#joyce kwon

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: I HAVE YET TO LISTEN TO 'AAA' BY HYUKOH x SUNSET ROLLERCOASTER! IT IS NOT ON THIS LIST! I AM WAITING FOR THE RIGHT TIMING! IT IS NOT TIME YET!

on to this year's list:

beautiful world - kimhwol

akin to its album cover, it's best to listen when you are out on a walk. kim hwol's voice cradles you like a beating fire, like a baby bird. while forest child might be the best song of the album, my favorite is the demo track of dear my love with its plinky piano which i find particularly delightful. sparse, basic, but each tracks soars.

yin - colde

i was hesitant to place this here since it's only 3 tracks long but considering it's on my top spotify wrapped, i felt it'd be bias not to give it a place of honor. the background adlib at 3:25 mark in I Color You is laced with cocaine. solid rnb singles, per usual. where is that offonoff album.

dudndudndudn - yujin kim

get on the ground floorrrr. kim yujin is a gorgeous jazz vocalist (listen to her past 2 albums if you haven't) and this EP is rich, bright and her voice is playful and unpretentious. the double track You Love Me / I Love You are so disgustingly cheesy it rounds back to being good. personal fave track is hit me back where it dipped its toe in shoegaze.

orange hour - joyce kwon

have your ever heard an album that is so technically perfect that you get mad? this is that album. i don't even know what else to say.

neom 0541 - BØJEONG

during my first time listening of Unreal, i had to pause and check out if they were a side project of the band The Solutions - they're not. it doesn't mean this release isn't an absolute barn-burner. a concept rock album of landing in a desolate new world, this EP's highlight is Unreal but i implore to stick around for the next track Hyenoid as it hits you with a solo that can melt your face clean right off. check out their latest EP kin as well.

angel interview - meaningful stone, swervy

the latest entry in this list, not even a month old as i am typing this. however, i had a sneaking suspicion this album is going to be an instant shoegaze classic (red car and i open the window instead of the closed door especially) the transition from garage rock esc to house track _()_ is insane.

are you watching at all? - min.a

while i can't say i am a fan of the current epidemic of particularly nasal tiktok singing that's hitting youngsters, min.a is an exception to the rule because she actually has the sauce. by that, her EP thoroughly impresses in its production that i am here for everything she releases from now on. while skipping stones has the play numbers, do not skip on sunshower and petty because they are so cleverly arranged that i don't wanna spoil it.

cool - hyelyn joo

this is a funnnn indie-pop EP with great earworms like Kiss! and Crazy. it's bubbly nature oddly reminds of Lee Jin Ah, albeit steers more safely to the pop side. it's a true crowd pleaser release and each track can be someone's favorite. no on asked but B-Yum is my tongue-in-cheek fave.

the world you live in - ashmute

let it be on the record that everytime they release, it's gonnaaaa be on this list. i prayed for an album from them and my prayers were answered this year. to top it all, it's good and STILL so underrated. Air and Saudade deliver their signature sad sexy bops but surprisingly HARUMADA comes out as the citypop track i didn't know i needed.

honorable mentions:

Here is someone who isn’t Joyce playing Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” on it:

That was fun.

As you can hear in “Little Bird,” Joyce’s lyrics are often located somewhere between wistful and encouraging, singing to her songs’ subjects but also to us and to herself as well. There’s some self-care marketing potential, which I mean in a good way, and have recently asked myself, why I don’t aim to do more of that. On my guitar case, I have a bumper sticker which reads “Joyce For Thriving 2020″ -- I also just saw that she has a T-shirt with that slogan which I’m hoping that after reading this nice post, she will give me one next time I see her... 

Her excellent solo album DREAM OF HOME was written during a time where she was contemplating home as a concept and searching for it as a reality. Her songs ask us what "home” means for someone who, like myself and many others, is of two places and because of that, might feel that they belong nowhere. Although it was written between Korea and the States, this album was truly authored from an in-between place, an artist’s island of sorts, a place where I’ve written most of No-No Boy from. Dream of Home sweetly and sometimes bitterly works through these core ideas of belonging, home and hope through music, blending her Korean Gayageum with her American musical self.

As one of her many album adjacent projects, she took her “Little Bird” video and set out to include lyrical translations by friends who speak many different languages and who she notes are “American.” If you click on the settings in youtube for the video, you can choose to see the captions in any number of languages, including my 12 year old level French. By including these translations, she is obviously gesturing towards inclusiveness and solidarity, but also making a move off of that in-between cultural place and making a case for Americans and America broadly defined by its many sounds, including Joyce music and her friends’ languages.

I met Joyce at the DisOrient Film Festival in Eugene, OR in late winter of 2019. She was showing a music video for the song “Dream of Home” and performed a house concert. I was going through a really tough period in my life, maybe the toughest. I had come off two months of touring the world’s most depressing songs and having panic attacks during and after almost every concert. My long term relationship fell ended and many other important relationships fell apart. I was in the midst of personally reckoning with some deep, ancient personal stuff. I felt really exiled and depressed, completely lost. 

At this house concert, Joyce’s stripped down performance, just her and her gayageum, really touched me. I got to hang out with her a bunch that weekend at the film festival, along with a whole bunch of awesome film makers and actors. We ended up talking a lot at the staff party and not doing karaoke together despite my urgings. A couple days later, Joyce even helped me make field recordings of objects at the Japanese American museum in Portland, old suitcases and trunks, nic nacs, bells, stoves, objects which were at the Minidoka WWII internment camp and which I turned into percussion instruments for my next album. She was one of the first new friends I made after this really dark period.

After we parted ways and I went back to Providence to wait for summer. I’ll write candidly, not because I like sharing, but in case you the reader has been dealing with any kind of depression, anxiety or mental illness. Sometimes it’s nice to know you’re not alone in that... Anyways, my depression deepened that spring until the summer allowed me to make a life-saving change of scene. But one thing that kept me going during that cold New England thaw, aside from the couple of true friends I had in town, was Joyce’s song “Why-Go-Round.” Give it a listen, especially if you’re having a rough time, or are just feeling extra human, which is to say messy, sad, and really down. Put this song on your phone and walk through a park or to a nice cafe you like, or just look out a good window. Let Joyce Kwon remind you that, even on your worst days, there’s a pretty green field around the corner, or a good friend to meet you at the corner bar. At the very least, there is a beautiful song to lift you up, dust you off and say, hey “you deserve to be happy.” Because you do. We all do. Thanks, Joyce.