Song Review:: XODIAC: SOME DAY- OUR DAYS

• Release date: 2024 September 25

• Album tracklist: OUR DAYS, FOREVER YOUNG, BETTER WITH YOU, LEAN ON ME, MAGIC

• Album runtime: 16 minutes

Those are so many capital letters and I really feel like I'm shouting at you all. I'd like to apologize for that. Also, that runtime means that the average song length is a bit over three minutes, which is excellent.

I'm pretty sure XODIAC is a boy group, and for some reason, I have green associated with them. It's not NCT green; it's more of a dark lime. I get the feeling that this is more of a xikers sounding group than a TWS sounding group, and one of those two I generally like a lot better than the others, but we'll see.

I was very wrong. 

So there's something very interesting happening in otherwise pretty standard instrumentals. Normally, I would expect for the rapping sections to have that extra burst of energy by adding more instrumental tracks, though there are exceptions to this as is evident by the fact that I just listened to Beautiful Ghost, by NU'EST. Our Days does the opposite. It strips out some of the instrumentals, leaving some of the rapping with barely a beat and adds in industrial sounding grind to others, which makes the rapping starker in an otherwise comforting song. I wouldn't have expected metal to show up in a song like this. To clarify, not metal as in the genre, metal as in the sound of actual metal with the traditional DJ-on-a-track noise. Bear with me a moment. At one of Seventeen's concerts, DK is vibing to one of the songs until SCoups shows up and makes him start head-banging, which delights DK. He then returns the favor and makes SCoups question all of his life choices up until that point from the aggression. That's what the tone shift in the instrumentals remind me of. And then we go back to our hug of a song like nothing happened. Plus there's a very electric guitar (maybe? I think it's a guitar? It's an electric something) that announces its presence towards the end and then we never hear from it again. 

I wouldn't call this a high song necessarily, but I do think they spend enough time up in that range that if others were to describe this song as in a high key, I wouldn't be surprised. I love the vocalizations. I know I just commented on the highness of the song, but I don't count vocalizations in the general conversation of pitch, because they're meant to show off anyway. They really sound a lot like TWS (or NCT Wish), now that I'm thinking about it. But as much as I like both of those groups and as much as I like the sound of this song and think it's similar, XODIAC hasn't wowed me like those two groups. Maybe a b-side will give me some vocal oomph that just makes my brain happy. I like what I hear so far. But there's nothing specific about their voices that I just love. I'll probably find something like that at some point, though. There is full confidence on my end that I will. Also, I really like the lyrics even if I had to put them through a translator so that's sketchy as best.

This feels like a slice of life music video, and I'm 100% about them. There doesn't seem to be much of a plot, but slice of life rarely does. The point isn't plot. The point is the vibes, and the vibes here are on point.

Sorry. I really like the wording there and want to take a minute to enjoy that.

Anyway, the aural switch about two minutes in which is signified by the change of clothes, which I think is pretty cool. It takes them from cute to more swagger. It's not a lot of swagger, because one of them literally has a sweater hanging on his shoulders, but it is slightly more than the matching white shirts and jeans. Definitely more individualistic. I really liked the symmetry of the Wearing White set and the Blue Individual set pulling another up. 

As a side note, the entire group were proper adults at debut last year. Can we celebrate that?