• The Pin-Up Girls
• Broken Records
The Pin-Up Girls sound a lot like an Eighties band you can’t quite recall the name of, and they probably like it that way. (Hey, not everyone has to sound like Cheese or Slapshock, right?) Members of the Pin-Up Girls — Mondo Castro, Pam Aquino, Jeng Tan, Ryan Nachura and Noel Garcia — are proud of their indie creds, and no one can take that away from them. Their debut, Hello Pain, was recorded low-budget (P60,000) and is being marketed the old-fashioned way — between gigs at Mayric’s, one copy at a time.
Guitar-based, folk-influenced, the Pin-Up Girls are reminiscent of so many other bands that it’s pointless to list them all. They’re confessed ’80s music fetishists, so that’s a good place to start for roots. The title cut, Hello Pain, features some fine folksie harmonies over which Mondo inserts the phrase I’ll stop the world — a clear nod to the Modern English hit, Melt With You.
Their single Burn perfectly encapsulates the Pin-Up Girls’ schematic — and perhaps its limitations. Opening with a familiar guitar riff and drum roll, it opens up into a perfectly straight-faced rumination on... well, something metaphysical. The line Please don’t ask me why/Why we all must die would sound comfortable on a Big Country or early U2 anthem. Meanwhile, Quicksilver and Alright show the band’s flair for catchy choruses. After a single listen, the choruses lodge somewhere in your head, though you may recall little else from the songs.
Witching Hour — their second single — features a surf beat and a fine blend of boy-girl harmonies reminiscent of Versus, X, Prefab Sprout, maybe even Sugar Hiccup.
There are other nice touches elsewhere on Hello Pain. Raymund Marasigan is listed as producer and contributes instrumental/songwriting help on A Cold and Better Place, Burn, and Sabihin Mo Na. The chiming guitars over a fuzz drone on Food for Three have a nice drag-ass Velvet Underground quality. Too bad it only lasts 1:24. Moonwashed has a gentle, breezy feel, with Mondo and Pam trading verses.
In sum, it’s clear the Pin-Up Girls have musical talent and songwriting ability. What’s more, they have a likeable image and stage presence (having seen them perform at Mayric’s a number of times).
What one could hope for is a little more musical daring next time — the occasional unexpected chord change or offbeat tempo. (A few songs do stray from the formula, like the remix of Ride Rocket Wild, which admittedly sounds out of place.) Like their name, the Pin-Up Girls are only mildly risque — a tease, really. The groovy retro cover art — of a busty dominatrix wielding a whip — packs more naughtiness than the music itself. Not that we want XXX porn from a local band, but a little more kink wouldn’t hurt.