This year was a strange one in music for me.
Even to an Anglophile such as myself, I was unimpressed by the current crop of British acts to get on the local charts and being played by hipsters at MDC. Don’t get me wrong: they’re not bad but I just didn’t find myself in love with their music. Either I’m getting old or, uh, I am old. (Don’t let the picture above fool you; that was taken almost a decade ago. I now sport a handlebar moustache, a gold watch and a very large belt bag.) It’s equally bizarre to me that the best new American bands now sound British as well. Some of it is good, but only good to the point that I will download some of the songs.
To single out a few sour notes, I bought the latest Supergrass album because I am a fan of the band. But after listening to it, I can say that it is probably the worst of their career. They sounded better when they barely knew how to play. Also, someone lent me Coldplay’s latest and every song just seemed to go on forever. It’s never a good thing when a band starts to believe its own hype. Just because you’re applying for the job of biggest band in the world doesn’t mean every song has to last three minutes more than it should. I hear they’re getting a lashing from the UK press at the moment and they deserve every bit of it.
Thank heavens that local releases this year have been excellent! Someone asked me which era was better: the Pinoy Rock boom in the 1990s or the current music scene. Without hesitation, I answered that today the local music scene is the most vibrant it’s ever been. After the death of
kupaw, no one genre is prominent. To elucidate, even if you have these
pogi rock bands, there are groups like the Radioactive Sago Project, Drip, Johnny Alegre’s Affinity, Sugarfree, The Bitter Pill, Orange & Lemons, Pedicab, Sound, Nyco Maca, Rubber Inc., Bamboo, Monsterbot, Moon Fear Moon, Sandwich, etc…the list is quite long. None of those artists mentioned sound the least bit like each other at that. I was a bit surprised that when I decided to list down my favorite albums of 2005 and found out I only wrote down names of local bands. Even more remarkable was that all but one of the entries was an independent release. I didn’t do that on purpose. It’s not that I didn’t like anything else but these were the albums I constantly listened to throughout the year; I also decided that I had whittle it down to these few albums to save Igan the pain of proofreading a 5,000-word article.
By the way, a dear friend suggested that instead of just giving love on Christmas Day, why don’t you buy these "indie" records instead and give them to the people who mean the most to you. Or even to people you just have to give something to but don’t really mean that much in your life. It makes sense because they’re inexpensive and you’re helping the needy, i.e. the musicians who put them out and get only beer when they play live. Consider it charity.
| PRANK SINATRA/ The F Defect |
Upon seeing Raymond Red’s short films, the esteemed film critic Tony Rayns praised them despite their crudeness and modest production values and called the then young director, "a talent of Orwellian proportions." While it wouldn’t be quite right to compare Red to the debut album of Prank Sinatra, there are striking comparisons to be drawn. With no money and actually no band, Prank Sinatra’s Iman Leonardo wrote, played and produced this album almost all by himself. Being a veteran of several bands including a long stint in the country’s pioneering goth band Dominion, Leonardo enlisted the help of friends from Sugar Hiccup’s Czandro Pollack to Kabaong Ni Kamatayan’s Paul Magat to help see this project into fruition. But despite the uneven production, the album is an epic pop opus, and Leonardo obviously has Brian Wilson-sized ambitions and the biblical savagery of Kevin Shields. Undoubtedly, he sometimes overestimates and falls flat but the ride is nothing short of amazing.
Best Cut: "Hit The D Chord"
Probably the most uplifting, feel good song of the year that manages to be melancholy as well.
| ITCHYWORMS/Noon Time Show |
Whoever thought that a serious rock band can actually come up with a concept album that manages to be funny and great at the same time? To be sure, the Itchyworms’ second album owes much more to Tito, Vic & Joey’s
Tough Hits series rather than anything by Pink Floyd. Although don’t be fooled by the humor into thinking the band can’t play; these boys have got musical chops to take on any prog-rock wank-off band around. Other musicians like Malek Lopez have declared, "they’re my favorite twin guitar band," and filmmaker Mario Cornejo likened one of their songs to Jethro Tull. To focus on that one song in particular,
Salapi uses all the ’80s metal clichés you can remember but instead uses them in the service of one of the catchiest pop ditties to hit radio in the last year. (The middle part of the song is a clever reworking of the intro of Metallica’s
Seek And Destroy.) It all sounds confusing, doesn’t it? Ian Anderson and hair metal riffs can’t be funny, right? Luckily, even a cursory listen to the album will be enough to convince that, yes, concept albums need not be as dreary as
Wurm.
Best Cut: "Love Team"
This is the sort of tune you hope that Apo Hiking Society would write again. Again.
Nobody makes sillier songs than Ciudad. Their second album, released last year,
Is That Ciudad? Yes, Son It’s Me, had the band flirting with horn arrangements and slick rhythms but even that album’s most sophisticated gem "Call It A Flick" has lyrics that until now keeps me guessing what it’s actually about. Their third album is composed of songs that the band wrote before they were famous. (Well, at least, before they had their first album.) The results are songs that find the band at their loopiest yet. Whether it’s studying for exams, aliens or the coolness of being a nerd, no topic is too banal for these guys. (They did release a single called "Sipilyo" you know.) The naïve sincerity is touching and imbues this album with a charm so lacking in almost everything popular in music today.
