The Singles Jukebox

Maybe Future can give them a ride…?

[Video][Website]
[6.30]

Frank Kogan: As Rimi she’s done both hardcore rap and comedy, the hardcore sounding concentrated and dexterous, the comedy more ebullient. Here she’s embedding herself in sweet indie sound-layering that’s both cloying and tepid and that I don’t prefer to silence. But when her own rapping goes hard the contrast is kinda galvanizing, like shooting BB pellets through cherry cheesecake.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Soo-Rim’s raps are spiky and impressive, but on top of wistful dream-pop, they come off second best to the ache of the sung choruses. That holds true for two-and-a-half minutes and then you get a bizarre fanfare that would make more sense if the song were about going to the actual moon — pop as surrealism and romanticism at once.
[7]

Will Adams: At this pace, it’s more like crawling to the moon. ETA: Never.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: I’m so used to a gleaming chassis and supercharged engine in K-pop that something this rickety, not to say spindly, putt-putting along on clouds and sighs is something of a novelty. A preponderance of anything gets old.
[7]

Sabina Tang: Nam Soo-rim, like E.via, has several years of career under her belt already; where’s the belated trend piece on Korea’s female MC steam-engine time? Online review consensus seems to be that the Drive Me To The Moon EP constitutes a softer turn from her usual swagger. It’s romantic, all right: Park Ji-yoon’s hook a full-body swoon, over the guitar equivalent of a 360-degree starfield screensaver (it sounds incredibly like Supercar, to the point where I suspect it’s sampled outright). Two girls in the video, too, which at 3AM is liable to make me blurt something quite tinhatty.
[8]

Patrick St. Michel: Finds the right balance between rap-friendly production and dreamy backdrop appropriate for at-times surreal lyrics (the title being the giveaway even before dropping it into Google Translate). I’m left hypnotized in a very nice way.
[7]

Ian Mathers: I liked Drive a lot, but part of me wants to see the version of that film that would have used the intro/chorus of this track for its soundtrack instead. The blunt vocals the rest of the time work just a little bit against the melancholy/dreamy air of the rest of the song, though. So I guess I prefer Park Ji-Yoon to Nam Soo-Rim.
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: Park Ji-Yoon’s feather-light dream-pop hook is better in context than in fact; its candy-sweetness provides a distinct contrast to the sharp edges of Nam Soo-Rim’s rap. The effect isn’t too far removed from that Nicki Minaj attained on “Your Love,” which is fitting; there’s more than a bit of Minaj in Nam’s delivery. In all, the shimmer is lovely and nice to admire. (But that’s all.)
[6]

Iain Mew: The hazy pop-shoegaze elements kind of remind me of Faye Wong covering The Cranberries for Chungking Express, which is no bad thing, and then the track delightfully floats away to space at the end. Nam Soo-Rim’s rapping doesn’t interact with all of that so much, with the beat having to do a lot of bridging work, but this is one of those cases where two very different good things do work out together.
[8]

Brad Shoup: “Drive Me to the Moon” feels like trance on a shoegazer’s budget. Percussion is limited to a modest hip-pop backbeat, cricket sixteenths and lots of subliminal bass taps. Hip-hop love songs, to me anyway, are sweet for the telling; without a translation, I can’t say whether Nam approaches mooniness, but that final fanfare surely does.
[6]