Busan, South Korea’s Say Sue Me write songs about indecision, loneliness, and drinking—lots of drinking. The bar is the stage on the band’s second LP, Where We Were Together. Singer and lyricist Sumi Choi describes it as a crowded, noisy circus on “Let It Begin” and as a quiet, secret safe haven on “Funny and Cute.” When lead guitarist and principal songwriter Byungkyu Kim slurs the last couple syllables of a guitar phrase just a split second behind the beat, you can smell the place.
Don’t be shocked that this is such a prevalent theme on the follow-up to a 2014 debut entitled We’ve Sobered Up. For Choi, contradictions make for the best subject matter. “I’m full of things I hate/But I like you,” goes the chorus of one fuzz-covered highlight. “I just wanna leave here/But I wanna stay here,” she sings on the giddy lead single “Old Town.” Even the declaration of new beginnings that opens the album comes with an undercutting asterisk: “Let it all begin/Let it all begin again.”
Say Sue Me makes no effort to hide the bands that it takes after, each of whom is likely the subject of a 20th anniversary retrospective piece dropping somewhere soon and might or might not have been signed to Matador at some point. The band wears Painful and Terror Twilight on its sleeve, and Kim, in particular, seems to have internalized so much of the indie-rock canon that its approach to texture is second nature to him. His guitar warps, dilutes, and casts shadows over these songs, and his reverb placement reflects a well-versed ear.
Throughout this album, the band generally keeps within its sweet spot of familiar, wistful progressions complemented by Kim’s interior detailing. But that’s not to say it’s without brave moments. For starters, Choi sings just two of its eleven songs in her native Korean, even though she has said it makes her feel uncomfortably exposed and that she actually prefers English.
Halfway through the writing phase for this album, Say Sue Me drummer Kang Semin went into a coma after an accidental fall. The band eventually completed the album with a new drummer, but they were writing from a place of sadness. Four songs here address Semin’s absence, and two others also appeared on their Semin EP, released on Record Store Day 2017 to raise funds for him. “I’m afraid of making new memories without you,” Choi sings on “Funny and Cute,” offering to save his seat at the aforementioned bar. “I’m so tired and can’t dry my eyes.”
This makes Where We Were Together’s last impression sound that much stronger. King-size closer “Coming to an End,” written with Semin before his accident, is the band’s best work to date. Kim’s guitar starts as a flickering candle and erupts halfway through into a bonfire outro, a screaming, seizing solo that makes a single half-step down his guitar neck feel like a freefall into the Grand Canyon. It’s a convincing demolition of the argument that Say Sue Me can’t be anything other than gentle, and a persuasive case that they should be other things more often.
