Whether it is a good time for indie or not a) remains to be seen, b) can be argued either way, c) can propel casual conversations over light-beer to impassioned brawls over shards of glass. Theory-sparring, discussions of piracy economics, and so on, will somehow make it to the banter I’m sure. Naysayers will expectedly say it’s a bad time for everyone, but who listens to those guys anyway? Not Japs Sergio, who while in the throes of his hazy tenure as Rivermaya bassist (he went on indefinite leave from the bestselling band) has written, arranged, tracked, mixed, and, most interestingly, self-produced a new batch of songs under his online moniker, “Japsuki.” The resulting album is called Monologue Whispers, a markedly low-key batch of GarageBand-crafted songs that—were it made by someone working within a band framework—would have otherwise served as mere demos, but since the guy’s manning the ship solo, are being presented in their rawest possible form. Of course the whole construct of “raw” here becomes a sort of catch-22. Naturally, in the more-than-able hands of Sergio, these demos-in-disguise are not devoid of the sheen and mastery of one who’s spent the last decade with one of the busiest bands in local mainstream rock. This is not to say the songwriter’s musical schooling is spent entirely with Maya; Sergio’s celebrated stint with Daydream Cycle (who’s once again reunited and back in the studio, incidentally) has certainly contributed in no small measure to his adventurism when it comes to the business of rock. Sergio has stripped himself of the trappings of big-production audio and went back to guerilla song-craft tactics, arming himself not so much with an array of studio sleights-of-hand but with things that truly matter: memorable melodies, hook-filled guitar and synth lines, and assorted displays of heartbreak on disc. Best numbers include “Hits and Misses,” a regretful, wistful, and pleading reminder-to-self to “silent the thoughts”; “Time of the Signs,” which features a playful staccato melody-line that’s a no-brainer on the dance floor, even for the hopelessly non-dexterous; “Solar Eye,” which has Sergio channeling Wordsworth with this apostrophe to the sun and the moon and the signs they supposedly provide (the Strokes-ish riff doesn’t hurt either); and  “When Dust Becomes Diamond,” which features perhaps the most imaginative fretwork in the record: a plucky, open-chord playing style reminiscent of the best of Peter Buck, et al. It is, however, in a track called “Stereo Light” where Japsuki parades his wares best, as it negotiates between synth- and riff-rock amidst further self-motivation, with a musical score that’s most apt for strutting one’s stuff: “I’m gonna wear my suit/It’s gonna mirror the weather/It’s gonna be cloudy as soon as I get my act together.” (Aldus Santos)

Cover art and photography by Niña Sandejas, with layout by Gelo Lagasca. Listen to “Stereo Light” below:

This generation needs a soundtrack: the sort that lets the analog merge seamlessly with the digital, one that allows juxtaposing our old issues with new ones, because, of course, while we still lose sleep over the usual things like love, longing, desire, we now do so in the age of social networks, blogs, and instant messaging. We need new songs for our digital crushes and technologically-enabled flirtations and relationships, if only to verify that they’re as real as when we were all still scrambling to meet people via party lines, or trying to hook up with them by sending them mix tapes. And if we’re pushing for the soundtrack to be legit, it ought to speak in a specific language: one that won’t alienate kids who grew up with a multitude of software tools at their disposal, but one that also addresses those who love Steve Jobs not because his Macs are beautiful machines like no other but because they appreciate that behind the technological genius lies a very human heart and flesh.

Thus explains the attraction to Techy Romantics, a band that dares expand your definition of what gets played in local rock gigs. The band’s spartan setup is often labeled as “electronica,” but don’t be too quick to categorize: the synergy produced by Dondi Virrey’s multi-layered mixes, Ryan Villena’s calculated riffs, and Camille Besinga’s distinct vocals is warm and hypnotizing. It can untangle you from your beer bottle and have you dancing without feeling like you have sold your soul to the tugs-tugs DJ. Their songs feel comfortable whether they’re played at saGuijo or Republiq. In the band’s second album, Escape, the songs are lyrically-driven, possess characteristic beats and loops, and even tinges of punk. The trio has defied the dreaded sophie jinx, and their musical vocabulary is more diverse this time around, but what makes it work is that the songs are able to maintain a consistent narrative even as they present mini-stories of their own. It makes use of a lot of digital technology, but it’s one with a pulsating soul.

In the urgency of “Let Me Love You,” for instance, lies the framing of a lover’s plea and the baring of both desperation and determination to start over. In “One Way,” the bargaining is of a different sort, as it is about silence from the other party; a void is present and what’s left is the song to dance to on your own. (Aptly enough, this song closes with the sound of a busy tone.) The tempo shifts to a slower one in “Quicksand,” with Camille speaking in the melancholic voice of someone who is “bled dry, and wants to get away,” but doesn’t quite know how (“If I can get away from you, I’d try to.”/“Stop calling me.”) In all of this, it needs to be pointed out that Besinga’s voice is as instrumental to her band’s sound in the same fashion that Tracy Thorn’s was, perhaps, to Everything But the Girl.

One will find that a raw honesty exists in Escape, and one that is never over the top. A theme song for beginnings, “Brand New,” is perfect for those moments you could be thinking “This may be it.” It opens with “My life’s changing, I’ve never been here before,” and proceeds subtly and cautiously in the admission “You make me feel brand new.” In this day and age where several considerations are made before leaping into a commitment, this song gives hope to the romantics in us to “make it happen” and to “give in to the love within” and feeds optimism to our inner cynics. “Escape,” the title track and also the first single to be released, is light and jumpy. The stance of cool present in the song, the easy listening, is essential for keeping big declarations like “You give me something to live for” and “You’re my escape” from being too overwhelming.

Technology is often lamented nowadays for being a tool for putting up walls. Just as it aids intimacy, one click of the ESC button or a text message gone unanswered eliminates that instantly. Hence, most of us tread carefully. But remember when, as a kid, we hooked up to party lines in the hopes of establishing a connection? We’re still those kids. The digital makes the how of it less complicated now, hardware-wise, but as we’re still the same mumbling fools, it’s up to us to establish the depth those connections will take. With enough sincerity, we may find that technology can break down barriers. And it also helps to have a soundtrack. (Maniel O’Yek)

Album cover and band photo courtesy of Mike Shih of Party Bear Productions. Live image by Jasmine Ferrer. Tonight (December 9, 2011), Techy Romantics launches Escape, their thirteen-track second record, at saGuijo. Gates open at 9PM. Bring your USBs, iPods, and MP3 players (set to “manual” mode), as the album will be sold digitally at PhP150 for this night only. Listen to “Escape” below:

Clearly, this is not Marty Scorsese’s first time to speak in a documentarian’s tongue. The filmmaker behind some of the most memorable motion pictures of this century or the next (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas) certainly has no problems weaving together nonfictional narratives, as he has proven in modern classics such as The Last Waltz (on The Band), No Direction Home (on Bob Dylan), and Shine a Light (on the Rolling Stones). The mastery, really, lies in selection and omission: the series of decisions as to what to include or not, what to highlight or downplay, which bits to build on and which ones to let wither away. I can’t say whether Living in the Material World expands on the Harrison myth or merely reiterates facets of it: that Harrison is a mere sideman to the Lennon-McCartney monolith (an age-old construct, but one that deserves some serious challenging nonetheless); that his being younger in years translates to being younger in experience (a heap of horse manure, since the songwriter behind “Something” is clearly not wading in shallow musical waters). Yet “All Things Must Pass,” a genius piece closer to gospel than derivative rock ‘n’ roll, was somehow relegated to the recycle bin during the Let It Be-Abbey Road years, set aside to make room for Len-Mac throwaways such as “One After 909” or “Maggie May,” which is quite telling of the time, really, and of the pervading allegory, i.e., Harrison was a lesser mortal in the Beatle scheme of things. It is, however, in the second part of the film (the new iterations, as opposed to mere reiterations) where Harrison is painted as his own man: his disenchantment with Haight-Ashbury-style Flower Power, his frustration at people caricaturizing his “mysticism,” his Formula One fandom, his involvement in the Traveling Wilburys, his role in the humble beginnings of Monty Python. There’s also the legendary back story behind the love triangle that was him, Clapton, and “Layla” (Pattie Boyd). There’s a lot in store for every Peeping Tom or Curious George in here, but no great revelations. Still, hey, why not. (Aldus Santos)

“George” by Tommy Patto ~ Imagine, via Flickr Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

The initial attraction was, of course, the Julie Taymor brand name: she who crafted the Beatlemania-laden eye-candy that was Across the Universe, she who was at the helm of the controversial Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, which, despite its associations with composers Bono and The Edge, made the papers (and, yes, the late-night-show monologues) more for its mishaps than its virtues. There is also curiosity about how Singapore mounts world-class productions (I haven’t seen any), and the promise of a theatrical experience at the already-famed Sands Theater, where the sound is godly and the proscenium layout a spectacle in itself. Though my critical faculties wanted to zero in on music and sound in general, one couldn’t help but marvel at the set design, the costuming, and the choreography of the Disney film original. Expect someone like Taymor to dodge Broadway trappings and seek more non-Western solutions to an otherwise mainstream idea, mainly through the use of such disciplines as topeng (Indonesian masked dance and drama), wayang kulit (shadow puppetry), and banraku (or minimalist Japanese puppetry). Frame these elements with the East-meets-West songs of Elton John-with-Tim Rice and Lebo M., among others, and you’ve got cartoon-made-flesh—you’ve got a narrative not just made for New York or London but, yes, beyond.

