, however as an alternative they’re taking part in by Okay-pop’s lame guidelines. I imply, their producers have Japan’s Sakamichi Collection and 48 Group all around the web as inspiration. Think about what they may do with that sprawling sound as filtered by means of Okay-pop’s perfectionist prism? The truth that they gained’t escape of their constrained field is extraordinarily irritating given their potential.

Grade: C-