They released their first album and their fifth EP as an incomplete group of six but after a long wait, we finally see the return of the complete septet DREAMCATCHER with their sixth EP "Dystopia: Road to Utopia", which dropped on Tuesday. Chinese member Handong is back after her participation in last year's Youth With You season 2 and InSomnias (the group's fandom name) couldn't be happier. DREAMCATCHER is one of the most unique girl groups around, being one of, if not the only existing girl group to adopt a rock and metal sound. Their concept originally revolved around each member representing a phobia or a "nightmare" (eg. Siyeon and Handong represent claustrophobia and scopophobia respectively), although they've moved past that idea after the ending of the previous "storyline" known as the Nightmare Quartet.
With Odd Eye, we're getting the final addition to the group's Dystopia Era trilogy and it's actually one of the best things to grace K-Pop in a long time. I'm super stoked about it so let's take a look at their title track Odd Eye.
Meaning: In order to really understand Odd Eye's meaning, we have to look at all the Dystopia Era comebacks. The story that the group is telling this time is of a far grander scale, one that ends with a world in dire straits. "Dystopia: The Tree of Language" introduced us to the titular Tree of Language, which is this era's central idea. The MV for title track Scream starts by showing us the ethereal Tree, glowing radiantly and warmly. The words "one day suddenly the light did not come, people forgot how to say good things" are superimposed on screen and very quickly the background light disappears, plunging the world into darkness. Once the light dies, hate starts to spread and malicious language becomes rampant. Scream brought across that idea with lyrics like "words that cut deep like a sharp sword, dig deep into the scars", emphasising the dark path that the world has been sent on.
The story continues in the next comeback "Dystopia: Lose Myself", with the title track BOCA. While Scream was set in the forest surrounding the Tree of Language, BOCA instead showed the girls in areas with lots of infrastructure, infrastructure that's slowly taking over the Tree. With this comeback, we see DREAMCATCHER try to preserve the Tree, all while the Internet is infected by the hate. The girls sing about how "if those thorny words start to hurt you, I won't let them open that BOCA", with BOCA being Spanish for "mouth". This is representative of the protection they're trying to give to the Tree and all this will come to a head very soon.
The story comes to an end with "Dystopia: Road to Utopia", with Odd Eye seeing the Internet has been completely taken over by the hate and the members are trying to keep the Tree alive. Their desperate attempts to bring the light back and usher in a new utopia ultimately fail, and the Tree dies, sending the world into a Dystopia. The MV chillingly ends with "in the end, the Dreamcatchers couldn't find the Utopia that they dreamed of", while the dead Tree which was once surrounded by a lush forest is now hooked up to sinister cables. The story that's been presented over the past three titles is very haunting and rightfully so because it's an accurate representation of what's happening to our world now. The Tree of Language is of course representing everything that's good about language, how beautiful it can be and how words can be used to lift others up, motivating them for good. Of course, over the course of recent years, we've seen words transform into tools of destruction, with keyboard warriors turning on one another and using hateful language. As the Internet becomes the main form of communication, hate continues to spread and we see that right now, with all kinds of vitriolic hatred populating the social media landscape. It's a depressing state of affairs and Odd Eye is trying to warn us that if we don't stop going down this dark path, we'll end up in the dystopian world that DREAMCATCHER were unable to prevent.
MV: DREAMCATCHER has always had stunning MVs with their storyline intricately weaved in and Odd Eye is no different. As I mentioned above, this song is a warning to open our eyes and see the extent to which hate speech has infiltrated our lives, so that we can make a change and stop the world from descending into chaos. Following the storyline of the dystopian future that the girls end up in, the MV doesn't show any hopefulness or whatnot, instead apart from the usual group and individual shots of the girls dancing and singing, the vibe of the MV can only be described as despair. There are many scenes of the members with some form of electronic device that will connect them to the Internet, whether it's phones, TVs or computers. As the MV progresses, we see the devices start to degenerate and give off waves of energy (which represent hate), slowly crumbling the walls of reality and destroying the surroundings.
