feversend | right through me: day zero to two (Reply)

Day6 (Even of Day) just dropped their second mini-album Right Through Me and here are my thoughts on it.

At first I thought I’ll just clean up my first listen and post it. Then the music happened and I just took too many rumination breaks….and also kept putting a pause on this to rewatch the MV. So this is a bit of everything, I suppose.

I’m not a musician or a music expert in any way; an obsessive myday? Yes.

Right Through Me Music Video-

Watch on YouTube

I don’t know what it was but the first watch genuinely went right through me. I didn’t process anything that was happening, besides the music which I had on really loud and just the feeling. But not the visuals, not the lyrics...which is eerie cause how did they manage that? I really wish JYP would add MV credits in the description because I’m gonna have to go hunt all this down now, but I feel fairly certain this was not their usual team… Obvious things first: gorgeous cinematic mv, as we could tell from the concept photos and trailers and everything so I wasn’t surprised on that count but everything else— oh god it was painfully beautiful like only a Day6 production can be. I thought the members’ acting was amazing, but the production was really beyond good. There is this shot when the first chorus is starting, when the female character leaves a ring on the table, the camera pans all the way from the table upto Young K’s face and the anticipation kills me, it is SUCH a good shot, I keep going back to it. It’s hardly more than two seconds but it feels like you have to wait forever to see how he’s going to react. It’s powerful. Every still of this feels doused in oil and then it's like everything’s being set on fire at the bridge— except less dramatic….I really don’t know how to describe it. Loud but muted anguish?

Edit: I just watched this live clip which dropped just now and what the hell, the song changed colour completely because of their delivery, particularly, Young K’s, who is like really leaning into the grittiness and by the end the pain is really tangible. God, I love this song. Wow. I’m actually stunned at that live performance— very different from the Comeback show live performance, or the one at Dekira.

Album Listen

All lyrics translations are from twitter user jaelavie. I also looked at genius translations.

01. WE (우린)

The opening with the synths is so very Even of Day, even if this is just their second album, I think it’s a distinction I’m making correctly. I love Wonpil’s falsetto intro on this track (much higher than where he started off You Make Me). It’s such a hopeful song but the keys in the chorus section make it a little sadder— which makes sense of the lyrics too. It’s about moving towards hope together, out of the darkness and that darkness is very much palpable in the song itself. The surging, driving upwards sort of feeling in the melody is such a Young K motif. That reminded me of his demo track The Greatest as well as ONE, on the last Day6 album, Negentropy, especially the part where they stretch out the eee in the chorus here as juxtaposed with the ‘we are one’ stretched out in One’s chorus.

Favourite lyrics:

If a dark wave

Crashes into us

We’ll stand there, hands clasped

02. Right Through Me (뚫고 지나가요)

In the audio only listen, the piano is more prominent now as opposed to how much the drums popped out to me when I watched the MV and the jazzy (?) piano motif with the same keys playing over and over again makes this track feel almost upbeat and then you get to the chorus and it’s like oh no there’s something deeply wrong with this place...which is why Young k’s really punchy So I guess I’ve got to go in the post chorus throws me off so much. Or it did. I keep finding new things that pop out in the audio to this song. Seriously, what the hell is in this? That bridge is so much shorter than I thought it would be, but the switch from Young K to Wonpil is so good and Wonpil’s voice really...pierces through you.

The lyrics to this are….painful. I want to be of strength to you in whatever you do, I don't think you see me even when I'm in front of you. ;_____; Classic Young K, if I may so really, dude’s been putting out one heartrending song after the other for the last six years. If Where The Sea Sleeps was the most romantic non lovesong he’s written, this has got to be the most romantic non breakup song— what I mean is that if we take away the scene with the girl in the MV….the song doesn’t have to be about a romantic relationship ending, though it is still about heartbreak and the end of a relationship; this to me resembles WTSS greatly because of the same freedom to interpret. Not that it’s new for Day6 as a whole, their lyrics are almost always neutral, especially in recent years and my kinship with them is greater because of it.

