A Summer Getaway Arrived at the Playground — HAINA MAIKA PUANA's 'Coconut Juice'

In three lines

• HAINA MAIKA PUANA's 'Coconut Juice (코코넛 주스)' has arrived at NONOL Live.
• It's a resort-like folk song made with a single acoustic guitar.
• We pull one track out of last time's full-set live and introduce it on its own.

We pulled out just one track

Last time at the playground, we played HAINA MAIKA PUANA's live as a full set, all at once. Four songs flowing together made for a nice mood, but each song got a little buried, too.

So today we pulled out just 'Coconut Juice'. The title is summer itself. Keep your ear on one song alone and you hear something you don't when it's a bundle.

A getaway made with one guitar

'Coconut Juice' has a spare arrangement. An acoustic guitar and a voice are nearly all of it. Yet that spareness makes a resort-like openness. Because it isn't packed full, there's room for the listener to sit down.

Play it in the middle of a hot, humid city and you feel moved somewhere far away for a moment. Not the coolness an air conditioner makes, but the coolness shade and wind make.

HAINA MAIKA PUANA is the group's name, and it has the scent of some southern sea. It doesn't feel like a coincidence that a song like 'Coconut Juice' comes out of this team.

What it means to hear it at the playground

NONOL Live doesn't dress the stage up much. It's a spot where a musician just sits and sings one song as it is. A plain song like 'Coconut Juice' shows its true color best in a place like this.

Watching a single song stand on its own, with no flashy editing and no big lighting, you feel again that a good song holds up, in the end, on plainness.

These days, summer songs tend to be big and flashy. Spraying water, stacking synths, cueing the sing-along. Among all that, a small, murmuring summer song like 'Coconut Juice' sounds rare. If there's a big-stage summer, there's also a summer like this — humming in the shade.

If today was unusually hot, close it out with this one song before bed. The day's heat will drop a little.

A new song has arrived at the playground today.