An Da-young - 2nd Full-length Album [WHERE IS MY FRIEND?] (LP)

Ahn Dayoung 2nd Studio Album [WHERE IS MY FRIEND?] Vinyl The novel 'Finnegans Wake' by the Irish literary giant James Joyce spread through my mind like a red sun—or rather, an orange sunrise. This is because the act of listening to all eleven tracks of Ahn Dayoung's second studio album, 'WHERE IS MY FRIEND?', and then returning to the 'intro' overlaps with the structure of that book. The 'intro' of this album connects to the outro of the final track, 'EASY'. The title of Part IV, Chapter 1, the final chapter of 'Finnegans Wake', is also 'Return'. The final sentence of the work is "a way a lone a last a loved a long the," where "the" refers to the English word 'THE'. This 'THE' connects back to the first line of the book, "riverrun." The following sentence begins with "Pass by the cathedral of Eve and Adam..." According to Kim Jong-gun, Professor Emeritus at Korea University who published a commentary on 'Finnegans Wake'—a work considered problematic due to its extreme complexity—the "station of Eve and Adam" suggests the backflow of water. This also signifies the "recurrent history" of the Italian philosopher Vico, who stated that "the river flows backward twice a day, once by night and once by day." In the title track of her first solo EP 'Waves, Smoke, River' (2014), Ahn Dayoung constantly murmured, "I wish I had a so wide river." Ahn Dayoung now has the courage to return upon that river. She cited 'Samsara' and 'Karma' as the key keywords for the intro of 'WHERE IS MY FRIEND?'. It is a protest against wanting to put a period to this album, which she worked on for three years, by converging it into a single specific thought. The repetition of the chorus in the intro is a metonymic landscape of a life where the wheel turns. In 'Finnegans Wake', 'Wake' means spending the night. The novel deals with the one-night dream of a pub owner on the outskirts of Dublin. Ahn Dayoung's 'WHERE IS MY FRIEND?' also sounds and reads like a long dream of a single day. A life that becomes detached again—passing through the midday bustle of sprinting on asphalt because she does not want to be easily forgotten like yesterday on crumbled land, passing through the 'grave of light' (a nightmare that comes at night), facing the orange sunrise, and humming that it is easy to abandon someone. Ahn Dayoung's musical world is mythical. Most protagonists in myths left reality due to a sense of loss, eventually returned, and found answers by drifting in the process. Ahn Dayoung's previous albums—her first EP 'Waves, Smoke, River', first studio album 'ANTIHERO' (2020), and second EP 'Burning Letter' (2021)—follow a similar structure. In this album as well, she recalls vanished friends and searches for the existence and meaning of a 'friend' while drifting aimlessly. However, there are no right answers in life, and life does not flow in the direction one desires. Ahn Dayoung also worries and frets over whether she can accurately express the truth as she knows it. This leads to collapse ('Happy Asphalt'), a sense of alienation ('echoborn'), or cynicism ('Yawn / survive 101'). Yet, Ahn Dayoung's musical world does not vanish because it ultimately endures contempt and refuses to progress toward disillusionment. Defining oneself as someone who says a "complete farewell to your name forgotten over long days" and who "cannot ruin a single common lyric" ('you can change nothing') is a determination to venture into a lonely choice, even when thrown into a tragic situation like Antigone. The various confusions captured in the album are, in a sense, the minimum amount of time required to fully reveal oneself. Possessing a "painterly talent" that visualizes sound through lyrics and audio—including the immediate imagery evoked by song titles such as "grave of light," "tunnel," and "Orange Sunrise"—An Da-young's music leaves behind a method of oral mythology, serving as a trace of life's spasms. Another point to examine in An Da-young's latest album is that her exceptional talent has secured a path toward greater universality. This album, which incorporates more pop elements, offers a wider point of contact to reach more people. An Da-young established an irregular dreaminess through the band "In the Endless Reverberation We Are," known as a pioneer of post-rock, and has filled her discography primarily with alternative rock and pop featuring multi-layered textures of sound. Once again, contrary to lyrics that could potentially sink into gloom, the use of sound and choruses that evoke a sense of overwhelming emotion while drifting away is superb, and the tempo is brighter. The sense of unity, where her vocal style—appropriately blurring both Korean and English to make the ear more curious—acts as a single sound, has become more robust. "tunnel" is pop itself. The repetition and variation of guitar riffs that oscillate between melodicism and a guarded, unstable atmosphere are impressive, and "Yawn / survive 101," which features short singing-rap with a moderate sense of rhythm, is also well-crafted using popular grammar. An Da-young, who has spent time persuading enthusiasts as to why her work is good in terms of message and sound, has now reached a stage where she responds to the demands of listeners who want to know how her music is good as a whole. While technical skill certainly played a part, this converges into an affection for music underpinned by insight into humans and the world. It eventually connects to the act of resolving one's Karma. Singing that it was "too easy" to abandon you while humming is a kind of vow to create human relationships that no longer leave one feeling uneasy. Even if we do not know the despairs of each other's worlds—the scorched yesterdays or the raspy breaths behind the lights—when we listen to An Da-young's songs, old bolts break open, and we can watch the slowly spreading Orange Sunrise together. Written by: Lee Jae-hoon, Popular Music Reporter for Newsis (Selection Committee Member for the Korean Music Awards)