I’m not sure the whole ‘mini-album’ thing a lot of K-pop bands do works for me a whole lot. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good breakup album (which is where a lot of these projects tend to fall in my experience), but if your album is only six songs long you can’t expect me to be invested in the relationship it’s presenting. Therein lies the fundamental problem with Up10tion’s new album. I appreciate the attempt at trying to crowbar the breakup narrative into a lean tracklist, but in such a finite space of time and without a lot of unique details in the songwriting, there’s a limit on how much I can engage. Spoiler alert: the limit is low.
When (G)I-dle made I Burn last year (which for me is an obvious comparison) they showed a willingness to experiment more in the production and writing to flesh out the arc a bit more beyond the raw fundamentals. A quick read through the lyrics reveals very quickly that Up10tion have nowhere near that same level of ambition on Novella. The songwriting is melodramatic least interesting way, playing in the absolute broadest platitudes imaginable.
But while that make Novella a disposable, low stakes affair, it doesn’t exactly make it bad on its own. ‘Crazy About You’ might be an overproduced mess, but the hook isn’t bad, and the guitar melody is undeniably catchy until it’s swallowed by the careening synths. If Up10tion made a full on EDM album I’d probably be interested in hearing it.
The emotional apex of the album comes with the washed-out pop-rock song ‘Fall’. The lyrics are about how the memory of someone can weigh someone down, a poignant moment especially when paired with the album closer ‘Sad Ending’ which implies that the relationship has run its course and they both need to move on. There is a semblance of an emotional relationship arc on Novella that does enough to justify its existence without feeling like it accomplishes anything of note. Limited but likable.