The Singles Jukebox

And now a lovely song about some buildings.

[Video][Website]
[5.86]

Patrick St. Michel: “Everything goes really fast in Seoul — when you wake up in the morning there’s another building going up.” Neon Bunny told The Fader that recently in regards to “Forest of Skyscrapers,” her latest electro-flutterer. It’s a woozy love song, one that easily could have been an afternoon day dream and nothing more given its languid pace. Yet it’s love set against rapid urban expansion and the light-speed pace of life that follows, where the small details unrelated to work or getting from point A to point B take on larger significance. Seoul and Tokyo boast many major differences, but they share the same feeling of being in constant motion, spreading down to the people living within their borders. Living in a megalopolis has made me value all the pockets of warmth and humanity I can find between the constant churn, and Neon Bunny focuses on the same feeling on “Forest of Skyscrapers.” In places that often feel overwhelming, finding something deeper and slowing down for them are vital.
[8]

Iain Mew: I’m going to make an unusual move and strongly recommend the video version over the single one. Either way, the song is a beautifully maintained ache wrapped around a lovely image of growing up through the cracks, forest and city superimposed. The video, though, adds two sections that elevate it further: the psychedelic decay of the middle section, the city crowding in and melting, and the eerie forest drift at the end, both of which expand on and contextualise the one tone of the rest.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: We’ve covered Neon Bunny before while in this more measured mode, and though she sounds better when her burbles are energetic enough to bubble over, “Lost in Love” was proof that dreaminess could suit her. “Forest of Skyscrapers” is a less forgiving listen, its softly pressed chords dowdy and diffident. Repeated listens reveal the drifting melancholia; I usually think language barriers should not prevent Anglophones from enjoying non-English songs, but I suspect this gains a lot with comprehension. The lyric is an intriguing one that speaks of love in terms of childhood fears and the darknesses within urban architecture. Electric fantasy spirits through the background of Neon Bunny’s songs, and I suspect it might be easier to spot the sparks in this particular one if it were more legible to me.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Moody plod with real beauty to break up the dullness. It could ache, if I let it.
[5]

Brad Shoup: A hazed-out slow jam with a faint lighthearted burble; she’s communicating fear but getting wistful about it.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Those blips and synthesized block chords suggest a forest of VIP lounges and gastropubs serving $20 hamburgers, for which the affectless vocal provides suitable counterpoint for the sticker shock.
[3]

Claire Biddles: At first this seems like another fairly nondescript  addition to the growing genre of ‘Lynchian’ pop — hundreds of space-y  bored-sounding women under a neon glow at 4am. Even the title of the  song evokes a Seoul-transplanted Lana Del Rey. But it’s the stop-starts,  the three-time descent into a noise soundtrack of gasps and rumblings  that points to something stranger. ‘Forest of Skyscrapers’ is half  song-from-a-David-Lynch-film, half David-Lynch-film-itself, but  ultimately I want to hear it cut to more than just two scenes.
[6]