For artists Jaejun, Juntae, and Hyunyeop, the road to releasing When the sun goes down: Midnight, their debut album as the group In A Minute (IAM), is filled with years of hard-earned experience and a raw competitive edge.

Jaejun debuted in 2012 in C-CLOWN, and groupmates Juntae and Hyunyeop earned their break from the now-cancelled TV show Wild Idol, a 13-episode audition show that plucked seven winners with varying degrees of talent to form the group TAN (To All Nations). Although their respective groups eventually disbanded, their reintroduction to the world has been met with growing, glowing feedback as the group In A Minute.

Debuting in 2025 with the single Unboxing: What You Wanted, In A Minute showcased the blueprint of modern K-pop. “Unbox” prioritised thrusting harmonies over sleek acoustic production, while “What You Wanted” embraced upbeat gruffness, dirty guitar riffs and R&B-fuelled grooves. Its fun-loving, “you-should-hang-out-with-me” peacocking culminated in a crescendo that stopped just short of vocal fry. Together, the tracks formed a winning formula that earned approval before the world had even heard their voices.

While the group kept everyone in the know with their Monthly MINUTE series – which saw them releasing a new digital single every month – by the time their debut album When the sun goes down: Midnight arrived in September, the group had developed musical maturity, honing their trademark sound of unfiltered, evocative, raw writing backed by vocal versatility. Across the ten-song album, the trio puts every element that defined their previous music front and centre.

Built around the transition from sunset to deep night, When the sun goes down: Midnight explores the shifting emotions that accompany the passage of time. Its polished production creates vivid soundscapes, allowing the album’s twilight-hour narrative to unfold before the vocals even enter.

The album opens with the title track “When the sun goes down,” which serves as the titular opening credit sequence before launching into “Midnight,” a proper preface to the album's genuine themes of love and life after romance. In A Minute’s album feels like a diary entry meant only for the writer. Tracks “Painful” and the album’s finale “In_Complete” capture the desperate, love-starved gravity of 90s R&B.

The album finds its groove on “Inner Peace,” a song about the all-too-familiar feeling of reflecting on a former relationship, accepting the breakup and attempting to return to life as you knew it. Over the upbeat tempo, Jaejun sings: “We were so young/So it was hard for us to accept the breakup/We went from understanding to misunderstanding/I guess we'll never cross paths again.”

While the album maintains its sunset theme at a steady pace, the song “Pause” speaks to the downward moments of a relationship that make life and love feel overwhelming and uncontrollable, bringing a sudden shift in tone. Throughout the album, production, lyrics, and harmony help each track become a vivid audio picture; “Pause” is a relative lowlight, with IAM borrowing liberally from early 2000s pop acts, while its far-too-cheerful production feels transitional and abandons the album's theme.

Despite that minor misstep, the group finds its footing again with Hyunyeop’s solo track “Blah Blah” – the first of a three-part series showcasing each artist's talents as a solo vocalist. Juntae follows with “Ordinary Day,” and Jaejun follows with “Day&Night,” featuring artist AIDEN. Each track provides an honest journey into their psyche as performers, from Jaejun’s hip-hop-adjacent influences to Juntae's appreciation for softer tones and subdued instrumentation.

The album’s penultimate track “1AM” serves as a play on their abbreviated name, speaking to the inevitability of the sunrise and how they can only think of their former relationships under the night sky. The album concludes with “In_Complete,” a nostalgic track reflecting on their youth and their would-be future from a Ferris wheel, asking how far life will take them.

On paper, the project, which lasts under thirty minutes, feels like not enough time to capture the feeling of breaking up with a breakup or escaping the shadow of a relationship that once was. However, in execution, IAM provides more than enough material to make the album’s theme feel complete. As a self-composing group, IAM uses When the sun goes down: Midnight to further solidify their distinct musical identity. The album serves as both a fitting conclusion to their Monthly MINUTE series and a new beginning for the trio and the fans joining them on their journey.