Jay Park’s LNGSHOT made their debut early in the year and have steadily released material since, but are finally embarking on their first official comeback today. Title track Bananas arrives on the heels of last month’s pre-release Masterpiece, which… didn’t exactly live up to its namesake. Bananas is more aptly-titled, yet no less frustrating.

We’ve had a really strong run of boy group releases in K-pop over the past month or two, so I guess we need a song like Bananas to interrupt the party and remind us of some of the industry’s more regrettable trends. I find LNGSHOT interesting because they boast genuinely strong vocals, but their overall sound is not for me. This is largely thanks to Jay Park’s musical sensibilities. It’s clear that he wants to fashion this group as a musical offshoot of his own sound — and I’m not talking about the great heights of Joah or So Good or even Mommae.

Bananas is more concerned with looking and sounding cool than deploying an addictive set of melodies or coherent throughline. There’s plenty of vibe here — almost too much vibe, one might say. The percussion drags along, often slowed to a crawl and drained of color. The rap verses follow the exact same phrasing we’ve heard from every other song of this nature and the melodies get caught up in that repetitive structure as well. The production is more fitful and mercurial, occasionally bringing in cool synth touches. But without much of a song to attach itself to, Bananas feels like a series of ideas (some of them promising) that never get off the ground.

Grade: C-