Eventually, the destruction gets worse and we see shots of the girls directly affected by the dystopia. Gahyeon is in obvious distress at the hate emanated by her computer, a blindfolded JiU is holding a bunch of burning flowers and a member (who I assume is Siyeon from her hair colour) is shown tumbling through the vast empty cyberspace. The MV ends eerily with a shot of the Tree of Language hooked up to all sorts of fibre optic cables and surrounded by lights, which could mean two things. Either it's the girls' way of keeping it alive or it could show how the hate speech from the Internet has infected the Tree through these cables and is slowly breaking it down. I'm more inclined to go with the latter. The MV's sinister vibe really drives home its central idea of how hateful speech can send others spiraling into depression and in the end, tear the world apart. It's a sad reality that's presented beautifully with the MV's expensive-looking sets and apt colour scheme. Even though there are bright colours, they don't invoke the happiness you would expect. Instead, they add to the otherworldly and almost supernatural nature that hate speech has been given, and only makes it all the more clear that if not stopped now, hate can never be stopped ever again.
Styling: Just like it always is, the styling for this comeback is incredible and really accentuates the girls' visuals. The styling team have really outdone themselves this time. I'll look at two aspects of it, the performance outfits and the "story" outfits if you will. Performance outfits are phenomenal, whether it's the black leather worn for a good portion of their dance sequences or the red outfits that they don on. They really add a lot of personality to the performance and make a lot of sense considering the tone of the song. We've seen the black outfits in both their showcase and M Countdown comeback stages but we have yet to see the red ones. I really hope we get to see it in future live performances because it's stunning. As for MV outfits, they've done a good job in clothing the girls in costumes that emphasise the otherworldly storyline. It fits the concept well and match their respective scenes. When the members are interacting with devices, they're dressed in techwear of sorts but when we see them in the more otherworldly scenes, they're dressed in gorgeous dresses that only make the members look even more beautiful.
It's really hard for me to pick a member to say that Odd Eye was their era because honestly, they all shined here, both vocally and visually. As usual, JiU and SuA have caught my eye but the members that I would say surprised me the most were Dami and Handong. I'm honestly used to seeing Dami as a far tougher figure because of her powerful rapping but with the styling for this comeback, she actually looks amazing and I did a double take when I saw her solo shots in the MV. As for Handong, what can I say? She's always been a top visual in the group and now that she's back after so long, she's really living her best life and shining this comeback. The styling might honestly suit her the best, so maybe this is her era? It's impossible for me to choose.
Song: DREAMCATCHER has always been a rock-focused group but over the years, their songs have adopted different tones and moods. With their previous two Dystopias, Scream and BOCA, I would say that they went far more EDM, especially with the former. These two songs also have choruses that primarily consist of music rather than lyrics, something that the group hasn't really done too much of in the past. As for BOCA, another interesting thing to note is the song's Latin-inspired sound. Maybe it's because the song title itself is a Spanish word but it's quite obvious to even the untrained ear that BOCA has a lot of Latin influences in it which unfortunately makes me not a fan of that comeback. However, with Odd Eye, we're returning to something that's a little more reminiscent of older DREAMCATCHER titles.
After listening to Odd Eye a couple of times, the thing that strikes me the most about it is how we've returned to what I would consider the group's roots, a far more traditional hard rock song. If I had to liken it to a specific song, I would say it's fairly similar to PIRI, the title track from 2019's "The End of Nightmare", the EP which rounded off the Nightmare Quartet. The more you listen to it, the more you realise how similar those two songs are, especially in arrangement. That doesn't mean Odd Eye is an inferior product or a copycat though because this song is truly excellent. Some things that stood out to me for this song was Dami actually getting singing lines again (something that was also present in PIRI). In both Scream and BOCA, she stuck with rap lines and being main rapper, that makes a lot of sense but it is refreshing to hear her sing again. Dami has a lower voice which complements her powerful raps well so when she sings, she takes on a higher register which I find very melodious and easy on the ears, which is a nice change. Odd Eye also sees Gahyeon returning to taking on purely a vocal role, with her having been the group's de facto "lead" rapper. It's not a huge thing but just something I found interesting.
