REVIEW: lovpune Looks Back Before Moving Forward on “OPEN AiR”
WRITTEN BY ALICIA ZAMORA
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There’s a lot packed into five songs on lovpune’s OPEN AiR. Released October 3, the EP arrives as she gets ready to leave her twenties behind, and you can hear that sense of transition throughout the project. It’s not just a record about getting older, though. It feels more like lovpune taking everything that came with those years — the good, the messy, the heartbreaking and the fun — and turning it into something she can actually look back on.
One of the things that makes the EP interesting is how much the sound moves around. lovpune isn’t afraid to try something different from song to song, which keeps the project from feeling predictable. “AFTERLIFE,” the first single released earlier this year, brings in dark synths and trance-inspired production, giving the song this really atmospheric, almost euphoric feeling. It has a darker side to it, but it still feels like something you could get lost in. “OHMYGODDD” goes in a more chaotic direction. Produced with nicci.zip, it has that late-night, everything-is-happening-at-once energy that fits the song’s emotional release.
Then there’s “At Night (With Me),” which was originally released in September 2025 and feels right at home on this project. It adds to that late-night quality that runs through parts of OPEN AiR, while “Enough” brings the project into another emotional space. The songs don’t necessarily sound identical, and that’s part of what makes listening to the EP feel like moving through different moments rather than following one straight storyline.
The concept behind OPEN AiR could easily have become overly sentimental, but lovpune keeps it grounded. There’s a real bittersweetness to the project without it becoming a dramatic goodbye to being young. Her twenties are remembered for what they were: a time full of mistakes, heartbreak, lessons and some genuinely happy moments. Those things aren’t separated into “good” and “bad” memories. They all seem to belong to the same story.
That’s probably what I like most about the EP. It doesn’t try to make growing up sound glamorous, but it doesn’t make it sound tragic either. There’s something very familiar in the idea of looking back at a period of your life and thinking, I’m glad I experienced that, but I absolutely do not want to do it again. That feeling gives the record a sense of humor and honesty that keeps the heavier moments from taking over.
At only five songs, OPEN AiR moves quickly, but it still feels like a complete project. There’s enough variety in the production to keep things interesting, while the idea of entering a new chapter ties everything together. You get the feeling that lovpune wasn’t trying to make a perfect summary of her twenties. She was just trying to capture what they felt like from where she is now.
And maybe that’s the best way to listen to OPEN AiR. Not as a neat ending, but as a moment of looking around before moving on. lovpune is closing out one decade of her life, but she doesn’t sound like someone who has everything figured out yet. She sounds ready to see what happens next — and honestly, that uncertainty is what makes the EP feel alive.
