This 2nd EP musters up a delicate niche in NewJeans' continuous stream of success, carefully tiptoeing within UK garage production. Albeit consistent, the briefness and the lack of momentum keep a lot of this EP’s ideas from landing more strongly.
The success that NewJeans have garnered for the past year led them into the spotlight, where true to their name, the group has essentially implemented some refreshing sonic and visual palettes for the world to see. The Y2K revivalism aesthetic and some neat integration of 2000s style R&B and Pop certainly made them that up-and-coming K-pop girl group to look forward to in the future. While their EP had some issues in terms of production and some of the lyric writing, NewJeans is certainly capable of landing this brand of 2000s retro nostalgia in their music.
Now nearly a year later after said debut EP - alongside one-off singles and brand collaborations - their 2nd EP, ‘Get Up’, continues to manifest what NewJeans have started upon in their debut EP with all the cooler bombast now added further into other splashes of color and other 2000’s related references (the Powerpuff Girls cover art especially puts that nostalgia front and center). It also expands on their sonic endeavors as well, with the focus on this EP leaning more on UK Garage and adjacent genres alongside it. The opening track ‘New Jeans’ immediately encapsulates the fresh soundscape this group dips themselves into with all the stumpy beat alongside the flashy pop vocalizations from the members. They continue to stay true to this brand of Jersey Club production. From ‘Super Shy’ comes along with hushed singing that reflects the quaint lovestruck moment of the track as the pumping beat only comes through on the chorus, ‘Cool With You’ and its cooing restraint is firmly rested in locked house groove, and so does ‘ETA’ with the pounding bounce that keeps up with the quicker melodic tempo that fits well along the girlish camaraderie of the song.
These moments, while they do stick out in the wave of Jersey Club, UK Garage, and Drum and Bass dance-pop tracks that have been boiling since the last few years, the group doesn’t exactly expand a lot more ground as these tracks total together into 12 minutes, the same time length as their debut EP. This also means that it leaves the EP feeling exhausted really quickly, where the melodies are so fleeting that there could’ve been a bit more time to let these tracks flesh out into more that when the EP ends, it ends up more of a fast fashion trend that may be switched around when the current UK Garage trend starts to lose traction. That’s not just the issue either, given how the melodies run too fast, there are some production or melodic quibbles that get quite distracting. The horn line on ‘ETA’ ends up as a distraction against the well-produced beat thanks to how it sounds stagnant and flat to work and could’ve easily been removed in the song, and the language switch-ups on ‘Cool With You’ are a bit too clunky as the melodies start to slide off the rhythm just a tad bit. And then there is ‘ASAP’, a cliffhanger of a closer where after what is supposed to be a transitional interlude, this track with its repetitive chorus lines and unimpressive verses about opening the possibility of meeting with this person of interest just ends up being a misshapen interlude rather than a closer.
While it is a consistent EP throughout and it doesn’t have the messy production and lyrical blemishes of their debut EP, this felt like a breeze that has a track or two that will stick given the quicker tempo speeding through memory lane. It is quite a shame that there isn’t a lot more here to allow the structure to be just as well-paced and the melodies to be a little sharper, because the jersey club grooves are well-handled here and the members have nice vocalizations that work well when the melodies give them room to shine. The EP may have a bigger swatch of colors this time around, but it didn’t utilize a lot more of it to make the EP a lot more impactful.
Favorite Tracks: ‘New Jeans’, ‘Super Shy’, ‘Cool With You’
Least Favorite Track: ‘ASAP’