[INTERVIEW] Indie band Vodka Rain - Part 1

From left, Vodka Rain members Seo Sangjoon, Ahn Seung-joon, Joo Yoonha and Lee Haewan. [Lee Jin-hyuk/10Asia]

In an interview, famed singer-songwriter Yoon Jong-shin said, “Vodka Rain is one of the indie bands that will immediately work on mainstream stages." It means they are ready. Modern rock band Vodka Rain, formed of members Ahn Seung-joon (vocalist), Lee Haewan (guitarist), Joo Yoonha (bassist) and Seo Sangsoon (drummer), have worked nonstop since their debut in 2005 and have since released seven albums while holding the acoustic concert "Romantic Vodka Rain" every year. And just last month, they even expanded their singing career into Japan by opening the "Seoul-Tokyo Sound Bridge" show. This diligent band, which is constantly working hard at fulfilling the thought that they must do what they are best at to popularize indie bands, released their third full-length album "Faint" on November 9. They who used to sing of the psychological puberty people in their 20s experience, this time quite maturely sang of the "things getting forgotten" based on the emotions they have accumulated during the past five years. Below is 10Asia's interview with Vodka Rain.

10: How did it feel to get to perform on a stage in Japan last month through the Seoul-Tokyo Sound Bridge concert?
Seo Sangjoon: We went to Japan excitedly, regardless of whether we’d do well or not, because it’s a show that we had only dreamt of performing at. And we received better response than we had expected to -- we still have Japanese fans who root for us through Twitter.
Ahn Seung-joon: At first we thought of revising the lyrics to our songs into English but we ended up singing them in Korean and it still felt like we were communing with the Japanese audience through our melodies and voices. People often say that music transcends borders but it was amazing to actually get to experience that.

“This is the album that best-reflects on one’s emotional changes.”

Vodka Rain member Ahn Seung-joon [Lee Jin-hyuk/10Asia]

10: What did you gain through your experience in performing in Japan?
Ahn: Our local fans have a certain level of expectation for us because they’ve seen us perform a lot and there are still many who want to see us give a perfect performance. But in Japan, we sang the songs that we wanted to. We were worried whether it would be okay to give a live performance of song “Sincerely,” listed in our latest album, because it’s a quiet song but we were able to immerse ourselves into the song after seeing how intensely they concentrated. I think we’ll be able to sing the song confidently from now on.
Seo: It felt like we were banding together with artists →Pia-no-jaC← and 8otto who performed on the show as well. I think what we gained was friendship with new bands.

10: You must’ve had a wrap-up party afterwards. Were the Japanese musicians there as well?
Ahn: We all drank together. We spoke to each other in awkward English saying things like, “You like?” but I realized human beings are all the same when we get drunk. (laugh)
Lee Haewan: We ended up talking in English, Korean and Japanese in the end. Sang-joon even talked in Japanese in his sleep.

10: You recently released your third album “Faint” which seems to have a different vibe compared to your past albums. What is it that you wanted to express through it?
Ahn: We have always talked about the things we want to say at the time we release the album. In the first album, we talked about being in our late 20s, the time when you have sentimentality that has carried over from your teenage years, and in the second album, we showed the energy of newcomers to the indie market. In this album, we wanted to talk of the things that are getting forgotten. Things that we felt will become forgotten forever if we don’t put into music.

10: Did you intend on telling a story? ‘Memory’ is the uniform message that exists throughout the album.
Ahn: We wanted to do a good job of arranging the flow of emotions which was easier to do than we had expected. The first track “Now Here” is about one looking up into the sky from where he stands and from the second track onward, the songs give off the vibe that he is on a train riding back to his past. Of them, title track “Memory is like a Flower” directly delivers our message. And the last track “After All” talks about how everything will become forgotten as if they were a lie but that we should not forget that they existed.
Joo Yoonha: This is the album that best reflects on one’s emotional changes. It’s not like we had decided to talk about this but before we knew it, we found ourselves talking about the same thing. After we lined up the songs, we saw that the flow of emotions were perfectly in line with what we had wanted to express.

”We drank a lot of beer when we went to perform in Japan as well.”

Vodka Rain member Joo Yoonha [Lee Jin-hyuk/10Asia]

10: And within that flow, you reach an emotional climax in “Sincerely.” The lyrics are cruel and you even belt out the lyrics in the second half of the song.
Ahn: The song is in a range that you really need to belt out the lyrics but we try to refrain from doing too much of just one thing so we recorded it at a level the producers and our group felt was adequate. And that may be why but this is the album where we concentrated on such sensitive work the most.

Q: You belt out a lot in other songs as well. How’s it recording such songs?
Ahn: I don’t feel much difficulty in it because that’s my style of singing and they’re sun in the range I like. It’s just that with “Can't Say Anything,” I had to hold myself back a bit which was difficult, because the song could easily come off as an intentional tear-jerker if I overdid things since it has a strong story to it.

10: “Can't Say Anything” was composed by Lucid Fall and model-singer Jang Yoon-ju did a featuring for it. How did they get to take part in the song?
Ahn: It’s the trend for indie artists to collaborate these days and Lucid Fall quite often gives songs to musicians. He had told us one day as well that he would like to work with us and we’re not the type to forget about such things. (laugh)
Lee: And when we actually went to him he said, “I said that?”
Ahn: When singer Younha visited us to work on the outline of the song, we said amongst ourselves that the song would turn out great if there was a strong story to it. And it could turn out conventional if made by one of us so we wanted to ask someone else to do it, which is how we thought of Lucid Fall. He told us that it’s the highest pitched song he has ever composed. And he said he thought a lot about how the emotions could be let out. For the female vocalist, we wanted someone who sings like an imaginary girl so we suggested Jang Yoon-ju because it felt like there was a raw feeling to her voice.

Reporter : Lee Ga-on
Photographer : Lee Jin-hyuk eleven@
Editor : Jessica Kim jesskim@, Lee Ji-Hye seven@