S.E.S. 4
Everyone has probably heard by now that the S.E.S comeback concert celebrating the release of S.E.S 4, A Letter from Greenland, has been delayed until mid-January. Both Eugene and Shoo (Yoo Soo Young) have found themselves embroiled in controversy over their education at one of the many "foreign" high schools in Korea. Eugene has been attending Koryu University this past year, and Shoo was slated to start college in the fall. However, the Ministry of Education recently ruled that diplomas from schools such as KENT foreign language school. As it turns out, Eugene is going to be allowed to stay at Koryu despite having graduated from KENT. The jury, so to speak, is still out on Shoo's academic future, however.
Thus, it is probably not surprising that the comeback concert has been delayed. Fans will just have to be content with listening to the album. The good news is that they dumped all the "talk tracks" from this album--maybe the people over at SM Entertainment heard me complain about them. The bad news is that they dumped what little energy they ever had, at least for the single
I Will? [Real Audio]. Although I fully expect to get hate mail from S.E.S fans for this, I'm going to say that I Will? [MP3] doesn't have a lot of personality or vigor. I know it's suppose to sound more "mature," but to me it just sounds more tedious. It never held my attention. I queued it up and only realized after it was over that I forgot to listen to it. This happened about five times, which tells me that there's nothing much going on it.
Gamjja Aneumyuh [RealAudio] is slightly more interesting (after you get past the screech at the beginning). I'm afraid S.E.S will never the monotony of the drum beat behind its music. Sometimes their music sounds as if they are singing over top a karaoke track. Overall, the vocals for this song are stronger than those in I Will?, and it's definitely livelier, but it's not overwhelmingly wonderful.
So far, Slip Away [MP3] is my favorite song on the CD. It's got a little more groove than the other songs. Even though it still seems as if Sea, Eugene and Shoo are restraining themselves, the vocal lines are fuller and livelier than in most of the other songs.
One other song on the album that appeals is Beautiful Life [MP3]. This ballad actually has some forward momentum and shows off some good solo singing. On the other hand, I thought the group singing sounded a bit discordant in JOY [MP3]. The song itself is fine, but the harmony doesn't blend very well.
I really tried to think of something original to say about Be Natural [MP3], but all I could think was "well, more of the same." The more I listened to this album, the more it reminded me of the Japanese releases S.E.S had last year. It's not an offensive sound, obviously, but I think one of the great faults of SM groups is that they can be over-groomed, over-exposed and over-rated. In this case, although Bada's voice has definitely grown since S.E.S one, the musicality is really threatened by the management's need to produce four albums in three years (and that's not even including the Japanese releases1x). The trio is in danger of being ruined by this production schedule--they haven't had any time to mature vocally or to experiment with different genres of music.
I give S.E.S. 4, A Letter from Greenland, a lukewarm review, although I know diehard fans are already raving about it. I continue to hope S.E.S will develop into a trio that will win me over, but it hasn't happened yet.
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