Song Review: ARTMS – Icarus

After a burst of pre-releases last year leading to their first album, ARTMS have been relatively quiet. They released digital single Burn in early April, which also appears on their new Club Icarus. Now, we have that album’s title track to officially kick off promotions. So far, I’ve appreciated ARTMS’s artistic, genre-blending approach but haven’t quite found the right song to hook me. Icarus shares similar frustrations. It’s ambitious in some ways, yet lacks several of the core characteristics I look for in a great, fully fleshed out track.

One thing I can confidently say is that ARTMS have not played things safe. Icarus lends itself to visual presentation, which is key to K-pop, but doesn’t offer the kind of friendly song structure and massive payoffs many listeners might expect. This prickly nature is to its credit, yet keeps me from fully embracing the track as a highlight I’d rush back to on a regular basis. During my first listen of Icarus‘s first verse, I was almost convinced ARTMS were about to deliver “song of the year” material. The ornate production, slowly building from piano to strings to a lush orchestral sound, promised something very exciting to come.

Icarus blossoms from here, but the chorus isn’t quite working for me. Rather than a knockout melody, the song swerves into a softer refrain of extended notes. While very pretty, this structure hijacks the energy and keeps Icarus stuck in one gear when it could blossom into something quite stunning. This sort of happens as additional chants join the fray toward the end, but even these touches feel a bit disparate. Icarus is still a nice piece of performance art. It just could have been absolutely legendary with a few key ingredients added.

Grade: B-