Resurrection, Rebirth, and the Snake: All This and More in CRAVITY’s 8th EP, ReDeFINE
Starship Entertainment’s CRAVITY returns sharp with ReDeFINE, a metaphysical, alchemical, holy journey through resurrection and rebirth. Donning seminarian cassocks, the nine members of CRAVITY transform as young priests reborn again and again in a ouroboric loop. The album, a synth-pop treasure, keeps true to CRAVITY’s trademark anthemic choruses, rhythmic twists, and swirling bridges, with an edgier, darker spin on their sound.
And this album feels even more poignant, with the members admitting in recent interviews that it represents both a personification of their fears and a representation of their hopes to renew their contracts as they approach their seventh year in the industry. ReDeFINE is in this way the group’s own prayer to continue to eternity. Featuring the members’ self-produced work on tracks like “Love Me Like You Do” and “Spring, with You,” ReDeFINE is both CRAVITY’s first post-rebrand venture and what almost feels like their last open-ended question, as they mark their sixth anniversary, a comeback without a clear answer to the future. It’s in this beginning and ending that they take their gambit: “Eyes on it. I want it. I’m wide awake.”
Admittedly, I’m a huge fan of CRAVITY, a LUVITY if there ever was one. And yet, regardless of my own personal biases, I can’t help but feel that there is something deeply admirable about a group choosing to reinvent itself year over year for six years and counting, elevating their performance structures, their sound, and artistry; each cycle a risk and a bid to keep going. And I find it equally provocative to make that everflowing cycle of reinvention your concept in and of itself, reworking one’s own struggles to find your niche into the niche. Last year, CRAVITY’s second full album Dare to Crave set the group on a new path as a self-proclaimed rebrand, and ReDeFINE makes it clear: the act of reinvention is the brand.
Conceptually, redefinition opens the group up to endless options, the novelty of their performance the crux of the identity. ReDeFINE (if you couldn’t tell by the name) leans into the reinvention, revolving the narrative of the comeback around the ouroborous, the ancient iconography of the snake eating its own tail in a neverending cycle of death and rebirth.
TRACKLIST
“Hello-Goodbye”
“AWAKE”
“FEVER”
“Adore”
“Love Me Like You Do”
“Spring, with You”
“AWAKE”
Title track “AWAKE” features vivid production, storytelling, and choreographic settings that embrace the concept: high-liturgy, holy water and flame, elaborate illustrated set-pieces, Caravaggiesque drama. Yet, at the same time, it’s not clichéd nor is it jarring. “AWAKE” still offers a boyish charm to it: the members eat together, run together, pray together in the height of youth, before beginning it all over again, the church crumbling around them.
Seminarians on the cusp of priesthood, CRAVITY battles with light and dark, holy and unholy, death and resurrection again and again. A K-Pop music video in the vein of Conclave or Constantine. Acolyte Minhee processes incense down the aisle, Seongmin anoints himself, and, well, Hyeongjun dies as the church crumbles down around him (and Minhee). The storytelling is visceral, if a bit jam-packed in only three minutes. The symbolism offers an artistic representation of CRAVITY’s own legitimate fears, they reveal in one interview. Across it all is the ouroborous snake, slithering across the stage, striking at will, until the final concluding lyrics, circling in a rosary: “I can go for eternity.” Spins, slides, floor work, hands serpentine lashing out, dramatic tableaus, the choreography of “AWAKE” is not for the faint of heart.
The song, a dark anthemic synth-pop track, switches the tempo up constantly, never breaking stride. It’s breakneck but delicious, somehow punching a bridge into two-and-a-half minutes, with rap lines written by members Serim and Allen, and matching the crazy drama of its video counterpart. It ends as quickly as it begins, with a tongue-in-cheek brevity that, I suppose, is characteristic to its own concept.
B-SIDES
If “AWAKE” is the sprint, the five accompanying tracks behind ReDeFine flesh out the redefinition with CRAVITY’s softened (and in some cases, sultrier) edges.
