Unfinished Business by Junbeom Kim

With elegance and tenderness, jazz guitarist Junbeom Kim delivers a story of personal growth on the single “Unfinished Business.” Taking influence from jazz legends like Grant Green as well as contemporaries like Kurt Rosenwinkle and Jonathan Keisberg, Junbeom Kim’s style is classic and smooth with a modern tone.

The song starts out with a warm and calm greeting, but it has a slight tension that piques curiosity. The lyric-less vocals daintily enter. Her vocal tone is clean, airy, and open, unlike the typical nasal, closed-mouthed modern jazz singer, which is pleasant and inviting to listen to. Her scat locks in with the piano at times, creating wonderful unity, and she also delivers the main melodies with great eloquence supported by Kim’s counterpoint guitar.

About two minutes in, the song takes a dim turn, representing the tribulations that recur during life. Kim explains that “‘Unfinished Business’ is about one’s problems. All human beings have their personal problems in their lives, like human-relation problem, economy issues, personal complex, etc.; most of which are repeated during his or her life.” During this section, The band quiets down, creating slight drama, and the bass has some downward bends to pull our emotions down. The band is great at not over-playing, perfectly timing moments of interest. They are also skilled at giving ebb and flow to shift focus around each other.

The last third of the song is busier, and has an almost punchy rock lead guitar tone. Unlike the previous tribulation section, there is somehow more comfortability here. This reflects how as we mature, we do not solve all of our problems, but rather have learned to accept our shortcomings and live with our unsolved problems - our “Unfinished Business.”

Appropriately, the song has a fade-out ending, leaving us with an unfinished feeling.