On April 1, TXT released their new EP “minisode 3: TOMORROW”. TXT’s Minisode albums have usually signalled big moments in their career: Minisode 1: Blue Hour featured a very successful lead single “Blue Hour” and was a surprisingly sparkly album. The group’s output before Minisode 1 was teenagery pop music, and yes that meant it was bright and shiny, but there was also a thread of angst running through both “Crown” and “9 and Three Quarters” that seems absent in Blue Hour. Minisode 1 was meant to be a goodbye to that old sound. Two years later, Minisode 2: Thursday’s Child ushered in a dark gothic pop era for TXT with “Good Boy Gone Bad” which was followed up a few months later with their similarly toned biggest hit to date “Sugar Rush Ride.”
So what are we getting from Minisode 3? Um…trap?
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Album opener “I’ll See You There Tomorrow” is full of what I will call trappified funk beats. It’s almost giving old school SHINee? At this point I started thinking that we might be getting a throwback to second gen Kpop album from TXT and I kind of love that idea? I don’t hate this song and you know the fans are going to resonate with a repeated line like “There’ll be no more sorrow, I’ll see you there tomorrow.”
Let me pause here and tell you that what I am always longing for from TXT is a return to the full on emo era of The Chaos Chapter (between Minisodes 1 and 2). I honestly think TXT looked like they were having so much fun performing “0x1=Lovesong (I Know I Love You)” and “Lo$er=Lover.” Minisode 3 was explicitly meant to bring together elements of past albums, perhaps giving one a sense of “Deja Vu” (see what I did there? No, ok keep reading, you’ll get it), so I was hoping for some emo.
Next up is a quick morse code interlude that spells out “TOMORROW” - clever! And transitions us right into comeback single “Deja Vu,” (now you get it) where again the trap beats are strong. I’m actually a little surprised because I thought Kpop was moving away from such heavy trap sounds - this trap/electronic sound might be new for TXT but I’m not sure this giving us anything special. Even the remix of “Deja Vu” tacked on at the end of the album is IMO better than the single version. The band orchestration in the remix sounds more fresh and TXT than the trap arrangement in the official version.
Speaking of deja vu, let me tell you a little bit about TXT - they were second boy group from Big Hit Entertainment, debuting in 2019, six years after the other Big Hit boy band BTS (ever heard of them?). So TXT had a really big act to follow, but they were also kind of guaranteed a certain level of success. TXT is made of 5 members - leader Soobin, eldest member Yeonjun, youngest member Huening Kai, visual Beomgyu and last but not least, Taehyun. TXT uniquely does not have assigned roles - they are also famously very tall. They’re good boys. Soobin had a very famous and successful stint as a host on Music Bank, and Yeonjun is very popular for his magnetic stage presence and commitment to the bit in dance challenge videos. These days they are a genuinely successful group. I never realized it before, but when you watch the music video for “Crown” (their debut) with the power of hindsight, you can really see the influence TXT has had on fifth gen boy groups like Boy Next Door, Riize, and TWS.
OK back to the album. The fourth song is our first hint of emo in the unfortunately forgettable “Miracle”. There’s something about the arrangement of a TXT song that is very distinctively TXT. I do think they have something special as a group, but this song isn’t it. Next up, “The Killa (I Belong to You)” is the most disappointing song on the album. Is every Kpop group going to be doing Afrobeats and amapiano now? Smarter may have worked for Le Sserafim, but this song sounds like cosplay for TXT, because I don’t think these good boys have the attitude to pull off this track. And then FINALLY we are back in the TXT sweet spot with the shouty Gen Z emo angst ballad “Quarter Life”. This is my favorite song on the album but it doesn’t quite reach the heights of The Chaos Chapter.
In the end I think TXT is emblematic of the larger fourth gen in kpop (see also Itzy, Enhypen, aespa) which I think has really struggled to find its identity in a landscape still dominated by monster third gen groups (BTS, Seventeen, Blackpink, Twice). In a way, this has made them Kpop chameleons, trying on a bunch of different concepts while trying to usually stay connected by the thread of emo influence. On paper I love it and sometimes it really works for them but this album was unfortunately a bit of a miss. 2/5 stars.
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