This girl group rocks

MANILA, Philippines - They’re a quintet. They’re pretty. They sing. But tell them they’re the local version of The Pussycat Dolls and they squirm in their seats.

Vocalist Nicole Asensio, guitarists Caren Mangaran and Audry Dionisio, bassist Alexis Montemayor and drummer Bea Lao, collectively known as General Luna would rather be known as something else.

Yes, all of them look stunning enough to make any red-blooded male sit for long hours in the music lounge admiring, not just their music. But the eye candy image, they protest, is not their cup of tea. Besides, as Nicole, who was part of Rent says, “We’re not very good dancers.”

What each of them does is perform rock, write songs, play musical instruments and work with top tunesmiths for their self-titled debut album for Warner Music.

That’s a sure sign that those model-like looks are just add-ons. Their craft is the real deal.

“The last thing on our mind is to use our looks to get what we want,” says Audry, who has played with other rock bands.

It’s just as well. Beauty is the last thing people look for when they hear music on radio and pronounce their verdict on it. NU 107 listeners hardly considered the members’ looks when they heard its single, Red Heaven, and catapulted it to No. 1 in the rock station’s Stairway to 7 countdown.

Red Heaven, like other cuts in the album, comes straight from a seasoned songwriter. Typecast frontman Steve Badiola is the man behind the song. Sugarfree’s Ebe Dancel crafted the track Maria. Typecast guitarist Pakoy Fletchero wrote Walang Bintana. Mayonnaise vocalist-guitarist Monty Macalino composed Nandito. Rivermaya bassist Japs Sergio wrote Dala ng Ulan and Pagmulat.

The songs show that the band is not your typical gushing female group who swoon over love and romance.

Nicole says, “Yes, we have typical female songs about heartbreak. But we also have other songs — about a blind man playing for money; Ondoy, domestic violence, even bangungot.

Even the band’s name is deceptively non-female. It smacks of male machismo.

Or so you think. General Luna is not as tough-sounding as it seems.

Warner launched a contest of sorts in the office with a meal from the girls as the coveted prize. The office folks came up with the word “General,” a decidedly male world, and “Luna,” Spanish for moon and the symbol for womanhood.

Combine them, Anne Poblador, Warner Music promotions manager says, and you get a picture of the band: Feminine, but empowered and self-assured, like most men are trained to be.

The message, Nicole adds, is simple: “Although we are women, we don’t let our sexuality define our music. Our repertoire is not limited to female songs. That’s why we got male songwriters for our album.”

They’re not the bra-burning type, mind you. A typical General Luna music video doesn’t shout androgyny. General Luna is all girl — from skinny jeans, long, shiny tresses, make-up and all.

They won’t take offense though, if people who have yet to hear them mistake them for a showband.

“We welcome people mistaking us for a showband. It makes us work doubly hard on our music because we want to prove we’re not just made up of looks,” she says. Nicole knows that the moment they mount the stage, the audience will realize that the word “showband” is the last thing this group will ever be.

If they were, Warner won’t even take a second look at the band, a mere year after award-winning sound engineer Angee Rozul brought the girls to the recording company.

Their alternative rock sound must have told him the band can be the female version of Bamboo. This, the girls agree, makes them proud, Bamboo being the respectable musician that he is.

 Come to think of it, a Bamboo-General Luna show would be a good idea. It would see these kindred souls doing what they love best and make the audience rejoice along with them.

Let’s just cross our fingers a producer would do them — and the audience — this one big service, soon.