Henry: Oh ooh alright, driving. (Cloud: Oooh)
Henry: Whoa, whoa WHAT?!
Umu: Okay, are you ready for Jesus?
Isaac: Of course, I'm always (Kevin: Jesus is king!) Jesus is king!
Aaron: Oh I love, 'a motel room' not even a hotel room.
Umu: Yes! So now you're reacting to the K-indie band called Hyukoh
and a song from their 2017 album called '23'.
The band describes the LP as an exploration of the duality of youth:
optimism for the future and the pain and fear that accompanies it.
James: Girl...
Umu: 'Jesus lived in a motel room' portrays the rebellious nature of youth,
a time when we stray from the values we were raised with.
But to stick with the duality of the album, the song ends with finding a way back to those values.
This is a 100% English track and written and produced by Oh Hyuk, who is the main vocalist of the group.
Henry: Interesting. Okay, three two one!
Henry: It kind of starts with a choral. Cloud: Singing in a church. (Henry: Yeah.)
Elizabeth: This kind of sounds like Pentatonix, doesn't it?
James: Very much like plain chant vibes.
Brianna: Yeah, I love the acoustic—oh!!
Henry: There's some weird dissonance in there, it's really wild.
Aaron: It's like a modern take on early motets.
Nick: Yeah!
And here's the teenager part, we get that heavy bass line.
Owen: I wonder if the voice will come back in like that same vocal texture over this new band sort of texture.
Elizabeth: Or not. Owen: Maybe eventually.
Nick: This is so good! I love the clarity and purity of the voice.
There's nothing getting in the way.
Just got the downbeats in everything.
Daniel: His voice is so like...oh my god. Fiona: This is like Hozier
Daniel: I say more!
Fiona: He has a very, like broad, full voice.
Henry: Oh, oh!
Clean vocals!
Elizabeth: Ooh it's like an interesting whistle chorus
Owen: This is cool, just loaded with reverb.
Both: Yeah.
Owen: You know, it's interesting that they had such harmonic complexity in the very beginning
and this is like minor one to flat seven, it's just back and forth.
Kevin: 'ocean of tears'
Ooh I like the panning.
Isaac: Do you have it on the left side? (Kevin: Yes.) Yeah, okay.
Fiona: It's just crazy how different this feels with the triplets.
Because before it was like 'Chuuuuurrrcchhhh'
from...the 500's.
Henry: Oooh, alright, driving. (Cloud: Ooh)
Henry: Whoa, whoa. WHAT?!
We're in another meter now! Well, not another meter, we're not swung anymore!
Owen: And there's a lot more rhythmic complexity going on with the sixteenths
Along with the *imitates cymbals*
Henry: Oh! What a voice.
Cloud: Oooh
Henry: That's cleeeeeaaannn.
Fiona: It made it—That was definitely the most powerful moment of the song...(Daniel: Yeah) so far.
Fiona: Or ever, I don't know.
Daniel: It's like the recap now.
Aaron: And it imitates what the voice is doing.
Nick: Yeah, yeah. Aaron: How he has like—
Nick: He goes up and those like, kind of leaps, and then he just come down. (Aaron: Well yeah he has those little melismas and he changes...)
Nick: Yeah. Aaron: His melody.
Kevin: It's got a very punk attitude where like, he's not pronouncing very clearly, and it's part of his aesthetic, and the grammar isn't all correct.
But I like his attitude.
Owen: And the chorus is a lot more satisfying. I think it has a lot more forward momentum,
because it sets up a lot stronger cadences to lead to the end of it,
versus the back and forth between the two chords of the previous sections.
Like here, four....
[five!]
Wait, that was a flat six.
Kevin: Oh.
Isaac: Hey!
Hey!
Kevin: Nice.
Kevin: Ooh!
A little planing, B minor to A minor.
[Isaac singing along]
Henry: Ooh.
Cloud: Oh.
Cloud: No? Okay.
Owen: Pentatonics! Like you said in the beginning: it sounds like Pentatonix, it is pentatonics!
Elizabeth: Okay.
Umu: Starting off like the Pentatonix group, ending with (Owen: Ending with the actual pentatonic scale!)
Nick: That's odd that it ends—right, ends? Yes.
It's so odd that it ends with the guitar just by itself like it started with the voice just by itself.
So it's kind of like transformed by all that stuff in the middle.
Aaron: And like, the unresolved—because we get to a resolution and the guitar player is like,
WAIT!
And then he goes down some descending fifths or descending thirds or something and then doesn't resolve it.
Aaron: I don't know. Nick: I think it was just some pentatonic stuff at the very end.
Aaron: Oh, okay.
Nick: Because all of the lyrics were like, "I should have gone back, I should go back. I should, I should go back."
And then, I thought the ending would be so much more similar to the beginning.
Aaron: Yeah!
Nick: Because all the song was about going back. Aaron: And it was leading there.
Nick: And it kind of was?
Aaron: But then it didn't. Nick. Not quite.
