Remembrance of things past: 2002’s best albums

( Part I )

Despite all the global problems, the past year has a lot to be grateful for — at least if you use the music scene as a barometer. For starters, 2002 will be remembered as the time when intelligence and taste made a big comeback in mainstream music whether it be by young upstarts from as far as Liverpool or as close to home as Antipolo; or via established artists brushing off the dust heavy-laden on their record jackets and making albums that soar to grand heights even when compared to the best in their oeuvre... As for the struggling local independent scene, it must be pointed out that 2002 yielded an abundance of releases that were as remarkable for their variety as for their sheer ambition. So, without further ado, stand up and wave the gladioli for last year’s honor’s roll!

The Flaming Lips
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
Warner Bros.

Let’s be honest; almost every so-called concept album turns out to be either unlistenable or as boring as masturbating for the tenth time. (To illustrate, the album that invented the term — The Beatles’ "Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band" — is really quite a tiresome affair save for a few cuts.) However, The Flaming Lips’ new album — which, on the surface, pits an anime-styled heroine against some menacing machines — is so winsome in its delights that you’d be hard put not to sing along. Aside from the great melodies, the album is really a collection of love songs albeit circumvented through the language of a Katsuhiro Otomo futurescape — the ideal soundtrack for a 21st century schizoid romance.

Roxlee
Ghost of Rocker Janis
Documento

Who would have ever thought the absurd would make such a great sense? Roxlee’s absurdist fables on this album are melancholic reflections that would make the most jaded heart weep profusely if it weren’t so damn funny as well. Accompanied only by his guitar, Roxlee makes folk music for the coming apocalypse, the bastard child of Freddy Aguilar and Yoyoy Villame baptized at a feces-smeared altar by a long-robed Salvador Dali reading from a bible written by Lewis Carroll. Undeniable genius.

The Coral
The Coral
Deltasonic

Coming from Liverpool does carry a lot of baggage but this young sextet managed to shoulder the burden well. Unabashed in their retro-psychedelic influences, The Coral crafted an album that sounded like Love’s "Forever Changes" re-imagined as a rock opera by Captain Beefheart (smoking a gargantuan roach of bad-ass weed supplied by Lee "Scratch" Perry) with a libretto by Syd Barrett. Admittedly this sounds disastrous on paper yet it all makes perfect sense after compulsive repeated listens. Never did the aural equivalent of bad acid flashback sound so compelling.

Eminem
The Eminem Show
Aftermath

"It’s the end of the world," sighed American comedian Chris Rock on a guest stint on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. "The best golf player is black, and the best rapper is white!" Marshall Mathers is sure to be proud to be tagged a harbinger for chaos. Insatiable for controversy, Eminem speaks with an uncompromising honesty that made even pundits for freedom of speech uncomfortable. His latest album is his most solipsistic yet, mining the coal chamber of his heart to a point where it seems barren for anything but the real Slim Shady. Pop music with a soul blacker than anything Jah Rule or Nelly could ever muster.

Elemento
Makina
Organika
Independent

It is telling that members of the cryptic collective known as Elemento refer to their instruments as sandatas or weapons. Made from parts culled from your local junkyard, each instrument — when wielded by their able hands — is used to wage war on the corrupting conformity of current music. Taking its cue from sources such as New York No Wave (particularly Glenn Branca and Lydia Lunch) and the Dadaist Movement, the album is also an aural lament of a landscape littered with refuse fires and technological debris that somehow manages to offer a Roman-candle of hope. This is genre-defying music with a tachist’s approach to sound that’s hard to resist.

2002's Local Album Of The Year

Monsterbot
Destroy! Destroy!
MCA Universal

Surely, gene-splicing garage-boogie rock, funk-metal and techno-pop wasn’t in Mother Nature’s plans but that has never bothered the mad scientists of this Antipolo-based outfit. A chimera-rocker of an album, this debut snarls its way towards total domination of your cranium, leaving only space for the most basic of motor skills (particularly the ones you need to jump up and down like an idiot). If ever Iggy and the Stooges (circa "Raw Power") ever made a punk rock rewrite of William S. Burroughs’ The Ticket That Exploded, it would closely resemble this. Undoubtedly 2002’s best local album.

Thanks to Mario De Castro for his help for this column.

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Notes From Underground:

If you are a discerning music lover, the only bar to go to is Gweilo’s along Carlos Palanca St. in Makati. On Friday’s, luminaries from the local rock circuit like Razorback and The Pin-Up Girls play while on Saturdays, DJ Mondo plays the best of the current European rock scene and classic New Wave. On Mondays, you can enjoy an all-night Happy Hour (30 peso beer!) while DJ Ro plays the best of rock and pop (and everything in between).

Also, listen to EuroRock every Saturday from 8-9 p.m. on NU 107.5 for the latest and the best of European music from indie-pop to heavy rock. Contests are held weekly with rare bootlegs of your favorite Euro bands like Coldplay, Oasis, Travis and New Order as prizes.

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There are very few worthwhile things to watch on television these days but of course there are a few gems to be seen on the tube. Studio 23 is particularly good from 7-8 p.m. Mon-Fri when it shows the splendid Batman Beyond and Justice League animated series followed by the classic anime Samurai X (right now it's at the conclusion of the Kyoto arch). Also on Studio 23 is the original Twilight Zone series which airs every week night at 11 p.m. Now if only they would bring back the best music show in the world, Later with Jools Holland...

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What are your picks for 2002's best?

Send comments and reactions to: erwin_romulo@hotmail.com