The pervading musical element is, naturally, rhythm, which we rightfully attribute to Africa: the heart of the wildlife and, to a certain degree as it is portrayed in popular (youth-directed) culture, the wild life (with spaces). Rhythm is after all a life source; perhaps it is life itself. So, although John and Rice’s “Circle of Life” and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” remain powerful pieces—especially when boxed within the emotive narrative—it is in transitional songs such as Lebo M.’s “Grasslands Chant,” “The Lioness Hunt,” “The Stampede”/“Rafiki Mourns” where The Lion King locates it thematic anchor. These rhythms are indeed central, and you find them in the layout as well, in the two drummer-percussionists situated in the elevated royal boxes. Marry this with fine singing (read: choral chanting in several instances), textured set designs (palpable set pieces vis-à-vis virtual, projected ones), one of the most memorable storylines from the last millennium (hardly youth-oriented, almost Shakespearean in tone), and one of the most important speculative geniuses of this era or the next—failing (its far possibility) is most certainly out of the picture. (Aldus Santos)

Image (“Festival of the Lion King—Circle of Life”) by Dazzling Digital Photography, via Flickr Creative Commons. Some rights reserved. Learn more about the Singapore production of “The Lion King” here.

It’s been two weeks since I saw Quark Henares’ Rakenrol. Between then and now, I also played a couple of shows alongside bands who I don’t see a lot these days but who, for me, remain representative of…wait, what do those guys represent? Consider: these people (and some of them have become close friends of ours) don’t necessarily come off as chest-thumping, guitar-wielding revolutionaries; they hardly make ambitious pronouncements about art and society at large (except for perhaps a handful, but then again they do it in private, half-inebriated); and they wouldn’t even strike the regular Juan on the street as “rocker” types. Okay, maybe they don’t represent anyone or anything, not an era, a social class, or a godforsaken musical genre; maybe they’re just breathing reminders of a time in our lives. But this is precisely why Rakenrol is important; it catalogues these aforementioned “reminders” with an obsession that’s almost akin to religiosity.

Written by Henares and Sandwich’s Diego Castillo, the film is, essentially, creative nonfiction; to my mind, a documentary soundly swathed under a romantic narrative, which Jason Abalos and Glaiza de Castro more-than-ably play out. We’ve always pined for a film like this, where our music and culture, our ridiculous obsession with indie-rock ephemera, our opinions on matters we deem of life-and-death gravity (Bamboo Mañalac-as-onstage-messiah versus Rico Blanco-as-Brian Wilson-type-brooding-genius, for instance), are as important as national politics, if not more. We want our Dazed and Confused, our Almost Famous, maybe our own This is Spinal Tap, and, dammit, we want it set in saGuijo.

The bigger love story in Rakenrol, really, does not lie in Odie (Abalos) and Irene (de Castro) alone, but in Hapipak’s journey to not so much be the next Eraserheads, but to belong, all amid “satanic S&M bands, samurai swindlers, narcissistic rockstars, the pretentious Philippine art community, and the freakiest music video auteur ever.” It is, shall we say, a depiction of outsiders by some of local rock’s best-known insiders (who, granted, have not always had it easy). There is a scene in the film that sort of mirrors a moment in Kevin Smith’s Mallrats where Brodie (Jason Lee) gets to meet comic-book legend Stan Lee, who later on gives him love advice; in it, Odie runs into Ely Buendia, who professes to be a big Hapipaks fan, and proceeds to give him yet another form of love advice, where the object of desire is not the girl but staying with one’s dream (i.e., being in a damn band), no matter how silly it may seem to the rest of the world.

Maybe Rakenrol will make you nod along in recognition of several bits and pieces from your own lives; maybe it won’t. Maybe it will drive you to form your own band; but then, again, maybe it won’t. But you should see it, well, to get reminded, as I always say. (Aldus Santos)

The film premiered on July 23, 2011 for Cinemalaya (held at the CCP). Its regular run starts September 21. New Yorkers may want to see it on August 13 (details here). Press-conference photo by Mads Adrias; this, along with the poster, taken from Rakenrol’s Facebook page.

The suggestion that Lourd-the-musician and Lourd-the-poet are mirror images of each other is perhaps a lazy one to make. For how obvious is it, after all, that Sago verses are “verses” in the poetic sense? As in quatrains of alternating rhyme schemes, spit-fire alliterations, word choices like knives? How incidental is it, really, that from day one, his lyrics have always been “lyrics” in the sense of Whitman or Pound, as in the incantations of “Black Smoke Blues” (from his band’s debut) and a host of other poem-slash-songs? These are pretty apparent: that Lourd is a practitioner of both the spoken and the written word, and that people buy this duality, without compromise, without condescension. Meaning Lourd at the mic and Lourd on the page are both positive prospects, depending on the consumer’s form of choice at the moment. Over time—past the apparent Beat influences in Subterranean Thought Parade and toward the more introspective, Lorca-like musings of Shadowboxing in Headphones—as the poet advances in age (biological, cultural, creative) (and hopefully his readers do as well), one sees a moving-away from ceremony, from gesture, from the very “business” of poetry. Religion, music, high + low art, and writer-friendly substances crowd Insectissimo!, his third and latest poetry volume. For those deficient in matters of attention span, meanwhile, Lourd’s exploration of forms—notes (“Wasak, Notes On”), problematique (“Christ is Not a God But TV is Heaven and Your Kiss is Hell”), self-address-cum-ars poetica (“Strange Day, With Bicycle”), chorus (“X”), mock press release (“Consumeresque”)—should sustain you (though, really, his always-exciting cadences should be more than enough). Personally, the fact that Insectissimo! facilitates meditation through its chants and choruses and elicits giggles and knowing nods through bits of masa culture (from Ate Guy to Mike Enriquez, among others)—this very display of anti-self-consciousness, the negotiation of it at least—keeps me a big fan. (Aldus Santos)

Insectissimo! will be launched tonight, May 7, 8PM, at Cubao X. You may browse through some sample poems here. Image of Lourd de Veyra (“And then the Lourd said…”) by Jason Carbonera (a.k.a. Kulturang Ewan), via Flickr Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

Not simply a relic for Nirvana fans to drool over. A strict narrative, yes, but more importantly, a glimpse into the serious musician’s psyche (a psyche that incidentally involves a good measure of villainy, even to closest friends). Hardly a self-directed pat on the back; the band already has oodles of hangers-on doing that for them. One can argue, as a matter of sheer mathematics, that the Foo Fighters has gotten way bigger than the N band, Dave Grohl’s previous (who really only has three proper studio albums under its belt, and, to my recollection, hasn’t filled Wembley to capacity in its short incumbency). It wasn’t an easy-breezy ascent, however, and Grohl knows it. What the Foos have eventually become isn’t dictated by entries in an unseen rock ‘n’ roll handbook; corny as it may sound, it’s life—their kind of a life at least—and not some sort of rockstar pageantry. In my early years as a music journalist (the late ‘90s), whenever the convo screeches to an awkward halt, I resort to asking one silly question: “What advice can you give young musicians?” It’s not so much silly because it’s been asked to death; it’s silly because, when music isn’t in your marrow, it isn’t in your marrow. Back and Forth, in a nutshell, tells one about a musician’s life and how to live it—logic, health, and relationships be damned. I will not tell you how it depicts focal points in the band’s long, storied career (you’re online right now anyway), but rather, what you can glean from the feature-length docu.

How to recover from a suicide. Grohl confronted his friend-cum-frontman’s death the best way he knows how: through music. The resulting product of his passive (nay, evasive) mourning was a cassette demo recorded at a studio down the street from his home. People’s death-recovery programs invariably involve substance abuse, but Grohl’s involved, yeah, music. He cut the entire record all by himself (vox, guitars, bass, drums), and it became the debut Foo record. “Much of what I know about music,” he says, “I learned from being in a band with Kurt Cobain.” He had to endure being told off by people for what looked like an ill-timed endeavor (“How dare you,” etc.), but hey, songs had to be written. And while we’re at it, there’s also the matter of preventing drug-related fatalities. When Taylor Hawkins fell to a coma for a good week or so, it was like KC in Rome all over again, and Grohl was in tears.

How to choose your friends and co-workers. There is, of course, that Nick Hornby edict that goes, “It’s really about what you like, not what you are like.” You can audition people all you like, but if you pick a guy who’ll turn out to have the entire Kenny G. discography stashed away with his family’s heirlooms, you won’t be too cocky about your judgment. When Grohl found himself in a club watching the farewell gig of a band called Sunny Day Real Estate (who has since reunited, by the way), he also found himself his first rhythm section: bassist Nate Mendel, who’ll stay on forever, and drummer William Goldsmith, who would tour with them shortly but sadly wouldn’t perform on any record. Musicians don’t go to the hairdresser’s or the neighborhood Starbucks to find a potential best friend; they catch buzz-worthy punk-rock shows and form bands with the people onstage.

How to fire people (or drive them to leave their jobs). The sad thing really—though not necessarily a tragedy—is the fact that you can be the nicest Joe in your particular postal district but still get fired from your job, or be forced to quit (like William Goldsmith, who would find out that Grohl has pretty much redone all of his drum tracks for The Color and the Shape). Meanwhile, it was a déjà vu of sorts for Franz Stahl: Grohl was in his old band, Scream, but would later dump them for Nirvana; when Pat Smear pulled the rug from under Grohl’s feet and left, Grohl would giddily ask Stahl to jump in, only to get the boot almost as quickly as he’d been asked. I’m not trying to paint an ugly picture at all; needless to say, Grohl wasn’t happy about this, but he also wasn’t happy about the music being produced with Stahl on board. “You don’t want to see someone disappear out of your life. […] I feel bad about the bad things; I feel good about the good things,” Grohl narrates.

