 |
| New Arrivals! SNSD' s Lion Heart and f(x)'s 4Walls |
After an agonizing seventeen months since their last release, my copy of the awesome new album from f(x) arrived today (along with girls’ Generation’s latest album Lionheart) and as expected, it is freaking BEAUTIFUL!
Very, very beautiful artwork and packaging, the cover featuring the girls printed in blueprint blue over the album’s orange mechanical draftwork is just the COOLEST cover while the CD album itself is a thick 70+ page photobook with the girls looking smoking as hell (especially my twin biases Krystal and Luna, who look positively RAVISHING!
 |
| Amber and Krystal |
 |
| Victoria and Luna |
Of course, the package isn’t anything if the contents aren’t equally as great, and I gotta say that for both the new f(x) album as well as the new Girls' Generation release, they’ve heartily SUCCEEDED! Though I just received my physical CDs today, I downloaded MP3 files of them on release day, so I’ve been listening to them for a few weeks already and so far, this is how it breaks down for me!
4 Walls
A pretty subdued intro track (and the lead single to boot!) when you consider that f(x) have always started their albums with In-Your-Face Kick-Butt songs (Electric Shock, Red Light etc) but this swirly and dreamy song really sets the mood for 4Walls, while their previous album openers have had a “hotter” feel, this album is pure purples and blues…
Glitter
This song has a wind-up music box feel for me, which is a coincidence because I remember feeling quite the same way for Pink Tape’s second track “Shadow”…
A nice second song to settle your mind and get you to relax…
Deja Vu
When I heard this next song, I knew that despite the withdrawal of Sulli, f(x) would continue to be the fun, rambunctious, playful group I knew them to be!
Extremely catchy chorus that harkens back to teasingly coy songs like “Thrill Love”, this is without a doubt the happiest track on the album!
X
Right now, “X” (or, as I call it, Chemical X) is easily my favorite song off the album, its droning electronic bopping riffs reminding me of early Depeche Mode (My Secret Garden era), and I just love the girls’ tuff and sultry vocals! Plus, I love that a group called f(x) has a song called X, it tickles me the way Townshend would write songs with “Who” in its titles!
Rude Love
As I prefer to listen to an album a few times before looking at the titles of the songs (I hate having preconceived notions of what the song should sound like based on its name), I spent the first week listening to this thinking they were singing “Rumour” instead of “Rude Love”
Diamond
Very intense deep bass on this song, I LOVE playing this one LOUD in the car!
One of the songs they performed as second stage songs, they looked so freaking fierce, I must say that I like this song a LOT more afterwards!
Traveller
I didn’t see why f(x) should have a guest rapper for any of their songs since they already HAVE a rapper in the group, but the song Traveller featuring ZICO is a very catchy song and I must admit they’ve utilized his rap verses pretty well into the song!
Papi
This song reminds me not just a little of Girls Generation’s “Green Light” with different lyrics, giving me the vibe of a “album filler” more than a fully realized track. I’ll give this one more time.
Cash Me Out
The penultimate track to 4walls is a laser-effect laden dance track with a thumping beat whose loud, large and excitable sound sets up the listener perfectly for the last song:
When I’m Alone
Before the album came out a fan suspected that one fo the tracks listed might be a Carly Rae Jepsen song that Jepsen claimed she wrote as an ode to masturbation and “gave to some Chinese group”. Well, it turned out that fan guessed right, for that “Chinese” group was none other than f(x) and the song was indeed the album’s closing track “When I’m Alone”.
Didn’t know quite what to think about an f(x) album closing with a Carly Rae Jepsen song, butwow, it ended up being a really great song, very late 80’s new wavey with drenched synthesizers and phased vocals, what a perfect way to end the record!!!
 |
| I got the Victoria Card for 4Walls and Yuri card for Lionheart |
These are the first releases from both groups without their original line-ups, as f(x) lost Sulli and Jessica left Girls Generation and though I wasn’t worried too much about f(x) because the core vocalists Luna, Krystal, and Amber, were all still there, I was REALLY concerned at how SNSD would sound without Jessica singing, since she made up a HUGE percentage of the vocals. Thankfully I am happy to report that despite Sica's departure, they still sound (for the most part) like the SNSD I love, and there is quite a lot to be happy about here!