Best Cut: "Escape"
If nothing else, this song deserves to be played even for its last minute alone.
| PEPE SMITH/Idiosyncrasies |
Would you believe that this is actually Joey "Pepe" Smith’s debut as a solo artist? It seems that Smith has become such an icon (being an inductee to NU 107.5’s Rock Awards Hall of Fame no less) that it somehow confounds the mind that he never got round to putting this one together and releasing it at the height of his popularity. Of course, Smith’s ready consumption of the rock n’ roll lifestyle may have contributed to this belated release and his appearance as a human ashtray. To be sure, there is only one bona fide single here — "Hi Tek Babe" that boasts a catchy chorus one thought Smith would be hard put to sing by now. But the rest of the songs showcase Smith’s irrepressible character: part blues sage, part stand-up comic. Although ably backed by equally renowned musicians Dondi Ledesma and Jun Lopito, the album is clearly Smith’s show. Not quite the classic you would expect, but a worthwhile listen even if only a testament of its star’s tenacity.
Best Cut: "Hi Tek Babe"
From Smith’s laconic drawl on the verses to the laid-back swagger of the music, this song is also an uncanny impression of another rock n’ roll animal.
| DAYDREAM CYCLE/Underwater Kite |
Funny that it’s only been a few times that a local band’s name somehow magically describes their music. (To elucidate, I never did manage to reconcile the name Cheese with any of the music that that band’s put out or rather even any David Lynch in Ely Buendia’s songs. Well…Cueshé does mean crap, doesn’t it?) However, nothing comes as close as capturing the rapture of listening to the songs of Daydream Cycle as their name. Though it might not make sense to anyone who hasn’t heard the album, each track is evoked by those words. What else could you call a band that makes music to get drunk to in the afternoons, the sun glorious and golden, the possibilities seemingly stretching as long as the shadows cast with the slanted light, everything casual like a sudden breeze, brief glances that somehow lingered longer than you intended, the texture of lips…Phew, for a minute there, I lost myself. Music like this makes hacks like this one aspire to write like Gregorio Brillantes. Potent stuff!
Best Cut: "Winter’s Gone"
Dunno what the lyrics say but I feel a chill just listening for a few seconds.
| SHEILA AND THE INSECTS/Flowerfish |
Cebu must be stranger than those tourism advertisements would like you to believe. Sure, it’s an island and there are those sunny beaches with the natives waiting to serve you a cocktail with just a clap of the hands. (Wait! I might have seen a promo for another place. Hell, all the ads that the local tourism boards send out to entice foreigners to rape their citizens and their homes make them all look like
Fantasy Island.) But the music of Sheila and the Insects casts shadows on the sunny billboards welcoming you to their turf. This, their fourth album, is their best yet and broods in darker moods than you’d expect from the Visayas. This is songwriting that proves gloomy pop need not be dull as well.
Best Cut: "Clever As You"
This is the aural approximation of a wounded look that gets no reply.
| JUNIOR KILAT/ Party Pipol Ur On Dub TV |
Another Visaysan product, Junior Kilat’s music is heavy with vernacular witticisms and rhythms that weigh as old as the islands themselves. Of course, although an M16 is a 20th century toy, Budoy Marabiles speaks with the authority of a sage, weaving new myths for the paranoid generation. Though the doses of reggae and its descendant genres in this country are for the most part limited to Bob Marley’s
Greatest Hits, you don’t need to smoke anything to appreciate that Junior Kilat is a different band – working maybe under the influence of a foreign substance but homegrown all the way. I would advise you to steal this album but instead will cajole you to please buy as many copies as possible. They’ll be worth not much in the future…if things go as wrong as they seem. Still…
Best Cut: N/A
Every track seems to be part of one big whole so impossible to pick one track.
| ALBUM OF THE YEAR: THAT EPIC REGGAE SET/Wynona! |
This column predicted as early as December 2004 that this unassuming release from one of the "indie" scene’s best kept secrets would be the album of the year 2005 and – for once – was right! With no song dipping its toes past the three-minute mark, the album is the antithesis to everything wrong in popular music today. First off, although That Epic Reggae Set is a serious band, they don’t take themselves too seriously. Nothing wrong if your song has only one good idea: why f**k with the magic? And while we’re cursing, this is an album that for those who don’t give a f**k if you’re a pretty boy who’s got his heart broken. (Join the cue, bud.) Get over it and listen to these tunes instead. We assure you that it will make you happy. Very, very happy!
Best Cut: "Miss NYC"
Only 1 minute and 48 seconds long and basically just a chorus, it is quite simply genius.
All albums can be bought at Tower Records and Music One outlets except
Wynona! For That Epic Reggae Set, you can call Monopond Records at (02) 671-4146.
Much respect goes to Kerryl Demetrio who was involved in two of the albums mentioned above…and for being part of Smooth Friction.
Send comments and reactions to: erwin_romulo@hotmail.com.