ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 8/8/2006
Posts: 42,086
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If y’all folks haven’t noticed, Red Velvet are ****ing killing it. Elsewhere, you’ve got “Automatic” which is such subtle jazzy R&B sophistication that I’m about to break out the N’Dea Davenport debut and just call out from work & life just recalling it. But on “Ice Cream Cake” there’s a clipped precision absent from a lot of K-Pop. It’s maximalist electro-pop that’d make Skrillex’s eyebrows wag, Brill Building Girl Group cheek embedded so carefully it wouldn’t register if it weren’t for the “Cherry on top!” bit in the second verse’s beginning. Because this song, especially on that hook, it doesn’t try to seduce. At first the chorus seems a bizarre overcompensation until it leaves you in the goddamn dust. Red Velvet are laughing at you within their rocket; clad in smooth homerun shades, they cackle as you get tossed aside by the air pressure of their momentum. Sheesh.
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Some songs are beautiful cinnamon rolls, where the craftsmanship works to elevate a form to its most pure and Platonic. Then there are ice cream cake songs, songs that deliberately **** up form and declare that to be the fun part. There’s piped frosting, but it snaps when you cut it and tastes like creamy freezer burn, and that’s why you like it. “I Got a Boy” is an ice cream cake song, and so is f(x)’s entire art-bait thing, and so is this “Ice Cream Cake,” made in the shape of a Venn diagram centre between the two. Similar to Jessica, my initial reaction to all of these songs is suspicion, even deliberate contrariness — just because it’s in two different keys for no reason doesn’t mean it’s good! But an ice cream cake isn’t only made to persuade you that it’s good; it’s meant to taste good, too. At this many listens deep, I can’t imagine this not being in two different keys, and even the “Hollaback Girl” stomps don’t annoy me. There’s a Platonic version of an ice cream cake somewhere, too.
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“Ice Cream Cake” is enough of a perfect blend of “I Got a Boy” multiplicity and “Airplane” gliding escapism that I figured it must be another DSign production, like “Happiness”. In fact, it’s new collective Trinity, whose previous highlight has been a song by an Australian X Factor winner. Neat! That’s not the only surprise though, the most glorious one being the not-quite-jump-cut from the second chorus into Irene’s rapping over music box twinkles, and full credit to everyone involved because I can’t get enough of that bit. That’s for both the sudden intimate beauty of it, and how well the song is structured around it. There’s a hint of the same at the very start before going off to the rocket blast chorus, and it re-emerges just when the second chorus uncoils to the point where it seems like it must collapse. The sensation is of threads that have been there all along being pulled together perfectly.
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http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=16011
The Ice Cream Cake praise is too much. Wouldn't be surprised if it makes western best of the year lists 
The I Got a Boy/Airplane/Hollaback Girl comparisons 
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above any other K-pop song