How to honor your past. The look on Dave’s face when he harmonizes with Bob Mould (Hüsker Dü, Sugar) on “Dear Rosemary.” The cheerful, almost tensionless return of Pat Smear several years after he left the band. Krist (gasp!) Novoselic walking in to jam on bass and (gasp!) accordion on “I Should Have Known,” off of new album Wasting Light. Freaking Butch Vig producing. The Foos know that, no matter how many tickets they sell or charts they top, they shouldn’t forget those old telephone numbers. (Aldus Santos)

“Foo Fighters rock Düsseldorf” by Rongyos 1997; image of Dave Grohl and Chris Shiflett by Scott Barlow, both via Flickr Creative Commons. Some rights reserved. For more information on the film, go to the official website. Trailer below (via Quakeowner on YouTube):

When Radiohead reconvened in Paris back in January 1999 to begin recording sessions for the follow-up to OK Computer, Thom Yorke had been listening excessively to electronica, having ordered the entire back catalogue of Warp Records upon returning home from the Against Demons world tour.

Immersing himself in the binary beats and bleeps of such pioneers as Autechre and Aphex Twin, he rediscovered his love for electronic music—a love that dates back to his college days—inspiring him to deconstruct Radiohead’s sound into what eventually became the monumental masterpiece that is Kid A, and its uncanny, unforgettable sister album, Amnesiac.

Fast forward ten years and we now have The King of Limbs, Radiohead’s eighth studio album, an exercise in experimentation much like Kid A and Amnesiac in its focus on rhythm, mood, and texture, as well as in its reflection of contemporary electronic movements.

Further inspection reveals a band still in tune with the present forward-thinking sounds, specifically dubstep and its many permutations. They are also still very much in love with Warp Records, taking inspiration from some of the best artists on the label’s eclectic current roster.

The aptly titled opener, “Bloom,” summarizes The King Of Limbs’ modus operandi with its marriage of the past and the present: a modern-classical piano motif combined with minimalist Mingus-style basslines propelled forward by drumbeats that sound like Fela Kuti and Flying Lotus in a fist-fight inside a free-form jazz nightclub while Yorke gently commands you to “open your mouth wide” and take it all in.

The motorik drive of “Morning Mr. Magpie” moves towards Krautrock territory via Battles with John Stanier’s bombast replaced with Phil Selway’s precision and restraint. In more ways than one, the Radiohead timekeeper is “The King of Limbs,” as he actually sounds like he grew an extra pair of arms with his complex polyrhythmic drumming pushing forward six out of eight tracks that comprise the album, specifically on the organic post-dubstep shuffle of “Feral,” echoing the aforementioned Flying Lotus with throbbing low frequencies, cut-and-paste beats, and chopped-up vocals.

“Little By Little,” on the other hand, is reminiscent of the more adventurous side of The Beatles’ Revolver, updated with Gonjasufi’s psychedelic Middle Eastern guitar scales and layers of ambient tape loops. While the hypnotically majestic surrender of acoustic lullaby “Give Up the Ghost” echoes some familiar Neil Young sleight-of-hand along with Grizzly Bear’s pastoral hymns and choral arrangements.

Duality and contrast run deep throughout The King of Limbs but it is most apparent in the lead single, “Lotus Flower,” which starts off with ominous bass hums, clattering beats, and handclaps, before blooming into pop perfection with subtle church organs and Yorke’s sexiest falsetto delivery ever. There is a strange soulfulness to the controlled chaos of The King of Limbs that is best articulated in the album closer, “Separator,” which surprisingly shows Radiohead finally at ease. Fitter, happier.

While Radiohead’s previous forays into electronic music always seemed cold, dark, and distant, what sets this record apart is the fact that it sounds natural and effortless, graceful and uplifting even, despite its various tools and methods.

For the first time in many years, Radiohead sounds like they have complete control over the push and pull between the old and the new, the organic and the mechanical, achieving a perfect balance between human expression and artificial intelligence. In many ways, The King of Limbs is both a logical progression and a natural evolution for a band that has, for almost two decades now, successfully pushed the boundaries of what is considered and accepted as “pop music.” To be able to make something this complex sound so simple and accessible is both impressive and exhilarating, a true testament to Radiohead’s genius. (Chi Brotonel)

Band photo culled from their Facebook page.

“What I’ve always loved about fiction is its ability to be smart about people who aren’t themselves smart, or at least don’t have the resources to describe their own emotional states,” Nick Hornby wrote in one of his articles for The Believer.*

We already see this in his fiction, but when a songwriting bug bit Hornby, he carried this focus on characters into Lonely Avenue, his 2010 collaboration with Ben Folds. For example, “A Working Day” is presumably about a struggling writer who, instead of using the expected eloquence, reverts to breaking the writers’ cardinal rule: show, don’t tell. With lines like, “I’m a genius, really, I’m excellent/Better than them, I kick their asses,” he reveals his own mediocrity, one he acknowledges at the end of the song, set to Folds’ jaunty music.

“Levi Johnston’s Blues” pulls no punches when the song’s persona declares, “I’m a fuckin’ redneck, I live to hang out with the boys/Play some hockey, do some fishin’ and kill some moose,” in response to what may be a shotgun wedding between him and the VP nominee’s daughter, whom he’d impregnated while she was probably slumming. He probably runs in the same gang as the tattooed, pierced individual with the taste for violent pornography in “Your Dogs,” whose reasonable, genteel neighbor tries to cajole him with, “I still have high hopes you could join our community/There’s more of us than you now, but we’d welcome the diversity/You’re not white trash, like the other neighbors say.” This neighbor’s patience sometimes flags, as the chorus attests, and the line, “Sometimes I let my fantasies run,” followed by a volley of electronica, leaves the rest to the listeners’ imaginations.

Hornby and Folds do take a more serious turn with numbers like “Practical Amanda,” a dreaming husband’s ode to his wife, who’s good with “the nuts and bolts of living” and has been interpreted as a personal tribute to Hornby’s wife. “Picture Window” sings of the wife of a terminally ill patient, trying not to give in to hope, that bastard. If her spouse were to die suddenly, she’d move on to loss and grief, instead of staying in the drawn-out wait for death, wavering between despair and hope, which still seeps through the cracks in the form of sparkling champagne and fireworks.

“Doc Pomus” is Hornby’s heartfelt tribute to white blues songwriter Jerome Solon Felder, whom the world better knows by his stage name. His single, “Lonely Avenue,” became a hit for Ray Charles in 1956, and now lends its title to this album. Hornby puts himself in Doc Pomus’s shoes—or wheelchair, for that matter. He places the songwriter in a regular haunt, the lobby of the Hotel Forrest in New York, observing the “freighters, hustlers, hard-up millionaires/mobsters, cops, whores, pimps, and Marxists.” Hornby even relates an incident at the Spindletop, the Forrest’s steakhouse, where Pomus and Phil Spector witnessed a mob hit.

Hornby and Folds honor Pomus by keeping their subject human with lines borrowed from an unfinished biography: “And he never could be one of those happy cripples/The kind that smile and tell you life’s OK/He was mad as hell, frightened and bitter/He found a way to make his isolation pay.”

Other compelling characters populate Lonely Avenue: the lover-turned-sleuth in “Password”; the young girl trying to celebrate her birthday and enduring her parents’ divorce in “Claire’s Ninth”; the singer who just left his wife, for whom he’d written “Belinda,” a one-hit-wonder, a long time ago, and now can’t crank out any more chart-toppers.

“Saskia Hamilton” deviates radically from Hornby’s love of plain language by portraying one man’s obsession with a poetess’s name, a name so euphonious, dactylic, assonant, and sibilant as to inspire visions of wedded bliss. Folds performs the song with enough electronic explosions to get listeners out of their seats and convince them that the song’s persona is off his rocker.

Here’s an adorable video rendition of “Saskia Hamilton” by a fan, charlieissocoollike:

Hornby’s perspective draws back to the third person in “From Above,” a song upbeat enough to invite listeners to clap along, until they realize they’re singing, “Sure we all have soulmates but we walk past them every day, oh no.” As with most of the tracks in the album, Folds belies the melancholy inherent in some of the lyrics with deceptively lively arrangements and the playful singing voice that at times turns plaintive.

Obsession, narcissism, youth, old age, grief, suspicion, love. These keep the residents of Lonely Avenue isolated and alone, and render them as objects of pity, ridicule, and empathy. Nick Hornby and Ben Folds have created an imagined neighborhood out of names on books, little girls waiting at corners, raucous miscreants, the people one passes on the street, making everyday, non-lyrical strangers less strange, and perhaps not so alone. (Paul Catiang)

__________

*Hornby, Nick. “April 2005.” Housekeeping vs. the Dirt. San Francisco: Believer Books, 2006.

“Nick Hornby & Jasmin Tabatabai lesen ‘Juliet, Naked’ im Admiralspalast Berlin” by Admiralspalast Berlin; “Ben Folds Leading the Pack One-Handed” by deovolenti—both via Flickr Creative Commons. Some rights reserved. (The record is available at Fully Booked High Street; I pray to God other stores start carrying it, too. – Ed.)

