hathaw9y traces love on second album 'Lovers'

Busan-based 3-piece mixed band hathaw9y has released 'Lovers', its second full-length album and its first since 'Essential' 3 years ago. The lineup is Kang Kiwi on guitar and vocals, Choi Seyo on drums and chorus, and Lee Teukmin on bass and vocals.

The album centers on love as a sense directed toward another person, using the warmth of a 70~80s vintage Jazz Chorus amplifier and a sound shaped by yacht rock and city pop. The record frames relationships as imperfect and therefore truthful, with small daily images such as leaves outside a window and sunlight on a veranda.

Music critic Shin Saem, a selection committee member for the Korean Music Awards, said hathaw9y continues to present itself as an act that talks about love. Shin said that even when a person the speaker wanted to keep seeing fades from reach, love remains, and that hathaw9y's songs awaken and stir the listener's heart when they face absence, reunion in moonlight or a rush forward despite sensing tragedy.

Kang Kiwi said the 3 years after 'Essential' changed how the band thought about right answers. Kiwi said the members had once approached the band as if there were correct answers and a way to reach 100 points, but while making 'Lovers' they met varied people and teams and felt there was no single answer, which allowed freer attempts to enter the sound.

Choi Seyo said activity after the 1st album made the band feel more able to do things its own way. Seyo said questions such as 'Is it okay to do it this way?' became 'So what if we do it this way, if I like it?' after seeing fellow musicians in Seoul and musicians met overseas.

On production, Kiwi said Seyo's technical study made it easier for the other members to communicate their intentions by speaking closely with Seyo, including vague and abstract ideas. Seyo described the change as 'certainty about certainty', saying the producer's role was to reassure the members when they hesitated over whether a tone or performance was good.

Kiwi said the band's use of a vintage 70s Jazz Chorus amplifier for all guitars was not about precisely recreating an era it did not experience. Kiwi said it was important to keep the feeling of young people using only the equipment of that time without knowing too much, while Seyo said not having lived through the period allowed the band to follow the atmosphere it liked and still place itself inside the vessel.

Asked about 'Lover', the title track, Kiwi said Seyo's cat-like lyrics made many introverted people come to mind, including the members and shy fans met at shows, and that the song could tie them together. Seyo said the track was not intended to send a message to people today, but reflected a preference for a plain, firm confession over one made of polished words and sentences.

Discussing love as the album's main subject, Seyo said the idea that love comes with responsibility has not changed, while the band has begun observing people who cannot take that responsibility as well as those who do. Kiwi said loving has become more difficult and cautious with time, but also described it as something that must ultimately be done, calling the willingness to fall in love despite knowing one may be hurt one of the messages running through the album.

If we felt that a certain tone or performance was good, I tried to be certain that it was good.

The willingness to fall in love despite knowing one may be hurt feels like one of the messages running through our whole album.