I confess a weakness for the pop music form. I’m old enough to still feel the first bask of the Beatles’ timeless melodies, before it was all repackaged for the next generations in Las Vegas reincarnations. It doesn’t mean I haven’t explored all kinds of other music in my life — jazz, classical, industrial, country, early hip-hop, Brazilian, African, whatever — but I’ve always felt like those who carried the torch of the song form were doing a service to mankind, somehow.
That’s why I feel that Itchyworms and Ciudad are probably the traditional torchbearers for Filipino popular music, and the logical heirs to the Eraserheads’ songwriting canon.
No? Don’t believe? Sure, you have plenty of Filipino bands that push the form into different places — Up Dharma Down and Radiactive Sago Project (both on Toti Dalmacion’s Terno Recordings) being two obvious, diametrically opposite examples. But the pop form remains eternal, even after you strip away the style and studio effects. Being a sturdy vehicle, a pop song can be reinterpreted in any number of ways. Ciudad (specifically, Mikey Amistoso, Justin Sunico, Mitch Singson and Jason Cabal) understands this.
Proof is evident on their 2008 release, “Bring Your Friends” (as well as the Worms’ “Self-Titled,” also from ’08). I remember being privy to Ciudad in the early Ateneo days, when my sister-in-law Marie Jamora would play demo cassette recordings of the incubating band to us. Despite the indy, lo-fi quality of the tapes, you could tell Mikey had songwriting talent. That talent has only grown through “Is That Ciudad? Yes, Son, It’s Me” and other releases. Though I may have once joked about Mikey’s singing style (on one song in particular; I forget the name), I have seen this band craft music for a variety of settings — movie sound tracks, pop jingles, anthemic singles — and they are, for want of better words, serious and workmanlike about pop song structure.
“Bring Your Friends” will stand up as one of 2008’s best because of catchy songs like Until It’s Cool, You’ll Be Out of Here and My Emptiness. But Ciudad will continue to grow because writing catchy songs is now only half the trick for Mikey and the gang. It’s the equivalent of a juggler who, having mastered the art of putting a watermelon, chainsaw and bowling ball into orbit, decides to drink a glass of water and yodel the National Anthem while doing so.
A small example: the way Ciudad deploys the chorus in Underwater: the first syllable comes out “Ahhhhh…” — a typical pop song breath release— while the chorus comes back in with “…nderwater.” Mark my words: these things are thought about, discussed, by pop songwriters worth their salt.
What Ciudad and Itchyworms clearly possess is a healthy respect for harmony, something that may seem like the nostalgic trip, a backward nod to the Beatles. But harmony is to, say, the music of Eminem as 3D chess is to checkers. It’s a whole different musical realm. And these two bands know this, and use harmony like mad men. Take a song like Itchyworms’ Love Team — there are few things more satisfying in pop music than the descending three-part “oohs” in the third chorus of that song. This stuff sounds simple, but it takes total understanding of the form, its history, its forebears; then it takes the joy of tinkering with lines and layers to pull something new out of it. It’s this kind of understanding that led the Beatles to go beyond the R&B and country classics they once reverently covered to craft intricate three-part harmonies in the studio.
Musically, Ciudad’s sound, with its intimate, breathy vocals, acoustic underpinning and softly shuffling backbeat, often reminds me of Elliot Smith (without that singer’s suicidal depressiveness, of course). And not only because of the drawn-out lines and the folky blend of voices; there’s a wistful undercurrent to most of the lyrics, which deal with romantic loss and misunderstanding, but also with healing (as in Vanessa, Wait For Him). It’s often accompanied by a musical shrugging of the shoulders, the resignation of a sad but willing clown. Songs like You Should recall the Beach Boys in its bouncy arrangement, while others conjure up Burt Bacharach (Friday Noon in particular). Not bad examples to follow. You can also hear traces of the Lemonheads’ slacker charm, sprinkled with some of Death Cab’s emotional vulnerability. But comparisons are otiose.
And musically, this is one classical-sounding pop record. Just listen to Justin Sunico’s lush slide parts in Vanessa… (or the layered doo-wops and vocal parts in the same song). Interweaving vocal lines sew up the finale to My Emptiness, while naggingly catchy choruses haunt Until It’s Cool and the anthemic album closer, The Last Thing I Want to Do. A song like You’ll Be Out of Here begins with a simple, strummed expansiveness, then takes off to new plains (new pains?) with its diminished vocal hooks. Looking for angst? Sometimes pain comes in the gentlest chords, not in detuned guitars and power ballads. And how strange the change from major to minor.
There are plenty of directions for Filipino music to go — there are metal bands, electronica acts, and traditional OPM performers, Riot Grrrls and R&B-flavored chillers. So there’s definitely got to be room for bands that respect the fragile, yet intricate, gifts of the pop song. Ciudad clearly does.