In praise of older women ... and some older blokes

The new year in k-pop traditionally begins with a rush of great releases from barely cooked rookie groups - and this year was no exception. I will get to them in a follow-up post, but first I want to salute three veterans who made comebacks that made my ears - and eyes - happy.

According to Wikipedia, Uhm Jung Hwa is 47 years old, yes that's right, bow the fuck down. It's been almost a decade since her last song, DISCO, which she re-visited this year in a must-see performance, with Big Bang's TOP, at one of the end-of-year shows. She's now signed to Mystic Entertainment, who are home to Brown-Eyed Girls and Lim Kim, among others, so they obviously know class when they see it. In December, she released an EP of four songs called The Cloud Dream of the Nine. It's named for the 17th-century Korean novel and it is flawless.  The weakest track is Oh Yeah, the duet with Shinee's Jonghyun, and that's not something I will often say about anything involving King JH. It's a pleasing enough noodly soul jazz thing that sounds like one of JH's trademark tunes, but it was written by BEG stalwart Lee Minsoo. It's pleasing, but not earth-shattering. Dreamer, with electronic bass and swirling strings was written by someone who has adopted the anime moniker One Piece/Michael D. Luffy, and after going down a web rabbithole trying to find out more about him/her I lost the will to live, so back to the music: it has some kind of trilling Celtic pipe sound as well - something that drew me to Sun Mi's awesome Full Moon. Jung Hwa performed this with the title, Watch Me Move, when she was promoting and at first I thought it was pretty weak, but it wasn't long before it got its hooks into me.

In a tough field, the title track  Watch Me Move is still the standout, but it's a tough call. It's written by Hyuk "hitmaker" Shin, who wrote and/or produced Exo's Growl, SNSD's I Got a Boy and Heize's And July, among many more. There's molten lava bass bubbling under the snapping snare. Jung Hwa's high-pitched voice whispers a vaguely Middle Eastern melody on the verse before hitting out on the chorus: "watch me moo-oo-oo-oove", with some auto-tune. This really has a killer club groove for me. Also good for belting out in the lounge room and pissing off the neighbours.

Beats and looped strings - my weaknesses - star on the last track, Willow Forest. I guess the instruments - cello would be my guess - are electronic, but they have lovely textures that suggest the scraping of bows across strings. There is the pit-a-pat of light percussion and a sweet breathy vocal performance from Jung Hwa.

The Cloud Dream of the Nine is 4/4.

[Bonus video link: Jung Hwa and Ga-In together at the Golden disc awards.]

SM's flagship girl group SES returned for a 20th anniversary project, following up a November remake of their 1999 hit Love with a shitty ballad, Remember. Thankfully they followed that with Paradise,  a new jack swing tune co-written by the team that did Shinee's 1 of 1 - who got the formula right this time. It's a slamming track with a grippy chorus and the girlish vocals are tailor-made for the sound. The rest of the album is not quite as enticing, but Birthday,  an Italo-house style number by a team from Monotree, is a lot of fun.

Shinhwa. Almost two decades together and they just keep going. And the girls just keep screaming. While I appreciate most of their releases as being well-crafted and executed songs, they don't usually do much for me. Touch is different. A track by uber-producer Kim Do Hyun (Psy, Lee Hyori), Touch won a couple of trophies on the music shows but has been slagged off all over web. So obviously, it's the first Shinhwa song that I've really connected with. It's an electronic song with lots of space, shattered sounds and rhythm changes - in an interesting interview, Do Hyun called it future bass, and said he was surprised when Shinhwa chose it. Honestly I could easily see Shinee doing it, and I think SM dropped the ball on this. Kudos to the oldies for giving it a shot. The choreography is a little geriatric, but the song is one of my favourites so far this year.