For the first half of their career, Red Velvet gave equal attention to both halves of their name: “Red” for eye-catching pop confidence, “velvet” for classy restraint. Titles of their past releases, The Red and Perfect Velvet, were prosaically clear about which side the music played for, but since the explicit blend of the two on 2018’s The Perfect Red Velvet, the genre-bending girl group have merged their dueling components with increasing abandon. On their latest mini-album, The ReVe Festival 2022 - Feel My Rhythm, released just a fortnight before the eerie glimmer of Japanese full-length Bloom, Red Velvet return with a verdant dance-pop sound. Clothed in Pre-Raphaelite finery in the era’s artwork and videos, the queens of bold summer hits deliberately make their comeback with a refined springtime landscape in tow.
Feel My Rhythm is colored in blooming detail: A promenade from purple and green to yellow and blue in the swooning “Rainbow Halo,” the tranquility of fluttering “petals” in “In My Dreams,” billowing “confetti” across the hook of “Feel My Rhythm.” Bold and stylish, “Feel My Rhythm” is one of Red Velvet’s finest title tracks. Reminiscent of the elegant darkness of their 2019 hit “Psycho,” “Feel My Rhythm” is based on a wistful sample of Bach’s “Air on the G String” layered with a clangorous EDM trap beat. But the song’s frisson isn’t based on the shallow spectacle of the two genres’ contrast. Instead, “Feel My Rhythm”’s contradictions serve to elevate the harmony, playing as smooth and lush as the similar pop concept on the Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” Irene’s blunt opening line—“We’re blowing up this fancy ball”—verbally protests while sonically agreeing, and Yeri’s spoken delivery of “Grab me in your motion/G-give me another direction” stutters in time with the detonating rhythm behind her. She sounds unharmonious but skillfully sidesteps discordance.
The sauntering “BAMBOLEO” plays at a five-pronged intersection of nations—its title likely derives from a Spanish-language song by a French band, its K-pop melody ornamented with Japanese city pop stylings, its hook declared romantically in English. But it primly avoids chaos, sounding as evenly dreamy as a Tokyo-tinged cut off of K-pop contemporary YUKIKA’s 2021 EP Timeabout. Only “Good, Bad, Ugly” feels underwhelming in the context of the mini, tepidly and unmemorably strolling through well-trod R&B. Similarly, “Beg for Me” declares itself sensually commanding but is fairly chaste in execution. The chanted invocation of “Dance for me, work for me, beg for me, die for me” and murmured request of “bring out your freak” are amusingly sterile—only Wendy and Joy’s rap glimmers with any real sultriness, delivered with a dark smirk and whispered haste. But the luxurious, balmy closer “In My Dreams” brings a more complex conclusion. Despite all the ornate bravado and glamor across Feel My Rhythm, the ballad centers on a surprisingly tender admission of rejection: “In my dreams, you love me back”.
In the video for “Feel My Rhythm,” the members of Red Velvet drape themselves in the visual beauty of Western classics—Seulgi seated in striking Stygian stylings, Joy raptly posed as John Everett Millais’s “Ophelia,” Irene arcing across the frame in a diaphanous recreation of Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s famous swing. But it’s the less conspicuous Bosch references that ring truest. “The Garden of Earthly Delights” isn’t as immediately Instagrammable as Monet’s lilies, but its phantasmagorical presence—the triptych’s surreal details strewn across a landscape of monstrous set pieces—feels like an appropriate metaphor for Red Velvet’s mythical stature in the modern landscape of K-pop. Despite stumbling on last year’s Queendom, Feel My Rhythm stirs awake from complacency and reinstates the group’s regality without compromising their principles. Resolutely elegant and vocal amid a flashy, Blackpink-influenced fourth generation of girl groups, Red Velvet shrug off trends and embrace their signature idiosyncrasy.