Aaron: I really liked the imitative nature of the guitar and how
he or she copied the voice part.
Because I think that's something that instrumentalists do
like when, there's 'The Shepherd on the Rock' for clarinet and voice and like
and you're kind of supposed to imitate what the voice does and it's kind of very organic way of performing
Because it's not like you're making your part come to life and not really just playing the music.
James: I though the meaning I was like sitting here kind of like stone-faced the whole time because I was a little shook like I feel like...
I don't know, it's just something that hits very close to home at least.
Brianna: Yeah, that's what I'm saying! It feels like yeah
James: The way I experience college, or like the way I've experienced college like you get here from home and you're like so excited and you're like full of life and then
College like grinds you into dust and you like lose those values you like, lose your way.
You're like I'm young, I should be excited for the future, but I'm also terrified.
It's this romantic idea of like finding your way back to the values you once had.
So I was just like, "Ugh" Like the lyrics were like really really really really good and I feel like (Brianna: Yeah... that's what, yeah.)
I feel like a lot of people can identify with that and I thought the music did a great job in supporting that in a way.
Brianna: I feel like that's what captured the spark of the song.
It wasn't like necessarily the chord structure or the complexity of it.
It's the meaning behind it, the words and it's like, I don't know. It just went back to like the root of like singing and
just like reaching people and touching people. I don't know why it touched me in a weird way. I don't know.
James: See? It's the meaning, the meaning is so important. (Brianna: Yeah)
Kevin: I think this song is about someone who is finding his faith and
also finding where he belongs in life and all the gibberish contributes to the fact that he doesn't know.
That's why I like, "I should better get down on my knees"
It's double uncertain. He's not sure if he should, (Isaac: Mhmm) he's double unfaithful.
It's not, not "I better get on my knees" or "I should get on my knees"
"I should better get on my knees"
So there's almost like another layer of doubt, if you sense a lot of doubt.
There's a lot of wishy-washiness and I think it's all intended.
Isaac: I kind of translate with the Music a little bit.
It's like you're trudging along. It's like ba-bump ba-bump
Where's this going towards, having such a straightforward beat?
Yet you have to question. It's like..
Where does this musical, this, I guess musical decisions and musical phrasing is heading towards?
And yeah, I actually really like the beginning because you have this almost...
Almost Gregorian, most of these chants were, even now with Catholic churches (Kevin: Well Gregorian was in unison)
Kevin: It's sort of like neo-renaissance like bringing it back, but now you're allowed to write parallel fifths and you're allowed to do all these planing things, you know.
And so the harmonies sounds simple yet way more complex at the same time (Isaac: Yep.) But the harmonies are more complex.
Isaac: I feel that that's the reflection of maybe his interpretation of religion. (Kevin: Hmm.) Yeah, and Christianity in that sense.
Kevin: Yeah a lot of Bible.
Isaac: I see the chant style, but then they...modernize it.
So maybe there's a modern twist to his interpretation. And then he starts going into this...
Yeah it's like called Spaghetti Western? (Kevin:Yeah)
Isaac: It's like this twang-y, atmospheric explanation of like Old Western film. (Kevin: Yeah)
and you start going to that and it's a whole journey from then on out and
Even the ending where it just doesn't end on a tonic,
it still adds to the effect of the unknown (Kevin: Mhm) that they're trying to convey and I thought it was really nice.
Just you know, whatever faith you're—or whatever your faith is, it's very interesting to explain it through a song.
Yeah, enjoy it!
Umu: You all seemed really pissed off that entire time.
Stephen: No, I mean I was I was more thoughtful
Umu: Hmm, what were you thinking about?
Stephen: Interesting how...
He used his song as a format to probably voice some sort of frustration, maybe with like his own childhood or something like that,
which I can understand.
This song reminds me a lot of a symphonic poem, I think is what it's called in classical rep.
Right? Where—or like I guess almost like a sense in the film score too. And what I mean by that is
using the music—I'm not necessarily just talking about the words—
but I'm specifically also talking about the music, the meter, the orchestration
like what rhythmic values, they're using what motives they're repeating.
For example, in the verses, right, like when he's talking about
in a sense like running away from home, running away from what his parents told him to believe.
And talking about anxiety things like that. The meter isn't 12/8, right?
So it's like you're trudging along. It feels like it's,
It's hard moving from one beat to the next you know? It's like it's forced, it's like oppressive.
Going on top of that like the guitars like, gahh gahhh you know?
Kind of painting that picture.
And then it's also interesting how when we get to the chorus and you can tell also
with the lyrics to his mind starts to race so a lot more
All of a sudden we go into like more eighth note subdivision like more
yeah more intense feel right like he's like,
"Oh my goodness, but what if they're right?" and like then "What do I need to do?" and then going back so
Really interesting how he used his song...
to paint a picture...
Sonically and visually, and how that added to it. Because a lot of songs don't do that.
Isaac: He lived in a manger
Kevin: No, he didn't live in it. He was born there.
Isaac: Well, he lived in it for a bit.
He had to leave.