Wonho

Highline Entertainment
The solo singer dives into a blue world, swimming between heady optimism and emotional vulnerability

“In English, when one says ‘I feel blue’, the word ‘blue’ is used [to describe feeling depressed or sad],” Wonho told NME in an interview ahead of the release of his third mini-album ‘Blue Letter’. “I wanted ‘blue’ to serve a double meaning of ‘feeling blue’ and… to flip the meaning of feeling blue to ‘feeling loved’, in context of the album.”

Just as there are many different shades of blue, with this record Wonho takes our immediate emotional associations with the hue and beautifully expands the palette. It’s a soul-stirring, sensitive release that gently shifts between shimmering celebrations to reassuring moments of encouragement and emotional vulnerability, each tone standing out in its own distinct way.

On the title track ‘Blue’, the singer is in jubilant mood. “I’m drowning down into the blue,” he begins over ticking percussion and a rubbery bassline, but this isn’t a dive into melancholia. “It feels amazing / Swimming high up to the sky, am I going crazy?” The hook that drops by later, effortlessly infectious and nonchalantly feel-good, bottles the sparkling mood of the song in a great earworm: “We are young, we are dumb / We just party all night long / When you feel the blue.”

The intro track, ‘Seasons And Patterns’, is uplifting in a different way, the instrumental two-minute fragment sounding as if it’s ushering us into Wonho’s own K-drama. Twinkling piano weaves around soaring strings that take you gliding through a sun-dazzled sky. The gently euphoric electronics of ’24/7’, meanwhile, find the star mixing shades, swirling synth-y optimism with lyrical reassurance. “I’m here for you 24/7,” he vows. “Let’s stay forever young.”

As you might instinctively expect of something blue, though, there’s sorrow present here too. The softly sad ‘No Text No Call’ laments a lack of communication from a former lover, Wonho sighing: “We used to talk all night to the morning, but now we don’t.” It’s a shame it follows immediately after the towering ‘Blue’, because its impact feels dampened in its neighbour’s shadow.

If the titular colour is a joining thread throughout ‘Blue Letter’, so is the biggest mass of blue on Earth – the sea. It pops up throughout Wonho’s lyrics, at once a symbol of fun, beauty, safety and peace. “You just have to take care of yourself and let it out,” he instructs on ‘24/7’, “I’ll be a wide ocean for you.” Over the rippling acoustic guitar of ‘Stranger’, he narrates: “The night is deep without you / The blue sea is asleep / I close my eyes and sketch you.”

If it wasn’t clear by now that the singer is a big softie, this record offers irrefutable proof. ‘Come Over Tonight’ starts off as a sultry slow jam but swiftly switches gear into something sweeter. “Can you come over tonight? / Promise I’ll hold you so tight,” he coos, before confounding expectations: “I can’t sleep without you / I’d be nothing without you.”

Just over a year since Wonho made his solo debut with ‘Love Synonym Pt. 1: Right For Me’, ‘Blue Letter’ showcases an artist growing rapidly in both confidence and his striking abilities. While the star has been involved with the writing and production of all of his releases so far, this record marks the first time he’s contributed his skills to every song on the tracklist. The results are impressive – particularly ‘Blue’, which would be an instant radio smash in a just world.

‘Blue Letter’’s songs might add more depth to our connections with Wonho’s signature colour in their sounds and sentiments, but there’s one more feeling we can now link back to blue thanks to the record as a whole. That’s excitement, because it’s hard not to listen to this mini-album and feel the exhilaration of watching a star in bloom.

The Animal Collective member transforms guitar riffs by Highlife’s Doug Shaw into modular synth abstractions. Its abrasive tone may not be for everyone, but its funky, egoless spirit is infectious.

Over the past two decades, Animal Collective and its members have produced at least half a dozen albums widely hailed as masterpieces. But what makes AnCo feel so much like a Great Band isn’t just those records—it’s the array of one-offs, collaborations, soundtracks, and idle experiments released between the classics. Every release isn’t guaranteed to blow your mind, or even be especially listenable (take, for example, Avey Tare’s entirely-backwards collaboration with Kría Brekkan or the ear-piercing buzz of Danse Manatee, which might sound unfriendly at first). Instead, Animal Collective’s appeal lies in how they’ve staked out an oasis of aspirational strangeness where anything can happen, and the usual expectations for a critically acclaimed indie rock band need not apply.

In that context, consider A Shaw Deal, an album Animal Collective’s Geologist made with his friend Doug Shaw of Highlife. Its runtime is less than half an hour, and Geologist, aka Brian Weitz, made it as a gift for Shaw’s birthday; still, given its place within the larger AnCo constellation, perhaps it’s not especially odd that the album got a proper release with a label and PR campaign and everything. You suspect this is the kind of thing people in AnCo-land make all the time: These guys live and breathe art, and in a cultural dark age where A.I. threatens to render artistic intent an old-fashioned concept, there’s something kind of noble about how much effort went into an album that’s basically an inside joke.

Geologist made these seven tracks by taking guitar recordings Shaw posted on Instagram during the pandemic and running them through his modular system until it spat out tangles of sound. The acoustic guitar has long been associated with a certain ideal of authenticity, of not needing fancy tech to get your feelings across. Here, that idea goes delightfully out the window. In Geologist’s hands, Shaw’s acoustic guitar sounds like a million other things while still resolutely sounding like itself, its notes sliding from one to another in big, oblong blocks rather than sounding plucked or strummed. “Petticoat” begins in similar territory to the West African-inspired pop doodles on Highlife’s 2010 EP Best Bless. But by the end of the track, its sound evokes a set of rubber chickens being played like a drum kit. On “Ripper Called” Shaw’s guitar could be mistaken for a squabble between woodwinds, before we hear what sounds like a giant sleeping bag being unzipped from the inside. “Route 9 Falls” splinters a fingerpicked snippet into a cascade of notes that suggests standing beneath a waterfall in the freezing cold. It’s abrasive in a purifying way.

As a birthday gift between friends, A Shaw Deal is pretty charming, but what’s in it for the casual fan? It contains no nods to pop, no moments that aim for the Beach Boys-like transcendence that permeates even Animal Collective’s looser and more improvisational releases. Your tolerance for freeform and frequently harsh-sounding guitar music determines whether A Shaw Deal will make it into your regular rotation or slot into the lesser-played ranks of the band’s catalog. But its funky, egoless spirit is infectious: less of a towering individual statement than another vivid shade in the wild splotch of color the members of Animal Collective have left across indie music.

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