One of the aspects that’s most argued in the downloadable-versus-physical album divide is, of course, the visual element. I mean, imagine Klaus Voorman’s cover art for The Beatles’ Revolver as a puny .jpeg file, shrunk even smaller than Rick Moranis’ kids. It’s a tragedy, yes, but also a travesty to the art form. To put things in perspective: the dimensions of an LP sleeve are roughly ten by twelve inches, which, for all intents and purposes, is something you can hang on your living-room wall.

On the other hand, you’ve got a cassette (the next step after LPs) and its constricting four-by-three frame, which is something you can fit (well, almost) into your ass-pocket. That kind of portability is utilitarian, but for art, it is a virtual slap, as though a palm is ample space for real, palpable art. The compact disc was an improvement as a canvas, but it was nonetheless lacking in grandiosity. Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs are the best, but I doubt if anyone would get floored when shown an image of a visibly perturbed Patti Smith the size of a pouch of peanuts.

There are album covers that look like album covers (i.e., like fulfillments of a damn contract), and there are those, meanwhile, that do not merely deserve a “second look,” but an autonomous second look, a look that tells you you’re looking at art that could be dislodged from whatever narrative a rock band is trying to pass off. Such a look should be given to the work of Stanley Donwood, the guy who (from My Iron Lung onwards) is responsible for the album art of those brainy Radiohead people. In the 2007 print release Dead Children Playing, Donwood displays his mastery of different artistic idioms, from the non-sequitur ink panels from the Kid A era, to the handsome acrylics of the signage-as-art pieces off Hail to the Thief, to the lino prints that appear in Thom Yorke’s The Eraser.

The art volume is conjured up with the cooperation of a certain Dr. Tchock, who’s really Thom Yorke on ideas and, I’m guessing, some of the text. It collects and re-angles Donwood’s body of work for the reader/viewer/art appreciator, Radiohead fan or otherwise. Time will tell if Donwood’s apocalyptic collages will be of lasting effect to modern art. For now, at least, his pieces are freed from those constrictive jewel cases and are now collected in book form, where clearly, he’s the rockstar. (Aldus Santos)

The author ordered his copy via Amazon, though you could be luckier and might find it in local bookstores (who knows).

For the recent 4^th International Silent Film Festival, Filipino jam band the Out of Body Special (OBS) lent their able hands in crafting the musical background to the 1927 Walther Ruttman classic Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (a.k.a. Berlin: Symphony of a Great City). Heard were variations on the band’s existing songs so arranged to fit the flow of images Ruttman used for his cinematic symphony of 1920s Berlin. Percussionist Diego Beltran explains, “Well, we just had to fit the songs into it; it was our idea that we use all our existing songs to create the mood for the film.” The end product was, to say the least, groovy. OBS is, after all, a hip-hop group hailed by Time Magazine as one of Asia’s best bands.

On board to collaborate and jam was renowned German composer and silent movie scorer Stephan von Bothmer. Before the movie began, von Bothmer related, “Berlin has sort of become a center for hip-hop nowadays,” explaining the rationale behind choosing OBS for the film. Perhaps this was all in line with efforts to “update” the movie’s message and present a more contemporary (i.e. “different”) picture of Berlin.

Originally, Die Sinfonie was released just around the time when the idea of sound embedded into movies began to hold ground. But even before The Jazz Singer (Warner Brothers, 1927) came out, filmmakers and movie producers already understood the importance of an aural component to a cineaste’s experience.  Having musicians and bands on-call to score movies live was an industry practice, but, due to time and economic pressures, these scores were, at best, treated as merely incidental.

Ruttman approached his film differently, however. Lauded Austrian-born composer Edmund Meisel was asked to be on-board early in the project. At the time, Meisel was a foremost choice, as his work on Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) was already beloved by audiences and intellectuals alike. As Die SinfonieI took around a year to film, Ruttman had in mind Meisel’s score. Such importance was given to this music, Ruttman actually edited his images to fit certain musical passages. Where most movie scores are crafted after the movie has been edited, the process here was reversed. Apparently, certain cinematically beautiful shots were discarded just because they didn’t congeal with the themes presented in Meisel’s music.

With a 75-piece orchestra uncharacteristically scattered across the Tauetzin Palast cinema, Die Sinfonie opened in September 23, 1927. Aside from traditional instruments, found objects such as anvils and sheets of iron were apparently used.

Sadly, only a simpler version of this music (written for a piano duo and a percussionist) exists today. This “economical” score is heard on some clips of the movie uploaded on YouTube (The movie is already of public domain). Its focal point is its jagged rhythms, while its melodies and harmonies are jarringly discordant.

Perhaps Meisel wanted to express the almost machine-like pace Berlin had tried to reconstruct itself after World War I. At the same time, the latent dissonance and uptight nature of his music could be understood as a foreshadowing to more horrid times. World War II, of course, was just around the corner.

All this lies in stark contrast to the smooth beats and tunes laid out by OBS, which lend themselves all too easily to the bobbing of heads and the swaying of hips, hip-hop style. Keyboardist Inky De Dios shares, “We watched the movie several times, not listening to the original score so as not to be influenced.”

Where Meisel’s score must have been deliberately planned out in sheet music, OBS’ was simply itemized in song titles (or, better yet, “ideas”), very similar to the set lists bands have taped on the stages they perform in. “I guess in this case, our approach was more similar to making a music video in reverse, and for our whole body of work instead of just a single!” shares guitarist Patrick Co.

One could say it sounded like a free yet focused jam. Apparently, von Bothmer would prove to be instrumental in this regard. Vocalist Los Magno relates, “[Von Bothmer] gave great pointers, particularly about keeping our eyes fixed mostly on the film as it played. He encouraged solos, varying our intensity, and creating space.” Beltran continues, “His experience and immense talent made the ride more focused, yet, [there was] a lot of room for improvisation. Before the performance, Stephan reminded us to enjoy [it] like it was just a gig.”

As Ruttman and Meisel sought to present a cross-section of Berlin as they knew it, the objective of OBS was slightly different. “I just needed to relate the similarities of pre-World War II Berlin to our experiences today: the fast pace of urban living, technology, and what it’s all about in the first place, which is making a living in order to live,” explains Magno.

Where trains in the movie are seen entering Berlin, or leaving for other great European cities, Magno would pipe in, “Approaching, Ayala station.” What started off as an homage to the great German city became an oblique reference to Metro Manila. With the music of OBS, the movie can suddenly speak of the universality of urban living. De Dios shares, “My idea of a big city is one full of stories, with people from different backgrounds, jobs, and social strata crammed into a small space. This is still the same whether you’re in Berlin in the ‘20s or Manila in the new millennium.”

Die Sinfonie was created during a time far removed from the boom and bustle of surround sound, 3D glasses, and in-your-face Michael Bay action films (with those “epic” tunes for those “epic” scenes). Regardless, movie scorers, then and now, are driven essentially by the same assumption. True, the focal point of movies is the flow of images projected across the screen. Filmmaking can easily be called a visual art in that sense. But such a categorization does not necessarily play down the role of what moviegoers hear. There are differences between the scores of Meisel and OBS (some very stark); in the end, though, both bolster the notion that film can very much be a musical medium. (Mikey “Billy B.” Abola)

Performance images courtesy of Stephan Bothmer by way of Patrick Co.

Perhaps because they came to me almost-bootleg, I initially viewed the songs of Kakoy & Johnoy (Johnoy & Kakoy) as objects of utter sincerity. This, after all, is how exactly love songs should be shared: either from that high school love who still thinks that mix tapes are cool, or, really, from a sibling gushing (like a head wound). You can approach this method of music acquisition in the same vein as the dying art of the love letter, or just holding someone’s hand without the fireworks, or the self-reflexive, ironic, wink-wink moment that most people think love is all about, or even grand cinematic spectacle (perhaps with the music swelling).

The jaunty strumming that introduces “Pagtatapat” tells you that you’re in for a good story. And it is one with which most people are familiar. The seemingly belated entry of the voice cues you into the excited and nervous energy that powers the song: yes, the persona is in love, madly in love, and he’s mustering up the courage (with each guitar strum) to finally say so. With the earnestness of an old black-and-white Mickey Mouse flick, the narrative portrays scene after scene of hesitation (“nagsasalita sa harap ng salamin”) and textbook juvenile anxiety (“natutunaw sa lagkit ng kanyang tinig”). And, along with these, the arrangement helps build the tension, slowly shifting from jangly ragtime rhythms to drawn-out notes and harmonies that sound as though pleading for love to be returned, and also syncopated by the clarinet’s distractions, as though the clarinet itself were overwhelmed by the possibilities of how it could just be so sweet.

In reality, however, it is not the actual revelation in the narrative that serves as the climax, when the music actually does swell; it is the pleading of the persona to be rid of misery (“Ayoko nang umasa pa./Kung ayaw mo sa akin,/sabihin mo na”). It is as if our ardent suitor sees the reality in front of him, and it is, sadly, not couple-dom. He then comforts himself with the thought of at least having professed love, over and over, knowing that perhaps only the gods’ favor will give him his heart’s desire. And then the voice gives way because only music could fill that uncertainty of waiting for someone to say yes.

I can only imagine how “Pagtatapat” would be performed in settings where it could be prefaced with the actual story, but without that, I’ll take my cues from the song and its vaudevillian shades. You can just hear the silent laugh track, because unrequited love is funny, sad, and unrelenting—at least until the giant hook pulls you off the rickety wooden stage.

