“Around you in the atmosphere, hard to reach, fading away” is how Crystal Choi, Phoebe Rings’ founder, defines the Korean word she chose as this album’s title.
Sung in Choi’s mother tongue, the funky opening title track features cheeky synth, wah-wah guitar (we can tell they’re Nile Rodgers fans), wood block accents and soaring strings. Just when we thought it’d be impossible love this one any more, we read that Choi penned it in her native Korean as a means of drawing her late grandmother – who she was separated from for a large period of her life – closer: (English translation) “May the falling light of faraway stars/ Reach your fingertips and let you breathe.”
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Mandarin Tree, with its güiro accents and “bup-doo-wah-dah” vocal percussion, is a commentary on the housing crisis: “By the mandarin tree we can live out the fantasy/ Buy a house up the street and spend our days in peace.”
During the discofied Get Up, bassist Benjamin Locke takes lead vocals, reflecting on extended periods of poor mental health during which he tried to will himself out of it in the manner of that famous scene from The Matrix: “Just get up!”
The heavenly, penultimate track Blue Butterfly finds a grief-stricken Choi addressing her dearly departed grandmother: “49th day since you left us/ It’s sunny and still…”. Goodnight (“a loving ode to our cats and the comfort they bring us”) bestows a closing caress.
“It makes me dream/ It’s so serene it makes me smile” – while singing these lyrics, Choi summarises Aseurai’s overall tone. This Aotearoa/NZ dream-pop quartet’s debut LP is unassuming, steeped in longing and quietly beautiful.
Out now via Carpark Records.
