During a well-recieved run on ‘Immortal Song 2‘ earlier this year, INFINITE‘s leader and main vocal Sunggyu
showed us that he may just have what it takes to go solo. With solo
artists ruling the charts right now, it makes sense that INFINITE would
test the waters of solo activities, and who better to start things off
than their leader?
Sunggyu originally joined Woolim Entertainment because he loved their indie-rock band Nell
and wanted to be in a group like theirs, so it’s no suprise that he
tries his hand at fronting a rock band in his lead single, “60 Seconds“.
While the song isn’t at all bad, it also isn’t at all innovative. The
instrumentation and arrangement is very generic and lacks the tailored
sound you want to hear in a solo single. While Sunggyu’s interesting
voice lends a special quality to the song, his vocals shouldn’t have to
do all the work here.
Unfortunately, “I Need You” swings too far in the
opposite direction. While it’s pretty, it’s so understated that it
stifles much of what makes Sunggyu’s vocals distinctive, making the song
feel like a filler. Around three minutes in, he finally has a few
distinctive-sounding notes, but at that point it’s too little too late.
Both “60 Seconds” and “I Need You” are enjoyable listens, but neither
gives us an idea of who Sunggyu is as a soloist, which is a problem when
they’re the first two solo songs we hear from him- a problem that could
make Sunggyu’s debut forgettable.
Smack-dab in the middle of the album is Sunggyu’s acoustic cover of INFINITE’s “Only Tears“.
He’s performed an impressive solo rendition of this song in concert
before, so it’s not entirely a suprise that the song popped up on this
album, and I’m sure lots of Inspirits are happy to have an official
recording of Sunggyu’s version of this song (which I personally prefer
to the original). While it’s definitely a better song for Sunggyu than
the previous two, I had hoped that the first really good song on the
album would be new material instead of a re-recording of an INFINITE
song.
“Shine“, written, arranged, and produced by Kim Jongwan of Nell,
is a step in the right direction. This 90′s soft-rock style is
something no one else is doing in K-Pop right now, and suits Sunggyu
pretty well. However, it’s the final track on the album, “41 Days“, where I feel Sunggyu really hits his stride, covering all of the points the other songs on this album miss.
Style-wise, “41 Days” falls somewhere between SISTAR‘s sad-disco of “Alone” and miss A‘s sinister-disco of “Touch” (genre titles courtesy of TheProphetBlog‘s review of “Alone”),
but with an ethereal, atmostpheric quality to it that puts a new spin
on K-Pop’s nigh inescapable disco influences. The vocals sound
distinctively like Sunggyu and work with the song to create something
interesting (unlike “60 Seconds”, where his vocals struggle to make
something interesting in spite of the song). It’s worth noting that
this is the only song Sunggyu had a hand in writing- could the missing
ingredient in the rest of this album be Sunggyu’s participation in
creating his own material?
It takes half of the album for Sunggyu to finally find his identity
as a soloist, but when he does, it works beautifully. If he wants to be
able to stand on his own as a legitimate solo artist rather than being a
member of INFINITE who sometimes does solo projects, he and his team
are going to have to get a firmer grasp on what makes him unique and
create music around it, instead of trying to force his uniqueness into
material that doesn’t do him justice.
Score note: (didn’t score “another me” since it’s just an intro)
Reviewer's Rating:
(4.1 / 5)
(4.1 / 5)
(484 votes, average: 4.66 out of 5)
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