Favourite lyrics:

Just walk away

Your words

Pierce right through me

Spinning out of control

My heart beating for you

Shatters and breaks into

A thousand little pieces

This is the end of my love

03. WALK (역대급/ the best of all time)

This intro was such a callback to Landed, it has to be right?! Production wise, even lyrically omg this intro reminds me of Landed so much… not so much once the rhythm comes in. This feels new, in sound. A decisive break from both the Book of Us series and Day6’s general discography. It definitely has elements they've used before but not in this way— the chanting with the really joyous pre chorus and the bare Wonpil vocals on the bridge! The lalala chants before it goes into the last chorus?! The line amuri junbihaedo in the chorus sounds almost exactly like tteollineun maeumeuro from so let’s love. To me, they pop out anyway. I’m not sure if this is the song they had said would be a good drive song...it could be. It’s got a spring to its step. Lyrically too it’s saying something similar to the first track, to keep going when unexpected pain comes your way but aside from the sentimental-ish bridge it has a lot more bouncy sound.

Favourite lyrics:

For me in the past

This was just a far away place

Looking back now

It seems the scenery that the scenery I’ve passed so far

Isn’t all that bad

04. all the things you wanted (네가 원했던 것들)

The retro lovesong….is this going to become a trend? They’ve gone two for two, in the last Day6 album there was Only and now this, here. And there is really no mistaking that this is a love song, though one of regret for a past love. Verse and chorus key change is so abrupt I don’t know what to think, it’s the kind of change (not sure if keys or just a weird jump between chords) I’d expect on a Gfriend track, you know? Not new in concept for Day6 but in the manner it is executed here, it is. It’s a really interesting track, to say the least. I love how Wonpil sounds on this, wouldn’t mind a demo or a solo song like this from him. The general production on it reminded me of so many songs I can name off the top of my head, like George Michael songs, Lee Moon-sae or a Lee Seunghwan track...the Bee Gees(coincidentally Day6 have covered them on a radio show way back in 2016!)

Favourite lyrics:

If had known just a bit sooner

If I had noticed

I wanted you (wanted)

Would I have given you all the love that you wanted

05. from the ending of a tragedy (비극의 결말에서)

This is the one I had been anticipating the most since the tracklist was released, and then the lyrics and the highlight medley...and boy, let me tell you: they delivered. Firstly, some background info relevant for understanding why this track. I have been that sad Linkin Park-person since I was a preteen. Okay, end of background info. That opening??? I was like...what is this Minutes to Midnight? The opening instrumentals took me to like..Valentine’s Day...What I’ve Done. But then Young K started singing and it became a Toy song, my favourite Toy song to be precise: A Passionate Goodbye. This is the only song with more heavy rock instrumentals on this album and, surprise, I love it.

The lyrics are kind of brutal on this one too. Again, I ask you to consider: Linkin Park. Seriously though, it’s such a fast-paced song but it makes you feel so trapped. Even though they’re screaming, please leave me now, please hate me now. How Can I Say’s I hate me now, is almost a mirror to these. And the song itself is like a switch in perspective of that story, now that I think about it. A more mature take on it, perhaps.

Favourite Lyrics:

I want you to turn away from this downward spiral

And my unlucky self as I fall into the darkness

06. Home Alone (나 홀로 집에)

This is….kind of the pandemic song? Or that’s what I came in expecting anyway, with the title and the snippets and it both is and isn’t that. 80’s called, again. Went and checked a ton of songs but can’t pinpoint a single one that this sounds like so perhaps just the general vibe of Duran Duran and Cyndi Lauper...maybe some Starship. Correct me if I’m wrong but is this the first song to have a Days Gone By era reminiscent feel? They’ve done retro-ish music but nothing that harked back to us the Remember Us: Youth album, which I looove. The verse melody here is my favourite on the whole album and then Young K comes on the pre chorus and there are Dowoon vocals thrown in there too. It’s so funky and good. I wanted to listen to it again the second it ended.

Wonpil wrote the lyrics for this one, alone that too. I really like them, they’re really simple and straightforward but also like...fun. Straightforward in the So so what, I’m still a rockstar, I’ve got my rock moves and I don’t need you way. Just a little less aggressive than that.

