HOHYUN Makes a Splash at the El Rey Theatre

HOHYUN spent part of his opening set at the El Rey Theatre talking about some of the hardest moments of his life. By the end of it, he was swinging water bottles across the stage and absolutely drenching the front rows.

It sounds like two completely different shows, but that contrast is part of what made his set work.

On Dec. 14, HOHYUN joined Sarah Kang at the Los Angeles stop of her six-city Before & After Tour. He arrived just over a month after releasing Petrichor, a 10-track album built around his experiences with depression, getting help and learning that feeling better is rarely a straight line.

That vulnerability showed up early. Alongside “Faded,” HOHYUN dedicated “i can’t escape the rain” to the overthinkers and INFPs in the room before talking about the mental-health experiences behind Petrichor. The album takes its name from the smell that follows rain, using rain throughout the project as a way of framing some of the heavier periods in his life.

“Tomorrow” carried the most weight. HOHYUN has described writing the song while his depression was at one of its lowest points, just before deciding to seek help. Its follow-up, “FLAWED,” deals with what came afterward: realizing that getting help did not suddenly make everything perfect.

Those subjects could have made for a very heavy opening set, but HOHYUN never let the room stay there for too long.

He joked with fans, grabbed phones from the crowd to record videos from the stage and had everyone singing back to him during “FLAWED.” For an artist whose newest work is so personal, he was surprisingly comfortable turning that vulnerability outward and making the audience part of it.

Then came “SUNSET BOULEVARD.”

The 2022 track is the song that first brought HOHYUN a much larger audience, and live it became the complete opposite of the quieter moments that preceded it. Water went everywhere. The first few rows were caught directly in the splash zone as HOHYUN threw streams across the room, grinning while the crowd screamed and tried to decide whether to dodge it or lean in.

It was easily the most chaotic few minutes of his set, and probably the easiest way to understand why HOHYUN works so well live. His songs can be intensely personal without the performance ever feeling overly serious.

The night continued with headliner Sarah Kang, whose before & after album explores the changes in her life surrounding motherhood. Her Los Angeles show included appearances from Luke Chiang, Sam Ock and others, but HOHYUN also got one more moment onstage when he returned to perform their duet “loml” with Kang.

For an opener, HOHYUN left the El Rey with a surprisingly complete introduction: the filmmaker, the songwriter, the mental-health advocate and the guy sending half a water bottle directly toward the barricade.

If Petrichor is about what comes after the rain, Los Angeles got plenty of both.