Now, “Will I Ever Waltz” is from the same ilk, and it’s about how love changes in the rocky terrain of uncertainty now at the story’s denouement (do we not all have one love story after all?). This song is tinged with simple and poignant lyricism, and even lyric in the poetic sense, a plea to an unnamed you. It is wry without bearing the coarse irony that a lot of self-conscious indie musicians wield like baby balisongs.

Apart from the furtive plucking that informs much of the song, the easy label of “sentimental folksy ditty” is obliterated by the plainspoken nature of the song’s lyrics (as well as its certain and masterful turns of musical phrase.) Yes, it is lyric and heartbreakingly confessional but without annoying, cloying solipsism. You know that somehow, the voice (or the persona) is singing alone, working out in his head what comes next before he answers an inevitable question. There is an infinite stretch of time that comes before cleaving (yes, to cleave as both “to separate” and “to hold fast faithfully”), and when a song can give you that much space in your head, then you know it is utterance, a strong and honest utterance of such fragile uncertainty. The dramatic situation of a lover trying to discern uncertain fidelity or certain separation is told in recognizable clichés (this is a love song after all). But the surprising use of such idioms (“No comic relief in this novel romance”) gives you critical leeway, as great songs do, to say that this is your song as well as it is his.

Wishing that I had more language and sense to speak of the music so eloquently, all I can say is that the music itself is lyrical. It moves as certain and as uncertainly as the lyrics do—as if in disbelief to find that the notes that do come, fit with what came before it and what came before that. Because this is what great songs must do: give you a parenthesis of coherence in a time where incongruity is default. And when words give way to the unsayable? Yes, there are no words but lo, there is song.

Is it kosher to say that folk is graceful? Because that is exactly what it is. It is this same artful dissonance that resonates in the title—though the use of the word waltz may refer to the song’s structure—it is also a conjecture into the nature of love. Both songs are.

And until we all finally “secure this insecure love of yours” then by Bathala, there should be music. And please, please, please, God, let it be from them. (Anina Abola)

Photos of Kakoy Legaspi and Johnoy and Kakoy by Aries Guinto. Photo of Johnoy Danao by Pong Ignacio. Images used courtesy of Kakoy Legaspi.

While MGMT’s 2007 album Oracular Spectacular was rendered as psychedelic electro-pop, it could have easily crossed over and charmed stoner-rock fans, hipster cliques, and yuppie circles alike with a brand of cleanly executed pop that was all memorable hooks, and lyrics that balanced emotional weight with lighthearted humor. That record was proof that even four decades after the Age of Aquarius, psychedelia and free love still bring us all together.

Oracular Spectacular, however was an album of singles, club hits that would have easily turned MGMT into “that band that did that song; I love that song!” With Congratulations, their 2010 release, MGMT appear to be making a conscious effort to create an album that is supposed to be played uninterrupted from start to finish. The album cover even has the look and feel of a vinyl record sleeve. For the fans of the radio-friendly sing-along hits like “Time to Pretend” and “Kids,” listening to and digesting an entire album may seem like too monumental a task. But even for new listeners, while Congratulations has some semblance of cohesion, it still manages to fall flat in the end by bearing a close resemblance to a David Bowie tribute album made by someone who merely had The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars described to them.

Congratulations opens with “It’s Working,” which is reminiscent of the rollicking riffs on the Pixies’ “Cecilia Ann” (the first track from their 1990 album Bossanova), peaks with the 12-minute opus “Siberian Breaks,” and ends with the piano-driven sighs of relief on the title track, “Congratulations.” It has a unifying theme; whatever that theme is still remains unclear, although somewhere between “Brian Eno” and “Lady Dada’s Nightmare,” I was pretty sure the theme was spite, making Congratulations MGMT’s ode to an apparent reluctance to accept mainstream success. (Alice Sarmiento)

Performance photograph of MGMT by Delgoff, via Wikimedia Commons.

To the extent that people actually took notice, Emir (d: Chito Roño) burst into the scene shrouded in dubious tinsel. It was disingenuously dubbed as the first Filipino musical, notwithstanding earlier efforts of the intellectual-property unconscious set such as Horsey Horsey Tigidig Tigidig (1986), and to say nothing about the first ever Filipino film, Dalagang Bukid (1919), a silent film which still featured Atang de la Rama singing live behind the curtains as her celluloid doppelganger wordlessly mouthed along. Emir also happened to be partly funded by “the President’s social fund.” State-sponsored art where the State dictates the art (and not just merely funds it) carries the stigma of sanitization, more so when the subject matter deals with politically potent iconography such as the heroic OFW, who in this case, is named Amelia (Frencheska Farr).

Emir begins with the promise of Amelia’s journey, as she prepares to leave the Cordillera hinterlands she and her family call home in order to earn some money in the Middle East working in the household for a generic royal in a generic country. She arrives at her desert-nation of call within 15 minutes of the film, and remains there for almost the entire film. Her common sense versus deference approach wins her the coveted duty of nanny to the only male heir of the family. Alas, there are few career advancement opportunities for Amelia and she marinates in the role of Yaya Primera Una for the next fifteen years or so; fending off the jealous taunts of her fellow Pinay maids, as well as being sob sister to the less caricaturish of her colleagues. Then war breaks out and everybody dies. Almost.

Emir never fully escapes the trap of film as homework. The basic plot is one that can be easily devised by a high-school student tasked with staging a play on the plight of migrant workers, and with some money, too. It dutifully features the expected touchstones of the OFW experience—the domestic instability they leave behind as well as wealth through remittances that they forward, the romantic frustrations they suffer through as well as the close bonds they form with their colleagues/housemates, the religious compromises they accept as to their worship and the religious understanding they gain observing the faiths of their temporary homeland. These episodes may resonate with the OFW audience, but the sentiments are too often context-specific to gain greater currency with a broader audience. The connect-the-dots mentality that pushes the plot helps little in developing for the audience any immersive experience with which they can empathize.

What the filmmakers and funders had hoped would set Emir apart would be the song and dance that tells about two-fifths of the film. The musical score is a mishmash of Pinoy pop, power ballads, Broadway-lite, folk music, and torch-lit Viennese choruses; unmemorable but not cacophonic. Choreography is happily infrequent, as the few examples we do see range from mediocre to trite. Again, the sense is that Emir is a musical not because the people who did care enough to tell this story couldn’t see it play out in any other way, but because they were just following orders. Still, two of the musical numbers do stand out. The first is a Proustian trigger set to Ifugao-inspired music as Amelia recollects her late grandmother’s advise as she prepares for her own journey. It works well, because when we do find ourselves singing at odd moments, it often is due to our own flashbacks of sentimental value.

The other number that works—the best thing in the film—embodies a complete story in itself and deserves extended discussion. It comes late in the film after imperious Ester (Dulce), the longtime household mayordoma, is forced into retirement due to health problems. Resigned to the fact that Amelia will be the new mayordoma, she is stunned to learn that Amelia had turned down the promotion due to insufficient ambition. The resulting ballad, “Hindi Ko Pinangarap,” features Dulce in the throes of denial and realization as it dawns on her that the noble OFW journey she had just completed may have actually just been a waste of her entire adult life. Dulce’s voice alone can already induce goosebumps, but witnessing the subtle control she invests in what is an emotionally devastating song will leave you in bereavement. It is among the best musical performances I’ve ever seen on film, and it makes you wish that the rest of the film were much better.

The honest emotional investment of “Hindi Ko Pinangarap” makes me resent even more Emir’s denouement by way of Caparas. When the war finally comes, let’s just imagine The Sound of Music but where the Von Trapp children (and all the nuns, too) are massacred by the Nazis on the convent steps, leaving the traumatized Maria and her Captain trekking the mountains in frightened flight, then Maria stupidly falling asleep only to awake to the sounds of her beloved being carted away by uniformed Nazis. On one level—the one where the film tries to avoid being an advertisement for “Let’s Fly to Dubai!”—this climax works. Emir will not find shelf-life as an in-flight movie for Philippine Airlines Middle East flights. Yet whatever outrage or groundswell of emotion one may feel over this climax is elicited through a cheap stunt that arguably bears little relation to the daily plight of our OFWs. The cast of characters may have as well been instead in a bus along Balamban. But a more prosaic ending would have deprived us the sight of Ms. Farr trudging along the stunning barren desert landscape. And in the end, that’s what the President’s social fund bought us, didn’t it? (Oliver X.A. Reyes)

Horsey Horsey Tigidig Tigidig poster via Video 48’s Blogspot. Emir stills and behind-the-scenes photography from the film’s official site.

Phil Spector, who had just recently severed his ties with reality, had a very clear and interesting notion about mono, the format that for most of his career as a producer defined his sound, and which he preferred over stereo even at the face of anachronism. This did not have anything to do with the quality of the sound (quality, or the lack of it, wasn’t the issue) or a Brian Wilson-style auditory defect that forced him to use only one speaker. His reason was obvious yet still surprising: mono was indestructible. As a format for broadcasting and consuming popular music, it was practically fool-proof. According to Spector, at least where hearing is concerned, the dynamics of stereo are hugely affected by the listener’s position relative to the sound source.

Thus, unless one is using headphones (hardly available at the time) or is seated at an exact distance to the source and never moved, certain parts of a song—a guitar lick, the hi-hat, or heaven forbid, the vocals—will either be lost or muddled. The final result is that the song’s fidelity would be compromised. Not a problem with a mono mix. In mono, no matter where you were in the room, no matter the size of your speakers or your radio’s reception, a mono mix’s, well, oneness guaranteed that you will still hear the same piece of music that was recorded in the studio. Everything is balanced and undisturbed. That fabled Wall of Sound will remain standing; Diana Ross’s voice will still be crystal clear; and that drumkit will still sound like it was recorded in a humongous bathroom. In other words, the song as it was intended remains intact. Uncorrupted. True.

