Spectreview: 파란노을 (Parannoul) – To See the Next Part of the Dream

Released: March 5, 2021

Indie Rock
(Emo)
(Shoegaze)
(Post-Rock)

-LIGHT GREEN-

For a guide to the review color rating system, click here.

Shunji Iwai’s 2002 film All About Lily Chou-Chou depicts high-school students who are connected by their fandom towards an enigmatic pop singer. In its dream-like cinematography juxtaposed with harrowing teenage cruelty, the film feels like a precursor to Gus Van Sant’s Young Death trilogy in how it portrays adolescence in an adolescent language: all edges and rife with extremes.

Similarly, we don’t know the person behind Korean indie-rock act 파란노을 (Parannoul), who takes the underwritten mythos behind Iwai’s film and turns it into a thematic foundation (their first record, Let’s Walk on the Path of a Blue Cat, directly references the screen name of the film’s sadist center, Shusuke Hoshino). That makes for a peculiar meta dynamic, one where a self-described “loser” takes inspiration from a fictional artist – someone written to be larger than life – and makes music that both reveres and attempts to transmit that unplaceable power.

If thousands of English-speaking people are suddenly starting to connect en masse to the work of one anonymous Korean student, it’s because To See the Next Part of the Dream succeeds so viscerally in its goal. Lyrically and aurally, the album is a cyclone of nihilistic hikokomori ennui cast in a shimmering darkness, a dream pairing of shoegaze textures and emo colors. For people aligned with that energy, this record will be like catnip.

Much of the source of Next Part’s power is in its production, which across the board feels miles ahead of its more humble predecessor. It’s the emphasis on high-end that does the most work, piercing through the ears like a sonic emergency. On punk-forward tracks like “청춘반란 (Youth Rebellion)” and “변명 (Excuse)“ the drums hit hard and crisply, the kick drum side-chained in a way that punches through the walls of distorted guitar. The fact that they’re over-compressed actually works wonders here, forming a messy edge that counterbalances the loose candor of the vocals. Meanwhile the face-scorching heat of the MBV-cribbing “격변의 시대 (Age of Fluctuation)” comes courtesy of those thick, opaque guitars, produced in such a way that it hits the heart directly.

While the melodies here are expected fare for what you’d expect in a post-shoegaze record, they’re punctuated by piano, keyboard, and synth hits that bring them out of the realm of standard. What’s more, they’re incredibly direct, borrowing from the language of the genre in ways that aren’t cliche. You don’t have to be Korean to understand the feelings behind anthemic opening track “아름다운 세상 (Beautiful World)” or the heavenward title track; the passion behind the playing does it for you. But Parannoul’s starkly honest words, helpfully translated for the English crowd, are still the cherry on top. In true emo fashion, it’s all searching without resolution, the music providing the catharsis that the lyrics demand.

That’s the funny thing about music of a language you don’t know; there’s a clear sentiment that’s altogether rendered unclear, allowing you to graft on your own ideas and feelings. In its translation, we understand the record’s existential dread of growing old or coping with lost time or managing the sameness of each day (and in a pandemic this applies even more than ever), but it’s the strike of the snare and the stab of the guitar that ultimately conveys the meaning. That distracts us from the darker implications of, say, an artist choosing to align himself with a film character that pimps out his peers to older men or organizes a group rape, but that decision is also extremely befitting a cloistered wayward soul caught up in the frustration of growing out of childhood. Emo, historically, harnesses unfettered ugliness and render it beautiful, an act as daring as it is perilous.

On those terms, To See the Next Part of the Dream is an unmitigated triumph. It’s an insular fantasy of shattered dreams that, for all its intensity, never betrays the dead heart in its center. Whether it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy is up to chance, but based on the sheer power of the music, the odds may just be in Parannoul’s favor.

Recommended for the Ether.