별일 없이 산다

The title track of the album that followed the "싸구려 커피" explosion, and Jang Kiha's answer to everyone waiting to see if he could do it twice. "별일 없이 산다" — "I'm living without incident" — turns a bland Korean small-talk phrase into a taunt. The arrangement is stomping and funkier than its predecessor: a fat fuzz-bass groove, handclaps, retro organ stabs, and the 얼굴들 backing chorus chanting behind him like a village of accomplices. Jang delivers it in the same deadpan near-monotone, but here the affect is aggressive rather than exhausted — the lyric is directed at someone who wants to hear that he's suffering, and the entire song is the pleasure of denying them that. "You're gonna be pretty disappointed," he says, over and over, sounding delighted. The music borrows openly from 1970s Korean group sound, which at the time read as a deliberate rejection of glossy production. It's a revenge song with no revenge in it, which is a very Korean form of victory. Play it when you've just heard news about someone you used to know, or on any morning when spite is the most reliable available fuel.