Favourite Lyrics:

When the seemingly endless loneliness

Turns into boredom

I feel free

07. LOVE PARADE

Every album needs a gay song was my first thought here. Also that Wonpil brought some of his musical actor experience back into the studio with him (he has credits for both lyrics and composing on this). His opening verse is long and beautiful. The lyrics are gay, I don’t make the rules, just look at them. The drum line is sooo relentless and catchy. The drums, the vocals, the unison chanting, this has such a vibe, how do I explain it— an anthem meets a musical chorus number meets a high school musical closing track? It just makes you feel so good about yourself. And it ends in fireworks. And then seamlessly slips back into the synth opening of We. What an ending.

Favourite lyrics:

Love

Has the same name but comes in different shapes

In all your various ways

Express your love

I think this the first time I have been this taken in with a title track in a long, long time. Don’t get me wrong, I always like them. But with artists like Day6, Epik High….Younha, Heize, most often being a fan is so rewarding because of how the album as a whole sounds. There might be tracks I like or dislike but the chances of me disliking the sound of the whole album are very very low. Plus, it's like a sacred ground, just for fans you know? Casual listeners and even a lot of mutifandom/ general kpop stans with diverse tastes might check out the title track and other singles being promoted and maaybe the album. But usually it's an experience I feel they create for fans who will listen to it no matter what.

So that’s my way of saying I’m a Bside fucker. Title tracks rarely are my favourite track on albums! Which is why this album has me so floored because Right Through Me?! I can’t stop myself from listening to it. The instrumentals, the vocals, the nature of the pathos changes with every new loop. I can’t stop myself from rewatching the MV, which is unheard of. Music videos are nice but personally, I expend very little time on them unless they’re really very spectacular or emotive. This is...both. So much of my first listen feelings are tied to the video. When Dowoon lets go of that leash? I feel a real punch in my gut, it’s so visceral. And again I just love that they have three different stories instead of having the breakup as the only storyline.

Something really wonderful about Day6 which I do feel is connected to the fact that they compose their own songs and play the instruments, is that you can really trace the changes in their sound. My initial thoughts on Negentropy had been that it was an album that couldn’t have sounded the way it did if Even of Day didn’t debut last year with the music that they did— really synth heavy atmospheric stuff. Negentropy did not sound like an EOD album but its influences were so obvious in songs like ONE and Only. And then there’s this album where both WE and all the things you wanted definitely seem to come out of that same evolution. But what’s different is that they are trying a lot of new sounds and lyrics, too apparently. The differences in the latter aren’t obvious to me but Young K said that writing for track 5 (hello!!) was the most challenging as he’s never used words like this in a song before. I guess that is the privilege of coming out of a band but also being a unit of your own— there will always be sounds that tie you back to the band but you are free to go in your own fresh musical direction.

After writing till this point, I went to check their album commentary, interviews and the like because my own thoughts have formed and now I wanna know what they’ve been saying. Firstly, a big reason for the change in sound is that Young K is playing the electric guitar instead of the bass which...what the hell. He hasn’t dealt with an electric guitar since debut at all, if I’m not wrong. Geez. No wonder the drums are so much more prominent since there’s no bass (bass notes are being played on the EG itself). And it’s soo interesting how so many things I’ve felt while listening were intentional (the festival-like feeling on Love Parade, for instance) and so many were just a result of the process (how much bigger their sounds feels now). I won’t go into the details, please watch the clip, it’s a wonderful insight into the making of the album.

What stood out to me there is that the title track for them represents how sometimes the smallest thing can lead to a breakdown/outburst. They’ve repeated this multiple times during the promos, and that’s how the more ‘hopeful’ songs on the album are connected to. To me, they resonate because it’s about the possibility of hope despite darkness not because hope and happiness are given and warranted. Wonpil and Young K actually bring that up while talking about the album! That they didn’t want to talk about hope in such an exuberant way and it leaves me feeling very, very warm. In this NME interview, Dowoon said he wishes this album feels like a pat on the back from a friend. Here, Wonpil says Love Parade should give the feeling of holding hands with someone. It’s such a small, ordinary way of comforting someone but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My writing is choppy because I kept getting emotional. I’ve kept it tame here but if you really want to get into the trenches, here’s Young K’s Thanks To note on the album. Good luck.

Current favourites are Right Through Me, from the ending of a tragedy and Home Alone but we'll see where it goes in a few months.

I really, truly wish for them to stick around for a long, long time. Their music just means too much to me to have to imagine anything else.