The Singles Jukebox

You can’t fight the moon night, though.

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[5.57]

Ryo Miyauchi: GFriend’s idea of maturity may initially seem misguided with its emphasis on theater dramatics and poetic eloquence, though the group is far less willing to abandon its former self than many other youths who flounder through this act of overcompensation for the sake of more serious credibility. “Time for the Moon Night” is indebted to the sepia nostalgia of past releases, just refined to a higher definition. If anything, the baroque inflation is not a bug but a feature: if your comparison to love goes from the summer rain to a full moon, your song should be more cosmic in size and feeling.
[6]

Alfred Soto: What you think of “Time for the Moon Night” rests on what you think of the hyperactive string arrangement. GFriend revels in overstatement. I prefer the faster kind, but even pop house and freestyle artists channeled batshit-tery into their ballads that medium play revealed. 
[6]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: It can be kind of a double-edged sword at this point in their career, but because the age of easy, immediate hooks — “Rough”, “Me Gustas Tú,” “Fingertip” — is gone, new doors are open for GFriend musically, and “Time for the Moon Night” represents a significant change in direction. Of course, melodrama is an integral part of their sound, and this lush, string-filled instrumental works pretty well with their performances; the hooks are still quite solid, they just take a bit more time to unfold. 
[7]

Stephen Eisermann: A big issue that I have with K-Pop groups is their insistence on pushing their less-than-stellar vocalists into going for out of reach glory notes. It’s especially troubling on tracks like this one, where most of the song is rather lifeless and relies more heavily on the swelling instrumental than the girls’ disinterested vocal take to elicit an emotion from the listener. When one of the GFriend girls tries to hit that glory note at the end of the bridge, all I could do was shake my head and look away. If this is the best that GFriend could come up with the new producers they tapped for this album, it’s time to go back to their previous ones.
[3]

Iain Mew: It feels a bit unfair that I like the flowery Shibuya-kei aesthetic only until they commit 100% to it. The later stages are like eating lavender biscuits with lavender icing and a lavender filling, though. 
[3]

Jessica Doyle: It’s a measure of how much this song manages to pack in that by the final chorus I’ve near forgotten the relaxed, almost lounge-like start. Give at least part of the credit to Yuju and Eunha, who somehow manage to hit their notes as promised but still making it sound as if the emotion is great enough that one second more and the singing will change to screaming. Credit to the engineers, too, for not taking that possibility of breakdown out of Yuju’s and Eunha’s voices. I think I’ve finally figured out what was so riveting about “Navillera” and missing from “Fingertip.”
[8]

Alex Clifton: It feels like an anime intro! You know, that kind of upbeat-ballady combination that you rarely find outside of opening sequences: a good punch of dramatic strings and sweetness. Which is to say this grew on me after initially feeling oddly commercial. It’s definitely different than anything I’ve heard on the radio recently, which makes for a welcomed change of pace.
[6]