Lion Heart
Like the f(x) 4Walls album opener, I was surprised that Lion Heart’s titular opening track was so gentle and swaying instead of loud and brash! Almost get the mental image of the girls dancing in hula skirts on the sandy shores of Hawaii, and with all the SNSD bikini promo pics circulating for the Party Promotions, maybe that’s what they’d intended all along!
You Think
Another song SNSD performed during their “Party” promotions, this is a cool song with a lot of attitude, but sounds REALLY like it should have actually been a TTS track. In fact, it could have come RIGHT OFF their “Holler!” album! A GREAT bass-driven track!
Party
The cute single where I first realized that if there was one positive thing about Jessica leaving the group was that we FINALLY got to see some of the other girls like Yoona, Sooyoung and Yuri get more lines to sing than the usual half a sentence they used to have to share amongst each other! PS Yoona sound so adorable squeaking ‘It’s a Party!” in the chorus…
One Afternoon
Hmm, another Flamenco styled SNSD song. They already did this with their song “Talk To Me” off their “Oh!” album and much better, too. Eh, gonna have to see if this one grows on me…
Show Girls
A cool, barn-stomping track that makes you wanna break out the dance moves on the floor, this song starts off slow and then builds up into this massive club song!
Fire Alarm
Danger! Danger! Doo Doo Doo Doo… Aw, this song reminds me just why I love Girls Generation in the first place, with its catchy melodies and soaring vocals, this song is quintessential SNSD, and reassured me that the group would be okay without Jessica.
Talk Talk
SNSD had an unreleased song called “Boomerang” which you could only hear in bootleg form, until it was re-recorded in Japanese for their album Girls and Peace. Kind of funny, but when they finally released a koean version, they changed the name of it to “Talk Talk”. When I saw this title listed on the Lionheart album, I thought, “Oh No, don’t tell me they put that song on AGAIN?” But like their song, Diamond, SNSD just has two different songs with the same name…
Green Light
Green Light first struck me as sort of a re-arrangement of their earlier song “Party”, the beat, feeling and cat call choruses all seem very similar, but of course now I can only hear f(x)’s “Papi” LOLOL
Paradise
When I heard this song, it was so warm and full of 1970’s sunshiney vibes, I told myself, “Ah, this must be the last song! What a happy way to go out!” Imagine my surprise when three more songs followed it! I really like this song, the Fifth Dimension would be proud to call this song theirs!
Check
After getting over the surprise that Paradise wasn’t the last song, I settled into one of the coolest, sassiest SNSD tracks ever with Check! Super catchy tune as the girls check off their list for looking fabulous for a night on the town (Lipstick? Check. High Heels? Check. Hairstyle? Check, Check, Check) and I was THRILLED to find that Check was en of the secondary songs SNSD performed while promoting Party!
Sign
Well, if you wasn’t going to end the album with the happy “Paradise”, then the cool and smoldering “Sign” is the way to go! Oh my gosh, the girls sound so cool here, this is my favorite song off of Lion Heart and in fact is already making its way up my Top 25 List!
As the song rocked me out, I figured that THIS time, this MUST be the closing track, it was just too GOOD! And once again, I was dumbfounded when there was one more song after it AGAIN!
Bump it
Well, Bump It is an OK song, but GEEZ, after the sweetly poppy “Paradise” and the hard-hitting “Sign” as PERFECT album closers, I just have a hard time accepting THIS song as the ACTUAL final track…man, whose idea was it to end the album with this one? This is a song that would have fit in better in the middle of the album somewhere….sigh.
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com