Of course, all these abstract, old-school concepts mean absolutely nothing to us folks in the 21st century. In the age of the personal touch, the idea of not being able to tamper with or even choose how to enjoy your own hard-earned downloads is ludicrous. However, if you strain your ears, there are ghost notes in Spector’s production. His obsession with mono puts forth the ideal of the producer as God and the final mix, his indisputable law. This is not megalomania. This is art. To be able to dictate the rules of the game has always been a true artist’s hallmark. Kubrick, Picasso, the Marquis de Sade, Yoyoy Villame are but a few of those who have time and again asserted their individuality and revolutionized their respective eras.

But even greatness has to step in line with the march of time. How quickly one era’s technological wonder becomes the next one’s clunky curiosity. Mono, for all the superlatives heaped upon it by Spector, could not hold back the change to stereo any more than silent movies could hold back the change to talkies. I myself prefer stereo because I want stuff coming at me from both sides. I want to be constantly reminded that both my ears are still working. And when I’m wearing headphones, I love the feeling when a certain sound goes in one ear and out the other. It tickles.

So it was with a mix of curiosity, cynicism, and mild confusion that I received word of The Beatles’ mono remasters. What the hell is so special about those mono releases? Didn’t they burn those at the Tennessee bonfires during the “Bigger than Jesus” scandal? Still, I secretly approved of the sheer genius of it. Those clever bastards, I thought. What could a man do but search online? There was some sort of waitlist for the remasters (this was a year ago). Crunch time. The rave reviews, techie blogs, the obscene price tag, the frantic search on eBay. It kept me giddy and bug-eyed for a whole month.

I’m no audiophile. I just love listening to music in whatever shape or form. I like the best stuff. The trumpets have sounded that this was the Holy Grail of boxed sets. Still, I’ve listened to the whole catalogue so many times that whatever new revelations were in store in listening to it again even in the “definitive” version would be few and, at best, underwhelming. I was half-right. The first five albums yielded very little new insights. Four of them have already been released in mono 20 years ago. And yes, those sounded like crap.

Skip to Rubber Soul, their sixth album. A collection of elegantly crafted pop tunes which coincidentally saw the seeds of their studio-tinkering starting to bud (pardon the pun). They were also participating more in the mixing sessions, a fact that the geniuses at EMI marketing didn’t hold back in establishing the supreme superiority of these remasters. You see, the mono mixes had the Fab Four’s personal touch, being the only format that mattered at the time (stereo was for hardcore audiophiles!). The stereo mixes they simply tossed to George Martin and the engineer. Yes, it’s like EMI is saying the stereo masters are crap.

Mono is a focused ball of energy, power balanced on a tightrope of electricity. This occurred to me as the whole band joined in after the guitar lick on opener “Drive My Car.”

Ringo was really pounding on the drums. I believe the Filipino word for this is bumabayo. Whereas his drum kit was always relegated to literal “side” status (incomprehensibly panned all the way to the right or left side) in the stereo mixes, he takes center-stage in mono and really drives the song forward. The bass was fuller. When you’ve got the rhythm section locked in, the song turns into a monolith instead of a bunch of scattered rocks. On the normally grating “Think for Yourself,” the fuzz bass now enhances the rhythm instead of distracting you like some pesky housefly. So this Spector guy really was onto something.

The trend continues on the more sinister Revolver, where on “I’m Only Sleeping” a stray back-masked guitar lick appears where it shouldn’t be. Clearly, the band was more inclined to play around with the mono mixes. Score one for EMI. And is it me or does “Yellow Submarine” actually sound better?

I’ve always thought Sgt. Pepper was hugely overrated. Still do. It’s not a bad album; it just doesn’t live up to the hype. This is mainly due to the fact that it sags in the middle. The culprits, as any fan will tell you, are the draggingly dull “She’s Leaving Home” and the draggingly duller “Within You Without You.” Somehow in mono the former is livelier (it’s faster than the stereo version) and Paul seems to be singing in the right key now. Elsewhere on the album, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” achieves heights in the chorus never reached by the stereo version.

Too self-aware for its own good, Sgt. Pepper cannot hold a candle to Magical Mystery Tour, a tossed-out, hastily compiled soundtrack to a universally reviled TV movie. It starts with the rousing title track and never lets up, the highlight being “Strawberry Fields Forever,” a song every bit the equal of “A Day in the Life.” By this time of course, the same amount of attention was being lavished on the stereo mixes. No doubt the band realized that stereo offered even more room to play with, especially in light of the now growing number of available tracks (four). This is no more apparent than in the monster White Album.

This eclectic album (forays into noise, reggae, avant-garde, heavy metal, folk, all lassoed by a jarring Old West motif) probably motivated the coinage of the word eclectic. It’s no exaggeration to say that the mono version blew me away for the second time. The band’s jagged magnum opus has now become a perfect album. How so? “Don’t Pass Me By,” Ringo’s regrettable time-waster, has been transformed into a fun saloon romp, all thanks to a little nudge to the pitch control knob, similar to “She’s Leaving Home.” Yup, sometimes a few BPMs make all the difference.

The White Album heralded the last gasps of mono. From then on the Beatles would mix exclusively in stereo, while mixing in both formats became exclusive to singles. The real revelation was not how the number of channels revolutionized records, but that it didn’t matter how much meat you packed. It is crucial to strike the proper balance, and this is no more apparent than in the seemingly insignificant differences in the remasters. Sgt. Pepper could’ve been a real classic. Ringo could have been a real contender for best singer-drummer. Whole wars could have been averted. Billions of lives saved. See? There’s some truth to that shit after all. (Ely Buendia)

“Phil Spector mugshot,” though generally attributed to the Los Angeles Police Department, belongs to the public domain. “Wall of Sound” by wauter de tuinkabouter, via Flickr. Some rights reserved. “Kodak Stereo-Phonic” by piterart, via Flickr. Some rights reserved. “The Cavern replica of the Beatles Story museum (2)” by Hens Zimmerman, via Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reserved.

For various reasons and circumstances, certain musical forms and genres (and thus certain acts) are readily associated with certain types of venues or situations. Swanky, glitz-and-glamour bars don’t seem like appropriate places to hear something like the Urban Bandits’ “Do You Rebel, Rebel,” or The Wuds’ “At Nakalimutan ang Diyos” for that matter. Filipino black-metal stalwarts Bloodshedd would stick out like an angry middle finger if seen setting up after a jazz band in some hotel lounge (unless of course that hotel is in hell). Likewise, the confessions of singer-songwriter types like Gary Granada or Cynthia Alexander would probably be drowned out in a warehouse designed for the frenzied, ecstatic hysteria of a rave.

If this is sound logic then Causers of This, the debut album by Toro y Moi (the moniker of half-Filipino, half-African-American soundsmith Chaz Bundick) can work for a house party that is either a) slightly begrudging the fact that it is winding down, or b) simply cruising through a respite in preparation for a return to a high-energy breakout. Yes, this is yet another dance album, but one that calms the dance-floor divas down, not entice them to show off further.

Online press went abuzz when this album came out in early 2010, lumping Toro y Moi with such bands as Neon Indian, Memory Tapes, Washed Out, and, to some extent, Animal Collective under the banner of the so-called “chill-wave” movement. In Causers of This, layers upon layers of synthesizers, reverb-laden guitars, and god-knows-what-else, are driven along by straightforward, mid-tempo beats that lay the groundwork for basslines so deep, one almost feels it as a physical presence. Bundick seems to be very playful as a producer, embellishing the already lush arrangements with minute artifacts that leave the most attentive of audiophiles second-guessing themselves (i.e., “Did I just hear a ghost on the record?”).

Of course, while at the house party, there isn’t much time to harp on the details of this dance album. In fact, Bundick’s own watery and garbled vocals seem only incidental to everything else that’s happening. However, underneath the aural accoutrements of Causers of This is a latent sadness that comes out only if one actually sits down to listen, perhaps with a lyric sheet on hand. On “Fax Shadow,” there is remorse and disdain for an ex-lover’s new romance (“Don’t tell me anymore about what you have/I know you’re different now from what I had/I’m sorry that I couldn’t name the color of your eyes”). On the other hand, there is an acceptance of loss in “Low Shoulder” (“That was us for the last five years,/now it’s over and it’s getting better”). Perhaps Causers of This is to Toro y Moi as Sea Change was to Beck.

Where and when, then, would this album be an appropriate listen? Surely, the confessional nature of Bundick’s lyrics is hidden away from the cursory listening prevalent in a house party. Of course, this might be his aim in the first place. After all, it would be quite the buzzkill if somebody started reading aloud pages off of their diary while everybody was in the midst of party-grade socializing. On the other hand, this doesn’t change the fact that Bundick’s stories are there for anybody to pick out. I’d hazard a guess this record is heard best with one’s ears nestled within a set of studio-grade headphones. (Mikey “Billy B.” Abola)

Toro y Moi performance photo by Mehan, via Flickr. Some rights reserved. Causers of This is distributed locally by Universal.