“Hello-Goodbye” offers a brighter framing to the concept, opening the EP with a bright, laid-back pop track, offering percussive synths and lilting piano chords. It’s quintessential CRAVITY: sweet vocal ad-libs, a sprinkling of rapped interjections, a tempo swap on the bridge, an isolated high-note. Plain and simple, it’s great.
What makes “FEVER” a treat is obvious: the bass line is mission-critical levels of catchy, and it pairs well with oscillating vocal octaves that are either airy and high, or deep and suspense-ridden. The instrumentals cut out at opportune moments, underscoring a verse, a chorus, or the punchline, “Don’t let me go,” in what is by far the funkiest track on ReDeFINE. This song really needs choreography.
With lyrics by Jungmo, Serim, and Allen, “Adore” sinks its fangs in, all sultry idolatry and pumping resonance. It’s sexy (percussive gasps interlacing the bridge and all) and hypnotic, with yet another mind-grabbing bass line. From its heavily distorted intro to glitching vocal effects, the song does not let up. Every time you think there’s a break in the progression, the song startles you into something else: a rap, a chorus, a Woobin high-note. “Adore” is at one hundred percent full-time: the vocals never back off and the instrumentals never ease up. It’s one of my favorite tracks on the album, embracing the twisted nature of complete and total adoration: “Look me in the eyes, you a pretty little thing.”
My true favorite track on the album (I’ll forever be partial to nostalgic, anthemic pop-rock), “Love Me Like You Do,” is a breath of fresh, bright, coming-of-age air after ReDeFINE’s grittier tracks. It’s reflective and soaring, opening with its own proverb: “I know you could die for me. But, baby, would you live for me?” The first track on a CRAVITY album ever produced by member Taeyoung, and also featuring lyrics by Taeyoung, Serim, Allen, and Wonjin, “Love Me Like You Do” offers a cinematic spin on ReDeFINE, with its call-and-response phrases and atmospheric vocal effects. The outro of the song, a sudden low-tempo turn after the upbeat, fast-paced rock line, breaks the track away from any clichés and cements it firmly as my favorite, constantly switching it up, as is par for the course each track for an album with a name like ReDeFINE.
The final track, fan song “Spring, with You” balances sonnets with a shimmering, EDM-tinted instrumental in commemoration of six years of CRAVITY. Produced by members Wonjin and Allen, with lyric credits to match, “Spring, with You” is a tearjerking closer to the self-proclaimed unclosing album (and, true to concept, it's also the opener, pre-released prior to the album on the group’s April 14 anniversary).
The lyrics reflect this cycle, winter and spring, death and rebirth, the season of life:
“I'll be standing at the beginning of this season. Come find me again, because my spring is you [...] Even if you wither, even if you dry up. Because my spring is you.”
In this way, “Spring, with You” offers its poetic spin on an album that is nothing if not devotion, the softest form of redefinition, committing oneself over and over again. And the songwriting has its own nostalgia, featuring a winding synth-line with an almost-2016-esque nostalgic tone. “Spring, with You” offers a quiet rainfall of melodies that build and build into a drop that I can describe in no other way but lovely.
Start to finish (if that can be said about an album designed without those markers), ReDeFINE is excellence. Each song reinterprets its own refined concept, with the act of doing so then deepening its own complexity. The result is clever and cohesive in its conceptual production. Toying with devotion, idolatry, adoration, rebirth, temptation, brotherhood, perseverance, it all lays the cornerstone of a group approaching the end of one era, the beginning of another.
And, delightfully, all this conceptual work pairs with music that is first and foremost great, straying away from cliches, and always seeking to reinterpret and refresh the melodies it plays with in its production, true to its name. It switches tempos, octaves, pacing, tones, seasons, and it is in these surprises (and its cohesive theming) that it finds its consistency. ReDeFINE is everything one could want from 18-minutes of music, a six-track gem for K-Pop.