Coming off a fourteen month Jukebox break counts as a comeback, right?
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[6.17]
Cédric Le Merrer: Tears that reflected strobing light in their fall, like so many miniature mirror balls, are quickly wiped away by our feet once they’ve reached the dance floor. T-Ara has a lot to forget (or to make us forget) and that “it probably once was a sax” riff is a perfect obliviator
[8]
Brad Shoup: That synth line codes goofy to me, especially when paired with the melody-shifted computer voice. But T-Ara brook no funny stuff, and the track soon obliges, offering an upward-straining shuffle and high-pitched synthwinds. I kinda wish they’d listened to that goofy-ass line tho.
[6]
Will Adams: The club groove on the chorus is nuanced in a way that the dirty Dutch synthline and distorted robo-vox are not. Or maybe it isn’t, and it’s all just relative to how obvious the other sections are.
[5]
Patrick St. Michel: Great chorus, clunky verses (especially the noises ripped out of every nightclub in 2008).
[5]
Alfred Soto: I like the finesse with which they glide into the chorus’ alliterative confidence and ascending hook. The flamenco guitar works too.
[6]
Jessica Doyle: This sounds an awful lot like Jewelry’s “Hot and Cold.” It also sounds a little like Exposé, and that is never not a compliment in my book. “Hot and Cold” is too static; this is the piece to strike dramatic dancey poses to. Wait a second. Aren’t you the one perpetually droning on about how K-pop needs to give female groups something other than lamenting-the-lost-lover-set-to-poppy-music? T-Ara does not confuse things with horns or guitars. Besides, given their history, “Number 9” could be interpreted as a wail against the fickle fan base prepared to believe the worst. So what does Sailor Moon have to do with anything? Sailor Moon is a tragedy about age and responsibility wearing a magical-girl costume and further disguised by an annoying English dub. Giggle at transformation-by-makeup and Usagi’s/Bunny’s/Serena’s clumsiness; snicker at T-Ara’s thrust-upon-them narrative of infighting and management’s poor decisions; either way you’d be better off dancing in the dark. Or you’re a sentimentalist who doesn’t want to see the nastiest of the netizens get the last word. That, too.
[7]