minisode1 : Blue Hour

With the fanfare they inspire and their prolific outpouring of recorded material, you’d think TOMORROW X TOGETHER (styled as TXT and read as “Tomorrow by Together”) had been around a lot longer than a year. The group’s third EP is an uptempo mini-album co-written by members Soobin, Yeonjun, Beomgyu, Taehyun, and Huening Kai, meant to uplift listeners in the midst of the global COVID-19 crisis. With five tracks of glossy, ambitious yet uncluttered tunes, they’re successful, from the emo shoegaze of “Ghosting,” the Bruno Mars-esque retro-disco pop of “Blue Hour,” and the pandemic-inspired “We Lost the Summer” (co-written by English pop experimentalist Charli XCX) to the palm-muted pop-rock riffs of “Wishlist,” complete with handclaps and gang vocals—similar to the kind of songwriting that brought One Direction to such great heights in the last decade. The EP is comprehensive without sacrificing panache—a tough line to walk, let alone master, as TXT does here.

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