2008 - South Korea
Indie Rock, Pop Rock, Soft Rock
When guitarist and vocalist Lee Suk-Won suddenly becomes aware of the awful reality that he has nothing special inside the flamboyant world he lives in, an idea comes to his mind. This idea takes the shape of the Most Ordinary Being, which will become the title of their fifth album (can also be translated by Most Ordinary Existence). Sister’s Barbershop (Onnine Ibalgwan in Korean) are among the indie rock pionneers of Korean music, their talent culminating here, with the composition of an album that sounds radiant and kind-hearted. Lee Suk-Won’s voice never takes the lead over the instrumentation, and vice versa, the whole album moving inside a superb harmony where trumpets and guitars occasionaly appear to add colourful layers of light to the songs. But if the tone might indicate light themes in the lyrics, Most Ordinary Being is about an existential crisis and how the narrator tries to deal with it.
Because even if the lyrics, most of the time, reveals a profoundly pessimistic vision of the feeling of banality, the beautiful softness emanating from the singer’s voice and from the composition of the other band members Lee Neung-Ryong and Jeon Dae-Jeong glorifies banality til it glows. The album’s trajectory tells the story of a man just coming out of a break-up who, because no one makes him feel special anymore, locks himself up in his anger and sadness. His ordinariness is the unexpected truth he mentions in a song and this discovery turns his existence into something newly frail and flimsy. His body and mind isn’t something worth fighting for anymore, he wanders the street just like anybody else wanders the streets. He has no name, he has no face, he isn’t an individual being, he’s lost. The first eight songs off the album all points towards that direction, each one of them lingering on anxious thoughts, the fear of disappearing into a mass, the fear of becoming someone you hate, the fear of waking up.
However, the end of the album leaves us hoping this Most Ordinary Being will find in himself something giving him a new breath of life, getting back on the road, walking to the sound of a trumpet and a piano engulfing the delicate tone of his voice. The penultimate song I Am is the most simple way of affirming your existence to yourself and others, showing us that the narrator starts to understand his singularity again, not living through everybody else’s eyes any longer. There is so much delicateness in this album that every song becomes riveting. And the last song, Gently Gently, closes the narration with a breeze, a real one, where the singer finds his peace. Gently gently he goes away. On the cover of Most Ordinary Being, you can see the shadow of a nameless bird, the only presence on the otherwise entirely white cover. This bird’s frame
is blurry, but his movement seems vivace, just like the narrator who attempts to find his right shape in a world refusing to give him a single clue. And all this in a satin atmosphere.
Because even if the lyrics, most of the time, reveals a profoundly pessimistic vision of the feeling of banality, the beautiful softness emanating from the singer’s voice and from the composition of the other band members Lee Neung-Ryong and Jeon Dae-Jeong glorifies banality til it glows. The album’s trajectory tells the story of a man just coming out of a break-up who, because no one makes him feel special anymore, locks himself up in his anger and sadness. His ordinariness is the unexpected truth he mentions in a song and this discovery turns his existence into something newly frail and flimsy. His body and mind isn’t something worth fighting for anymore, he wanders the street just like anybody else wanders the streets. He has no name, he has no face, he isn’t an individual being, he’s lost. The first eight songs off the album all points towards that direction, each one of them lingering on anxious thoughts, the fear of disappearing into a mass, the fear of becoming someone you hate, the fear of waking up.
However, the end of the album leaves us hoping this Most Ordinary Being will find in himself something giving him a new breath of life, getting back on the road, walking to the sound of a trumpet and a piano engulfing the delicate tone of his voice. The penultimate song I Am is the most simple way of affirming your existence to yourself and others, showing us that the narrator starts to understand his singularity again, not living through everybody else’s eyes any longer. There is so much delicateness in this album that every song becomes riveting. And the last song, Gently Gently, closes the narration with a breeze, a real one, where the singer finds his peace. Gently gently he goes away. On the cover of Most Ordinary Being, you can see the shadow of a nameless bird, the only presence on the otherwise entirely white cover. This bird’s frame
is blurry, but his movement seems vivace, just like the narrator who attempts to find his right shape in a world refusing to give him a single clue. And all this in a satin atmosphere.