To pigeonhole Sigur Rós as an “exotic” act wouldn’t really be “missing the point.” Certainly, the idea of a non-English-speaking band holding the world’s imagination captive does seem “alien.” How did this inherently obscurantist Icelandic band get so, well, affecting? In the first place, I’m not one of those people who easily get tickled by exotica. I don’t care much for the incidentals of art, i.e., an artist’s racial or socio-cultural pedigree, his or her strange accent, the way he uses a cello bow on a guitar.

Whatever.

But I can shed a tear or two while listening to “Staràlfur,” and I can understand why its repeated descending melodies are like daggers to the heart, even though it’s sung in Icelandic, a language that’s as alien to me as platypi. (To those who’ve seen Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, I can also understand how first discovering Sigur Rós presents the same emotional conundrum as finally seeing the “jaguar shark” in the flesh: it’s a feeling of glory, but also a vague sensation of xenophobia.) The intrigue is of course buoyed by their dreampop, and, in their latter work, by the use of a language one can’t even hire a translator to decode: Hopelandic, which is made-up gibberish “invented” by the band. There could be a well-meaning critique in place in their song “Gobbledigook,” but, unless there are people (other than the band) who can tell me what “Þú ert að fjúka langt? í loft/Þú regnhlíf snúa á hvolf alltof oft/Ó nei, ég sé?” means, it remains what it promised to be in its title: gobbledygook.

In any case, I’ve since been hooked on S.R. and their “ways,” that is to say, their language and their other non-negotiables (i.e., a predilection towards the ethereal). Which is why, listening to frontman Jónsi’s solo debut Go sung entirely in—gasp!—English, I feel that a small fraction of the singer’s persona (the fraction that puts emphasis on the fantastic) has somehow died. But, also, I feel that Jónsi’s “language” (the letter married to the note) works as a sort of phantom limb or ghost image, where the fantastic world of Sigur Rós lingers even after its departure. To simplify, it’s as though English becomes a pidgin, a negotiation between Sigur-speak and the language of rational thinking. One other argument one can make is, Jónsi or no Jónsi, strong musical material turns lyrical content into gibberish anyway, where words become a string of phonemes that go well with a chordal theme.

“Boy Lilikoi,” first made available as a free online single, is pretty representative of the album (as a musical product, as a linguistic artifact, and as an idea). Its references to “growling” and “howling,” and its insistence that you “Use your eyes”—all told against a backdrop of a pulsating four-on-the-floor rhythm—point to distraction and escape. The melancholy narratives of S.R. are replaced with a buoyant urgency in Go, which makes you feel as though you’re listening to different versions of the theme music to some nature channel on cable (it is, in a way, the soundtrack to the race against extinction). “Go Do” and “Animal Arithmetic” also exhibit the same musical (and intellectual) resolve.

Nico Muhly’s neo-classical arrangements may be the main culprit behind this feel, but I’m guessing, it’s really Jónsi’s enduring fiction. (Aldus Santos)

“Sigur Rós at Somerset House, London” by clarksworth, via Flickr. Some rights reserved. Cover art for Go taken from Jónsi’s official site, where you can also hear streaming audio of select tracks.

­

There is a transatlantic-urbanite quality to Rico Blanco’s international single “Neon Lights (Nebula),” off of the Asian reissue of Your Universe. But it’s not for the fashion-week urbanite, and it’s not for the bar-hopping teenaged wino. It sounds like the starry-eyed wish of an otherwise miserable city-dweller: a secret desire for silence, for peace. This desire is nothing new. In high-rise office buildings everywhere, people with bills to pay and deadlines to beat have their minds someplace else: mountaintops and shorelines. The persona in Blanco’s “Neon Lights (Nebula),” however, exists in a vacuum: the entrancing metropolis. Paolo Santiago’s urgent intro drumming, Rico’s sinister synthesizer riffing, and, yes, that signature Blanco “big” chorus: they all seem to be dwarfed by the sentiment the song inspires, i.e., that we define our own universe; that, in the absence of stars, there are neon lights in marquees to stare at; and, in the absence of a sun, the face of a beautiful, inebriated girl.

But, also, in astronomy, this: nebulas can either be luminous patches or spots of darkness. It really all depends. Altered states abound in “Neon Lights (Nebula),” some hinged on artificial substances, some on a feeling:

She’s waiting for the drink in her hand to turn into a kiss

He starts to wonder why his heart’s beating like this

Blanco, as always in his singing, sways from wounded-animal to chest-up rock-god in a matter of seconds. Working on a singular repeating chordal theme, his melodies surprise and startle. If Blanco’s usual strength is his firm grasp on original Filipino-flavored pop rock, his other strength, it has to be said, lies in his masterful appropriation of a genre not entirely his (in this case, synth-and-reverb ‘80s rock). Shades of Robert Smith could be detected, yes, especially when Blanco weep-sings at the start of the bridge.

The random imagery, the fleeting-romance plot: they all seem engaging enough. And if it is not for you, just think of it this way: it is nevertheless another Pinoy stab at international inclusion, as Warner Music expounds below:

“Beating no less than giant international artists such as Usher and Will.I.Am, Lady Gaga and Beyonce, Wonder Girls, Christina Aguilera, Justin Bieber and Ludacris, ‘Neon Lights’ makes its way to the top within a week [of] its release in Music Bus Hong Kong. […]

“It has been close to a tradition that Warner Music Philippines has broken its artists into the international scene. In this case, no Filipino artist has ever topped the Hong Kong Music Bus Airplay Charts until the single ‘Neon Lights.’ To add to that, Rico just finished a successful promo tour in Singapore where Class95 FM also celebrated his birthday, playing a special birthday greeting by the biggest radio DJs every hour for 24 hours on Singapore radio that day.”

Chart-topper or not, though, the song is an intriguing sampler of things to come from the guy who can churn out anthems and oddballs. I would personally rally behind an entirely ‘80s-themed Blanco record anytime, in the same manner I rallied behind the vaguely Devo-tinged cut “Say Forever.” (Aldus Santos)

Listen to “Neon Lights (Nebula),” while it’s still up, here.

It takes a large dose of courage and credibility to have the word “great” somewhere in the title of your debut album. Sleepwalk Circus, fronted by “Ringmaster” Francis Lorenzo, alongside Peavey “Sideshow” Nicolas on guitars, Jeric “Jack of All Trades” de la Cruz on drums, and Laurie “Annie Oakley” Maravilla on bass, prove they have not only the guts but also what it takes to live up to their self-proclaimed glory. From “Introduction” to “Wakewalking,” the listener is plunged into a swirling musical vortex, the portal for Sleepwalk Circus’ Great Secret Show. We are thrown somewhere where blank canvases and white walls explode with rich melodies and morph into the landscapes of the band’s eerie imaginings that meld with our own.

Imagine that circus folk are the songs themselves: complex, expressive, and loaded with the magic circuses are known to be teeming with. Imagine “The Start” to be the moment when the red curtains are pulled to reveal an elegant trapeze artist in the spotlight, suspended somewhere, swinging, bending, twirling for our infinite pleasures. Track 5, “Sideshow,” is the song for the Mime, who tries to show us the depth of human gestures (or, in the song’s case, the depth of guitar riffs, licks, and trickles cradled by the beating of drums). “Insignificant Opinions” is the Clown’s song. He is in the spotlight now. We laugh but we do not know that he is handsome beneath the makeup and costume—an Adonis. He is cold to laughter. Untouchable. Track 6 is the “Clown’s Lament,” his revenge. “You little s**t suck on this ice!”

Into the seventh track, little snowflakes start to fall out of nowhere, tickling our noses. Snow Snow. The Clown is gone and in his place are ugly characters dancing, circling a beautiful figure bathed in light. We desire her. Him. It. The tiny snowflakes fall faster and harder until everyone but the beautiful figure is buried under a pile of the cold white stuff. We are left mesmerized by Up Dharma Down’s Armi Millare in “Part 2: For You My King,” her voice enveloping the enchanted stage. She is the beautiful figure at the center and as majestic as she has always been. She is Venus, the mermaid, the unicorn—the ideal woman of our dreamscapes.

Track 9: the stage is now open to the audience and we walk slowly towards where the “Flies are Flying.” We realize our limbs are attached to strings. We are puppets and we are part of the Great Secret Show. We ask big existential questions: “Who chose to bring Man down?” “Will they fall down?” From this track to the very last, we sleepwalk through a wild adventure of dynamic melancholy, an adventure not heartbreaking enough to be called sad but not uplifting enough to be called the opposite. Stuck in dreamland limbo, here is the only time we will ever use our ears to walk and dream.

The beauty of this album is that you can forget everything that has been written and it can still be everything you desire it to be. But you’d need a radical pair of dream-oculars. (Cat Cortes)

Great Secret Show cover art provided by Toti Dalmacion of Terno Recordings.

Imelda Marcos is widely regarded as a ridiculous figure who happened to exact misfortune on a nation because she was married to a president-turned-dictator who indulged her whims. If the fates had been kinder, she would have ended up as the obsequious, somewhat nutty wife of an antiques dealer, or at worst, as a TV psychic. Mrs. Marcos though wielded actual power which was validated by the Philippine legal system—she was at one time concurrently Governor of Metro Manila, Minister for Human Settlements, and Member of Parliament—not to mention the influence she bore as the wife of the President. A former confidante, Primitivo Mijares, wrote a tell-all book where he dubbed the Marcos rule as “the conjugal dictatorship.” For his turn of phrase and allegiance, Mijares and his teenaged son would find themselves forever disappeared.

