For Hwang Soyoon, SE SO NEON – the hugely successful indie band she formed in Seoul nine years ago – is like a pirate ship. Together, she and her crew, or bandmates, chart their way through whatever adventures they can find. In the past, that’s been making an almost immediate impact on Seoul’s indie scene with 2017 debut EP, ‘Summer Plumage’, touring the world, and for Soyoon alone, collaborating with artists including BTS’ RM, SEVENTEEN’s Hoshi and Woozi, legendary Korean singer parkjiyoon and more.
Her crew is also flexible and adaptable, members going ashore as others join her on board. Right now, after the departure of bassist Park Hyunjin earlier this year, Soyoon is sailing the ship alone. She’s not fazed by this. Steering the course of her pirate ship by herself has opened up a massive new adventure: moving to LA. “The huge thing is I tried to start in a different country,” she explains to NME from her new hometown. “Musician friends in Korea said to me, ‘Why did you do that? Why? How? How did you decide? This is huge’.”
Leaving Korea and heading to America’s west coast felt like something she had to do, a way to disrupt the ease that nearly a decade of acclaim and recognition in the indie scene at home has brought her.
“Even before I collabed with K-pop artists, I’ve done so many things in Korea [so] it’s pretty stable to stay there and do something there,” she reasons. “But I don’t know, I just follow my gut feeling and it said, ‘Just go somewhere’. I just wanted to change my circumstances and my life. I know I can stay in Korea and I can do more in Korea, but I just want to see more sky, see more nature. It’s almost two years [since] I started [going] back and forth here between LA and Korea, and finally I sold my place in Korea and tried to find my home. I carry this one backpack [lifts a black backpack up to the camera] and go anywhere.”
Now settled in LA, Soyoon – and, by extension, SE SO NEON – are moving forward on another new adventure with the band’s debut full-length album, ‘<Now>’. The singer and guitarist tells NME how the record served as a new “life project” for her, working through anxiety and uncertainty to make it, and the messages of freedom across the record.
Before you moved, you were feeling anxiety and uncertainty about whether you would continue in music. Where were those feelings coming from?
“Before I started work on this album, I was doubting myself – ‘Soyoon, do you think people still need your story? SE SO NEON is everything about life experience and my perspective, and what I feel from this world. Nowadays, I feel my perspective and my feelings don’t make sense in this world.’ I started doubting myself and it made me a little depressed. Music and my relationship [to it] was really good and I literally never stopped making music, but that was the first time I pushed my brakes and thought, ‘I think I need some different perspective, because I don’t want to stop this concern or dilemma.’
“So right after I released my solo album [‘Episode1: Love’], I visited New York. When I worked on my solo album, I worked with my friend who lived in New York and I learned how important it is to enjoy the process. So, I thought, ‘I just need any different space where I can breathe more.’ So I went to New York and met this friend and recorded all the demos for my new album. It was so happy. I just [worked like] crazy on this record and I literally spent over 10 hours every single day making these demos and ate only sour gummies. I don’t really like sweets, but every time I eat a sour gummy, it makes my brain wake up.
“So I was eating Sour Patch Kids for 10 hours and almost finished my demos in New York. I flew back to Korea and then I randomly went to LA again. Everything is so intuitive – I was just like, ‘OK, I want to finish my album in LA’ and it was good timing because I met this management company and they wanted to manage me, so I just decided to move here. At the time, me and Hyunjin talked about our new format together and it was all so natural.”
How has your relationship with these songs changed since you finished the album?
“Every time I’m making an album, it’s not about music – it’s more about my life project. So, I told you I had a dilemma and concern about my life and being a musician. I realised every song I made is from my past. Like, I miss something, or my nostalgia, or my childhood story, or something really cynical about the city – it’s all about the past. But I realised, ‘Soyoon, if you want to make a timeless album and not try to follow trends or the moment, you have to live now. You have to feel present more.’ I’ve never tried to do that before, so I decided, ‘OK, I have to live now’. At the time, I didn’t know how to do that. So it means I started my life project to live my present.
