Cha Eun Joo's fifth album CHA EUN JOO

 

Cha Eun Joo – CHA EUN JOO

 

With four mildly jazzy/folk ballad albums under her belt, the South Korean singer Cha Eun Joo, who debuted as a singer in a injazz group, has showed not head-spinning but still diverse versatility in love. I introduce you to her self-titled latest album, CHA EUN JOO.

 

According to the artist, the ballads in this collection were created to tailor to the lyrics, and as well as containing what could be regarded as soulful ballads dabbing in various genre, she expands her melodic vocal skills to perform to the lyrics. In one track, she sings and shouts to several octaves, and that employing traditional electric guitar sounds rolling down from the ‘90s.

 

These intelligent tracks fill the hungry-like-the-wolf gaps in the context of the aorta-enlarging musical arteries, as part of musical anatomy of this album. Before she made this her fifth album, Cha quit her existing record label and start doing her mixing and production herself, all the while setting up a new independent record label on her own. And on the whole she is successfully clean-cut in this album. 

 

Not only does the album feature versatile guitar solo’s and guitar patterns, but in the self-identifying example of “So what”, beat, melody, electronical, and very stable almost-Celine-Dion-like vocal ability, she also succeeds in harnessing her own voice.

 

Continue listening to CHA EUN JOO, and you can relay one track to the other, absorbing, and performing to, the flowering genres of her previous albums. The first four tracks stay close together. The first piece as jazz rock ballad ending with soul, the second folk rock ballad, adding to the album’s rota of genre ballad tracks, the third one is 'shouting rock ballad.'

 

The fourth? Well, its title can be translated to “I am Beautiful”, and it looks inward the listener’s own self. (could well be called ‘feminist’) on the whole, most of the various modes of ballad in CHA EUN JOO identify self-presentation, and on her way, her twists and swishes form a sort of vocal intestines in the song’s musical body.  

 

As told above, most of the tracks are ballads, and her lyrics are one of the outstanding elements of Cha’s music, into which she channels her energy. I focus on her lyrics and they readily grab my she-gender lyrical secret mind and come across as inspirational.

 

If you look at her bibliography, it remains an open question whether any of folk/rock/jazz ballads are her main skeleton. However, her new, independent integrity is beginning to show and don’t let’s forget that wisdom.