CHAT-SHIRE

The record

CHAT-SHIRE is the fourth mini album by IU, released on 23 October 2015 with seven tracks. The title track is the third of them, ‘Twenty-Three’. The single Heart, out five months earlier, was placed on the record’s CD edition.

The album introduction states that the seven songs put what she saw and felt around her into characters drawn from novels, and that the record’s name is the state where those characters live. It is the first record IU produced herself from end to end. Hwang Seon-eop of IZM read that fact as follows: “That the whole of the work was handed to the artist proves two things at once — an acknowledgement that this is a moment when she may do anything, and a hardened confidence in her musical talent.” The music video for the title track was uploaded to the 1theK (원더케이) channel on 22 October, the day before release.

Reviews

IZM reviewed the record in November 2015. Hwang Seon-eop wrote that “what sits here in place of the hit formula that stands for large scale is her own honest feeling, given a room of relatively modest furnishing to live in”. He described the record as “not a disposable job cut to a trend, but a job that carves the present self down as though taking a photograph”.

Idology (아이돌로지) carried several writers in its new-release column ‘1st Listen’ on 7 November 2015. Kim Young-dae opened with “the ear responds easily from the first bar”, and wrote that “by the time you reach ‘Twenty-Three’, the sense with which she plays the notes — supple, and at times firm — is out of the ordinary”. Kim Yun-ha wrote: “That is why one chews over and over the lyric of ‘Twenty-Three’, which satisfies every side of it — candour, wordplay, and rhythm too.”

Kim Se-cheol of weiv published a long piece on the record alone on 13 November 2015. Pointing at the arranger, he wrote that “the name to watch more closely is Lee Jong-hoon”, starting from that name’s earlier work on ‘Pierrot Laughs At Us’ for the remake album A Flower Bookmark: “The jazzy electric keys, the unexpected harmony, the minimum of electronic sound pushing out between real instruments — all of it repeats intact on CHAT-SHIRE.”

Billboard placed the record sixth in “The 10 Best K-Pop Albums of 2015”, published on 31 December 2015. Jeff Benjamin wrote that “as she continues to demonstrate throughout her career, IU knows how to take the sounds of yesterday and update them to stunning results”, and that “her latest focuses on disco and soul music, yet the subtle ballads ‘Knees’ and the melodica-led ‘The Shower’ speak even louder than the funky-fun up-tempos”.

Among the tracks

The title track, ‘Twenty-Three’, is the third track. Hwang Seon-eop wrote that “the title song ‘Twenty-Three’, on which the varied use of several vocal colours stands out, sets out directly the confusion that arises between IU the person and IU the public figure”, and Kim Se-cheol that “‘Twenty-Three’, which lays light strings over the top and changes the vocal tone continually to match the lyric, also represents the record well”.

The Singles Jukebox took up the same song on 13 November 2015, each writer signing a short piece with a mark out of ten. Brad Shoup gave it nine: “This is a hearty slab of disco-pop, with a sparkling organ cameo in one channel, string stabs cooked just right, and a droogish bridge where she rides the bell, weaving the weirdest harmonies in and out.” Jessica Doyle gave it eight: “Don’t do what I did and read the translation before you hear the actual song. Or do, and be surprised that a story of self-understanding, of coming to terms with confusion — what do I want to be, what does the world want to be, why can’t I or the world settle on just one thing and be done with it — is also a straight-up jam.” Alfred Soto gave it seven, calling it “a souffle-light disco bounce complete with strings”.

Kim Young-dae picked the opening track, ‘Shoes’: “‘Shoes’ is a piece lit by the most graceful vocal arrangement I have heard in some time.” Kim Se-cheol took the fourth track, ‘The Shower’, and the sixth, ‘Knees’, together: “‘The Shower’, a folk song recalling summer in pretty words, and ‘Knees’, a ballad carrying the confession that ‘I think I’m tired’, are examples of that.” On the fifth, ‘Red Queen’, and the closing ‘Glasses’, Hwang Seon-eop wrote that “around the relation between the one who judges, the one who is judged and the one who watches it, the first offsets the weight of the subject through a retro-flavoured rhythmic sound and the second through the contrast between the indifference and the cynicism the vocal gives”.

Numbers

Idology placed the record joint fourth in “결산 2015 : ② 올해의 음반”, its album-of-the-year list, on 7 January 2016. Billboard placed it sixth among the ten of “The 10 Best K-Pop Albums of 2015” on 31 December 2015, and on 25 November 2019 ranked ‘Twenty-Three’ sixty-sixth in “The 100 Greatest K-Pop Songs of the 2010s”.

Afterwards

The fourth full-length album Palette followed a year and a half later, on 21 April 2017.