“I made this track, ‘Twit Winter’, like, if I’m trying to live now, I have to understand my past and future. So I was thinking about, ‘What if I make a song for my future and also my past so then I can stand in the present?’ ‘Twit Winter’ is the first key of this album and it’s like a time capsule. I’m excited to sing it after 30, 40 years when I’m old and a little cutie granny. I really want to sing this song and connect with that Soyoon and right now’s Soyoon. Every song’s meaning is about my present now.”
There are some songs on the album that listeners will have heard before – 2021’s ‘Jayu’ and 2023’s ‘Kidd’. How do they connect to the journey of this album and why did it make sense to put them on this album?
“So basically, I only have two EPs and then I released a bunch of singles. ‘Jayu’ and ‘Kidd’ are both part of the ‘<Now>’ universe. They came out earlier, but they were already asking the same question. ‘Jayu’ is right before I decided to make this album and it was about my [decision] – ‘I’m gonna live in my freedom’. So I really needed this power in this album – not music-wise. Honestly, it’s more about energy and that power in that track. And ‘Kidd’… those two tracks are more about hope, so ‘Kidd’ is all about hope. I [started writing] this album when I was 19, 20, so it’s pretty old. ‘Kidd’ is a really, really timeless track for me. I wrote it eight years ago and it still really makes sense [in terms of] meaning, energy, melody – everything.”
You said both songs ask the same question. What is that question?
“‘What do you want to feel from this life?’ It’s a different answer [for each song]. ‘Jayu’ said I want to feel more freedom, I want to feel like I’m not stuck in this small world. And ‘Kidd’’s answer is that even though the world is so brutal, I want to feel hope.”
Tell me the story behind ‘Secret Police’.
“This is my first time talking about ‘Secret Police’, but it’s one of my favourite songs, too. It’s kind of a funny story, and it’s real. Whenever I’m tempted to fall into despair or anxiety, or I get scared about everything, there’s a kind of secret police in my mind. They exist in my mind, and they show up to kidnap the negative things. I always appreciate my secret police. I literally finished my lyrics in the bathroom because that day I felt so depressed and I had to take a shower. When I was taking a shower, I was like, ‘Oh, secret police, yeah I know him’ and I had to finish the lyrics while naked. But that’s why the second half is just instruments and like sirens and a psychedelic thing. I can literally play it in my head – they’re coming and they’re going and they have the orange lights and everything.”
‘O’ is a beautiful song to end the album on. How did that wrap up the record for you?
“So, I told you the process was my life challenge, my life project and ‘O’ is kind of like, ‘Oh, I finished this, finally I figured out what it is’. So it’s a kind of mediation about my unconscious [decision] to feel all the fear and feel happiness, warmth and everything. That song has the only fully English lyrics on this album. I don’t usually write English lyrics without using a translator. But [this time, I thought,] ‘Yeah, English is not my mother language, but I also feel language doesn’t matter’. Even if my grammar sucks, I tried to put all my feeling into English lyrics. Every time I try to write Korean lyrics, because I’m really good at the language, I always try to control myself and want to make it perfect. But this song is about my unconscious [mind], so I tried to make it messier and just spit it out.
“There’s a part where I think I sang: ‘I fight alone and nobody can help this.’ I have to fight myself – like figure it out myself. I think I wrote: ‘Finally, I can stand by myself and feel all the warmness in my life’. Something like that. I was always drawing this circle when I was doing my project and since I decided to live in the now, past, present and future is all the same. So I was always drawing a circle and that’s why [it’s called] ‘O’ – the shape of my project.”
You’re going to be taking ‘<Now>’ out on tour next month. What’s your vision for the performance and set this time?
“Every time I’m doing a festival or headline show, I realised I don’t need to try to cover anything. Some artists need more art direction or more dynamic set lists, but I feel like my pro is just showing my energy on stage. So I’m trying to focus on how I can make myself more strong on the stage like Michael Jackson. It doesn’t mean I’m trying to be Michael Jackson! But now I know why people like me, so I try to focus on expressing myself 100 per cent on the stage and communicating with the band members.”
SE SO NEON’s ‘<Now>’ is out now via FTR/AWAL. The band will head out on a world tour later this year – visit their official website for details and tickets.