'The ReVe Festival' Day 2

The record

‘The ReVe Festival’ Day 2 is the mini album Red Velvet released on 20 August 2019, six tracks led by ‘음파음파 (Umpah Umpah)’. It is the second chapter of the series opened two months earlier by ‘The ReVe Festival’ Day 1.

The album introduction on Bugs describes the title track as an up-tempo dance track on a disco house rhythm, whose lyric takes swimming as its motif and has the singer teaching someone splashing about in her charm how to breathe. The same text presents the other five as a pop dance song, ‘카풀 (Carpool)’; a retro mid-tempo R&B pop track with doo-wop backing, ‘Love Is The Way’; a pop dance song about a summer music festival, ‘Jumpin’’; an R&B pop song set on a midsummer night, ‘Ladies Night’; and an R&B ballad written and composed by SUMIN, ‘눈 맞추고, 손 맞대고 (Eyes Locked, Hands Locked)’.

Reviews

IZM’s Kim Do-heon began with the title track. He wrote that “‘Umpah Umpah’ is a good song, and needs no explaining alongside it”, and that “the melodic line that opens up right after a short introduction is clear, and the disco rhythm cast from a rippling guitar and bass recalls Girls’ Generation’s ‘Holiday’”. The same piece added that “the shape of it is distinct from beginning to end, and it keeps an organic flow with nothing overdone, which is also good”.

The way he read the whole record is as a retro one. After writing “note how the title song’s retro leaning carries through the flow of the whole album”, he traced the record back to the doo-wop of girl groups of the 1950s and 60s and to 1990s R&B. What he welcomed most was the singing: “It is also good to see, after some time, an approach like ‘Carpool’ and ‘Ladies Night’ that brings out the members’ own timbres as fully as possible and draws a fine chorus from them.”

On 1 August 2024, for the group’s tenth anniversary, NME published a piece by Tássia Assis going through all 127 songs Red Velvet had released, one entry at a time. Of the title track she wrote: “Once again, Red Velvet pulled off a line that would sound awfully silly in anyone else’s hands. ‘Umpah umpah, umpah umpah’ is the compass of this single, dictating the speed and direction in which the members invite you to ‘feel the rhythm’.”

Among the tracks

The song IZM calls the core of the record is ‘Ladies Night’. He wrote that it “takes a funk idea from Kool & The Gang’s song of the same name and folds it into a melodic line close to Michael Jackson’s ‘Rock with you’ and a lively brass section, to deliver a good-humoured ladies’ night”. Chu Dae-gwan of the writing team Monotree took part in composing it. NME leads with the same track, writing that it “matches city pop inspirations and dreamy vocals” and that the group “handle ‘Ladies Night’ with skill, enclosing us with the same lightweight fun of partying with your besties”.

Of the closing ‘눈 맞추고, 손 맞대고 (Eyes Locked, Hands Locked)’ IZM wrote that “SUMIN’s ‘Eyes Locked, Hands Locked’ is a fine ending too”, explaining that the strong genre colour of 1990s R&B and of its writer is tempered by how the parts are shared out. “Among them,” he added, “it is Joy’s and Wendy’s voices, leading the song, that catch the ear.” NME picks out the a cappella passage at its start and writes that the song is “a tad more uplifting than the usual end-of-album ballad”.

NME’s entry for ‘카풀 (Carpool)’ runs to a sentence: “You should never talk to strangers, except when the stranger is Seulgi.” ‘Love Is The Way’ is a retro mid-tempo R&B pop song, and the album introduction credits the male backing before the chorus, the saxophone rhythm and the doo-wop chorus with much of its appeal.

Afterwards

In December of the same year ‘The ReVe Festival’ Finale closed the series, carrying these six songs again with four new ones added.