The Solutions is a South Korean indie rock band under the label Happy Robot Records. They originally debuted as a duo with Naru and Park Sol in June 2012 with the digital single "Sounds of the Universe" from their self-titled album The Solutions. Kwon Oh-kyung and Park Han-sol joined the band for their second album Movements in 2014, which included the work of Grammy award-winning recording engineer and producer Jimmy Douglass. The group takes influences from 90s British pop, American alternative, and contemporary Japanese pop music, with most of their songs written in English despite having no native English speaking members. They have toured Asia, Europe and the U.S. and are popular in the indie scene in Hongdae, Seoul.
History
2012–2018:''The Solutions'', ''Movements'', formation and touring
The band was formed in 2012 by frontman and lead singer Park Sol and guitarist Naru. Both had previously been solo performers. Naru, a music producer and singer songwriter, had released two modern rock genre solo albums, Jaga Dangchak in 2008 and Yet in 2010. Park Sol was an already well-known indie musician, with a 2010 album The Song is You, and was a singer songwriter for the 2011 music competition show Superstar K 3. Park Sol has described Naru, who usually arranges the music, as the leader between the two. They started writing and performing most of their songs in the English language, as the lyrics seemed to work better than Korean lyrics; but they have questioned their abilities to sing well in English. Naru spent five years as a child in America and later studied English in Korea, and Park Sol learned it while traveling abroad for a year when he was twenty. Naru said he started playing guitar in his teens and writing songs at twenty, and says the two of them work hard at music, as they had a later start than some musicians. The band toured Asian countries, Europe and the U.S., and performed solo and at indie festivals in Hongdae. In 2015, they played at the fifth Seoulsonic annual concert which introduced South Korean musicians to U.S. audiences at the SXSW music festival. They headlined the 2017 Pentaport Rock Festival along with other South Korean and foreign acts, including rock bandsBastille and 5 Seconds of Summer, and have performed at Japan's Summer Sonic Festival and Spain's Primavera Sound. Their first album The Solutions was released by the original duo, Naru and Park Sol in 2012, and followed by a second album, Movements, with all four members in 2014. They created the song "All That You Want" for the music project.
2019–present:''Signature''
They released their third studio albumSignature on July 29, 2019, which includes the title track "In My City".
Musical process, style, and influences
Naru described their sound in 2014 to Hilde Heyvaert, a Never Was magazine writer, while playing in Liège, Belgium, "We experiment mixing our favorite sounds from the 80s, 90s and contemporary music. Using both guitars and synthesisers, which I like both. We are experimenting with mixing them, without making it sound complex. We want people to be able to just listen, not hearing all that complexity. It’s pretty difficult to do that." Heyvaert's description said, "this band was unintentionally playing music that could happily be a soundtrack to a rock-and-roll-loving dieselpunk lifestyle." In an interview with NoHo Arts District, Los Angeles reporter Caroline McElroy, for NoHoArtsDistrict.com, in October 2016, while playing at the Hotel Café, they detailed the band's songwriting process, which varies, sometimes starting with one member's contributing a completed song, and at others, with the group creating a song "organically" together, with Naru arranging the final product. They said they are influenced by "80s, new wave and alternative music to EDM acts such as Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins". The band published a book in 2015, with the encouragement of an interested publishing company, Do it, Just Do It, about each members' musical journey. It includes Park Sol's story of listening to Nirvana in middle school and Naru's working at a factory job to save to buy a guitar.
Members
Kwon Oh-kyung – bass
Naru, birthname: Kang Kyung-tae – guitar, backing vocals
