Made to dance while still a mess — GuGu's 'ALL I MESS'

In three lines

• GuGu's 'ALL I MESS' is up at NONOL LIVE.
• It's youth rock that runs without regret.
• It sits at the opposite end from 'Eyes of Sorrow', which we covered yesterday.

The other side of the same band

Yesterday we covered this band's 'Eyes of Sorrow' — a song that lowered the voice and spoke with the eyes first. Today is the other side.

	Eyes of Sorrow	ALL I MESS
Speed	Slow	Fast
Sound	Held down	Let go
What's left	What went unsaid	The breath after running

That one band sings both in the same session is this team's range. Knowing how to stay quiet, and knowing how to flip the room.

A song that doesn't tidy up

The title is 'ALL I MESS' — in Korean it's just the word for being a mess. Normally that's a state treated as something to be sorted out. This song doesn't sort it.

Instead of settling a messy heart, it makes it dance as is. Passing through rather than solving. Some feelings tangle more the harder you try to organise them, so there are times it's better to just move your body.

A title that just names the state plainly is rarer than you'd think. Most songs explain the state or try to comfort it. This one says the name and moves on: a mess, and that's all.

What it means to run at the playground

At NONOL LIVE the distance between stage and audience is short. On a quiet song that closeness carries the tremor in a voice; on a song like this it carries something else — the pressure of sound.

That there's almost no editing works differently here too. Breath running short, a beat arriving slightly early, the guitar getting a little rough. Things that polishing would have removed stay in, and they carry the temperature of that day instead.

'Youth rock' is similar. It sounds like a word about age, but it's closer to an attitude — not being embarrassed by an unsorted state. With that, any age is youth rock; without it, twenty isn't.

Two songs, a day apart

Played back to back the drop is steep and one tends to get buried. Left a day apart, both keep their own place. That's why we introduced them across two days.

Try this side today

If 'Eyes of Sorrow' left you sunk yesterday, stand on the other side with this one today. Volume a little up, standing if you can. It's a waste to hear sitting down.

Instead of straining to tidy an untidy day, try passing through one song in that state. Three minutes is enough to confirm you can still move while you're a mess.

A new song has arrived at the playground today.