Saturday, May 21, 2011

[Review] “Love Alone” by miss A @ 2:23 AM

JYP Entertainment always possessed a clean and tidy production style and one of their latest releases, miss A’s “Love Alone“, pretty much lays down the same level of quality.

Comprised of Fei, Jia, Min, and Suzy, miss A debuted last year with “Bad Girl Good Girl,” placing them on the map as JYP’s first girl group post-Wonder Girls. Unlike their seniors, miss A were pushed into the scene with a musical style that was less glittery, and more contemporary. Their music wasn’t sampling any glaring genre or time period, which in hindsight was a clever move on JYP Entertainment’s part (or more accurately, AQ Entertainment’s), seeing as it was smarter to kick off a pop-career with a degree of flexibility than some form of limitation.

This approach was tested during miss A’s second mini album, “Step Up,” where the girls took on a very unconventional, pseudo-reggae style that took them to a totally different place than they had been before. The reception is split on whether or not it made sense with miss A.

But it seems like the age of “Step Up” was perhaps a phase and now miss A is back to the good ole’ pop routine the group debuted with.

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“Love Alone” is by far one of miss A’s strongest songs. Interestingly enough, what makes this such a nice song for these ladies is the simplicity of it. miss A have good voices all around and “Love Alone” brings them out really well, giving them a sense of resilience as the vocal-processing is kept to a minimum; in essence, we hear them, and not a slew of nuances and glitchy auto-tune.

The way miss A sings this particular song – which deals with unrequited love – does a really good job of selling its meaningful theme. It’s soft-spoken through the verses and chorus, which is what “Love Alone” asks for in the vocals; the overall effect gets infused even further with a feel-good beat and instrumentation.

“Love Alone” isn’t revolutionary for a girl group; it’s just a simple little tune that happens to push and pull in all the right directions without overdoing it.

miss A will be making a comeback soon, and I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that they keep this trend up because they’re definitely talented and do a nice job of putting those skills to use when they’re give the right material.