If you know anything about DREAMCATCHER, you'll know that they're one of the most vocally impressive groups around. All the girls are amazing vocalists, being both stable and powerful even when performing live, which makes watching them all the more exciting. Odd Eye has really capitalised on their power vocals, especially considering the fact that the choreography in the chorus has a lot of jerking motions that call for multiple quick changes in body movements. Even with such powerful choreographies, the girls' strong vocals still shine through. I can't stress just how amazing they are in this aspect. Special mention has to go to main vocal Siyeon and main dancer SuA, who don't sound out-of-breath at all even when executing complicated dance manoeuvres. In fact, it's a small wonder that SuA isn't considered a lead vocal because I daresay she's the second best vocalist in the group. I also really like Handong's voice and because of it's husky rich quality, it adds another layer of ethereality to the song. She gets lots of parts too so that makes it even better (more on this later).
Line distribution: In the past, DREAMCATCHER tended to have pretty unfair line distributions. Generally speaking, main vocal Siyeon would be at the top while Handong would be at the bottom. Both cases are understandable because in K-Pop, usually the main vocal will have the most lines while foreign members would be near the bottom, it's just business. Of course, Siyeon does have the strongest vocals in the group so she would dominate the song and Handong would get a short couple of lines, which was sad because her voice is really nice. So imagine my happiness when Odd Eye gave us one of the fairest line distributions not just in the group but in recent K-Pop.
No surprises here, lead vocal Yoohyeon and main vocal Siyeon are at the top with 18.6% and 18.3% respectively. Yoohyeon had tons of adlibs in this song and she also sang half of the first chorus by herself, as compared to later choruses (which I'll touch on later). Leader JiU comes in 3rd with 16% and considering how she's also a lead vocal plus the visual of the group, I would say giving her this many lines is appropriate. Something else I found interesting, at least for the past 3 comebacks (I'm not sure about before), JiU has been the one to end the song, with her being the center at the end. I think it's an interesting choice by both the choreographers and songwriters, and it's probably for promotion purposes, so that her insane visual will capture people's attention. Let me tell you, if that's their strategy, it's definitely working.
At 4th, we have SuA at 14.1%. Like I mentioned earlier, SuA might as well be lead vocal because she's definitely at that caliber. How on Earth she does such a high kick and still be able to hit all her notes is one of the many unanswered questions of the world. SuA is the group's lead rapper and while I've never really listened to DREAMCATCHER's older songs, I've heard that she actually did rap in the past but as of the few comebacks I've heard, the rapping role lies with Dami and sometimes Gahyeon. Now, what comes next is one of the most amazing things to happen in K-Pop recently. Handong isn't at the bottom of the line distribution (cue celebration). She comes in 5th with 12.9% and I'm so happy. Her sultry voice is finally being put to good use and she even gets part of the second chorus. On my first listen I knew JiU was the one who started the second chorus (because of the MV) but when the voice and MV focus changed to Handong, I was a little skeptical because I simply couldn't believe that she would get a chorus. It's still a little surreal to me.
As for Dami and Gahyeon, they have 10.3% and 9.8% respectively. Even then, they really aren't that far behind the rest of the members and I think that's something that should carry on for their future comebacks. Dami of course took the rap in this song and some bridge lines while Gahyeon took the second pre-chorus as well as part of the bridge. This was more than enough to demonstrate their vocals without giving them peanuts for lines. This kind of fair line distribution, especially for a 7-member group is hard to come across in K-Pop and it would do the world a favour if this could be the case for many more groups in future.
Despite the fact that Happy Face Entertainment is a pretty small company, they really take care of DREAMCATCHER, even creating their own sublabel for their only girl group (aptly named Dreamcatcher Company). They're a shining example of how small companies should treat their groups and actually, even big companies should learn from them, especially when you see how some bigger companies have treated their groups recently (I'm looking right at you Cube Entertainment). The return of the complete DREAMCATCHER has been a long time coming and they've really hit us with such a powerful title track. It absolutely baffles me that this amazingly talented group has yet to have a first win, especially with the quality that they've consistently given us and I sincerely hope they can get it with Odd Eye. If there's one thing you need to do by the end of January, please go and give Odd Eye a listen and appreciate this masterpiece of a song. Thanks for reading.
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