Here Lies Love, the new concept album by Talking Heads’ David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, encapsulates the Western World’s more detached and consequence-free caricature of Imeldific Marcos. In conscious evasion of cliché, there is not one reference to the 3000 pairs of shoes, yet this remains the portrait of a frivolous woman told to the inflections of disco, that profoundly unserious genre (save for one track, the countrified “A Perfect Hand,” that introduces Ferdinand Marcos to comic effect as a ludicrous Johnny Cash he-man type). That Imelda survives today, hardly punished by the nation she and her husband had misruled, may signify that the joke is ultimately on us Filipinos. It is that hunch that may leave the listener hear with some unease.

Narrative to a fault, Here Lies Love is a rigidly chronological, relentlessly factual retelling of the Imelda Marcos story, beginning with her humble origins until around the time of the Marcoses’ expulsion to Hawaii in 1986. Young Imelda, one of those “garage people,” emerges as a rather sympathetic and doe-eyed figure with no more lofty culinary tastes than fried chicken. It avoids the racier rumors about her love life (save for a brief and celibate depiction of her romance with Ninoy Aquino) before diving into her marriage to Ferdinand Marcos after a whirlwind 11-day courtship. In this version, it is made clear that Mr. Marcos saw his partnership with Imelda only in politically expedient terms (“King and the Queen of Hearts/could be a perfect hand”) and did not hesitate to make an Eliza Doolittle out of her (“I’m going to learn how to walk like a woman/I’m going to learn how to dress, how to dance”). This Marcos also plunged into extra-marital affairs, leaving Imelda in resigned despair (“If you prefer this slut—okay/I’ll tell you what we’ll do”). She stands by her man, proving to be an effective campaigner, as depicted in “Don’t You Agree?,” one of the more amusing tracks in the album (“Who cares about the Philippines? He’ll build a house—I’ll decorate”).

Imelda soldiers on and from her plight, makes the best that she could, which turns out to be quite a lot.  Possessed with a vision of a “beautiful” Philippines and a hyperactive bloodstream, Imelda gifted the Philippines with her life, her time, and a Heart Center to boot. No wonder she was pissed when the bastards tore her apart and threw her out, just like Richard Nixon. (Here Lies Love is a name-droppers’ delight, but only Nixon merits references in multiple tracks. Digression: Richard Nixon so despised Imelda that when she visited the White House in a solo visit, he dispatched his wife Pat to meet her. But Pat Nixon also disliked Imelda and fled the scene, leaving the American President captive to an unwanted audience with the Madame, who promptly announced that she would succeed Marcos.)

Yet before this ultimate betrayal, Imelda gets to live the good life. In “Dancing Together,” her vocals (here by Sia; multiple artists including Cyndi Lauper, Natalie Merchant, Tori Amos, Martha Wainwright, and Charmaine Clamor take turns singing Imelda) take on a harder edge and the groove settles into a grind as Imelda parties with the Rockefellers and the Andy Warhols of the world while making secret deposits on the sly (“My name is Jane Ryan…and I would like to make a deposit”, the album’s one imputation of criminal behavior to Imelda, cryptic as it may be). Otherwise, First Lady Imelda whines about the snobs who put her and her husband down (“Please Don’t”), waxes vapid sentimentality about her first love (“Seven Years”), or improbably plays Mafia wife to her despotic husband (“Order 1081”).

Here Lies Love is at its scariest with “The Whole Man,” a straight-faced and literal explanation of Imelda’s philosophy of life whose lyrics though do not seem out of place in today’s anodyne pop. More intentionally, the central tension in the album is provided by Estrella Cumpas (nee Cinco), a relative who served as Imelda’s childhood nanny and, if Here Lies Love is to be believed, the virtual mother figure during her formative years. Cumpas is not a fictional prop—though she is a marginal figure in the popular mythology surrounding Imelda—but she emerges in the album as a dramatic counterpoint, if not the closest thing to a conscience figure. The album is at its wittiest in “How are You?,” which portrays an awkward chance encounter between a young unmarried Imelda and her former nanny who could not help but remember the dying promise of Imelda’s mother that her former wards would someday ensure that “you’ll never want for more.” As she grows in stature, Imelda of course shunts aside her increasingly embittered Cumpas, yet this breach is depicted as less a betrayal of roots or the lower class than one conditioned on a highly personal promise. This perception is enhanced by the characterization of Cumpas as one aggrieved not by the large-scale sins of Imelda, but by her failure to live up to the vow of her mother, though it is not even clear that the daughter was ever privy to that promise. The act of perfidy is by no means trivial or uncharacteristic, yet when we remember the flaws of Imelda, ‘yung hindi marunong tumanaw ng utang na loob does not really emerge to the forefront.

Byrne’s lyrics are functional, occasionally funny, but rarely profound (then again, Imelda Marcos is your source material). Fatboy Slim has made a fortune arranging highly enjoyable though rarely challenging dance tracks that make for effective cardio workouts. “Here Lies Love” is no exception. The title track, with a refrain that recalls that of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” (pum-pum-bum!), is particularly hard to rid from the brain. In tone and result, it is evident that Here Lies Love was not designed for an audience for whom Imelda Marcos was a trauma. It is for that wider world audience that sees her as a one-dimensional figure of ridicule, and in that light, the cosmetic humanization serves the goals of purposed art. (Oliver X.A. Reyes)

You can order Here Lies Love over at David Byrne’s official homepage. Photo of Imelda Marcos with the late former president culled from Wikimedia Commons. Here Lies Love cover art and poster taken from, yet again, David Byrne’s official homepage.

It’s been sixteen years since they found the corpse of the man who (whether he liked it or not, and he probably didn’t) embodied grunge. A self-inflicted shotgun-bullet wound. Kurt Cobain—along with Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl (okay, also Chad Channing and Jason Everman at one point)—cut three of the most memorable rock records of the ‘90s, but his myth sadly isn’t anchored entirely on them. The thing that easily made Cobain a fixture of punk-rock lore was not so much the bullet that killed him, but his rhetoric of hatred, frustration, and depression. He was painfully sincere, and he made his views known (even if they were, occasionally at least, playground-style verbal bullying directed at the likes of Vedder or Axl).

Nobody knew what Michael Azerrad had as a journalist-confidante, but when Cobain and wife Courtney Love approached him to write what eventually became Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana, he made sure to let the couple know that he wanted complete transparency beyond the usual Rolling Stone fare. And he got what he wanted: all no-holds-barred twenty-five hours of it. Those twenty-five hours’ worth of Kurt tapes became the basis for director A.J. Schnack’s docu-film Kurt Cobain: About a Son. Perhaps the most stunning characteristic of the film is its impressionistic quality, and here’s what “impressionistic” means this time: it is told using Cobain’s narration (Azerrad’s tapes), but using no clear Cobain imagery (except at the very end), and using no Cobain music either.

Think of it as a poignant photographic slideshow (and I don’t mean An Inconvenient Truth, okay?) featuring the works of celebrated Seattle lensman Charles Peterson. They’re mostly stills of the haunts Kurt frequented (and probably haunts these days, ha-ha), centered on the three major stops of Nirvana lore: Aberdeen, Olympia, and Seattle. The soundtrack, meanwhile, features music Kurt loved (The Melvins, Big Black, The Vaselines, R.E.M., Bowie), as well as a heartrending original score by two unusual suspects: record producer Steve Fisk and indie stalwart Ben Gibbard, who of course fronts Death Cab for Cutie. Gladly, Gibbard didn’t try squeezing in his signature number “I Will Follow You into the Dark,” because that would have been totally cheeseball.

Some people may lament the utter Cobainlessness of About a Son, but more discerning minds would appreciate Schnack’s directorial move as tantamount to “role-playing Cobain,” i.e., seeing the world through KC’s eyes and hearing it through his ears. The less patient among us will probably go “ho-hum” at the aforementioned “slideshow” and the utterly un-Nirvana-esque Gibbard-helmed score, but you know, that’s a risk Schnack was probably willing to take. Most importantly, at the center of it all, there is Cobain’s blunt and unguarded vitriol: how he was hit by his dad for being clumsy, how he liked imagining he was a kid from another planet, how he hated people in general. “It was a mixture of hating people so much because they didn’t live up to my expectations, and just being fed up by being around the same kind of idiot. Everyone’s just a carbon copy of one another,” the late musician spat out at one point. He bemoaned pains both palpable (scoliosis, stomach flu) and perceived (everyone pretty much sucking), but in the end attributed his life’s long-winded drama to simply being “a product of a spoiled America” who “bellyaches about a divorce.”

Most of us who heard “Lithium” and “Serve the Servants” in real time are now older than the person being heard in Azerrad’s tapes, and may even retroactively think of the twenty-five year-old (his age in the interviews) as being painstakingly morose. A lot of us who used to bodyslam with reckless abandon have probably become idiotic carbon copies of one another. But Kurt Cobain remains frozen, and perhaps A.J. Schnack and Michael Azerrad froze him best. (Aldus Santos)

Kurt Cobain: About a Son is available on DVD. Sidetrack, which put the film out, also came out with Beautiful Losers, which celebrates “the independent spirit of American artists who emerged from the underground youth subcultures of skateboarding, graffiti, punk rock, and hip hop in the ‘90s.” Photos used in this review are from the Press section of the film’s official homepage, and are credited to Wyatt Troll.

Watch the official trailer here:

“The pandemonium is in bloom,” Matthew Bellamy warns in the opening track, “The Uprising,” and, right away, the lack of political specificity—i.e., What pandemonium? And against whom?—reeks of bourgeois guilt. Nobody’s saying rock artists, if they wish to be “militant,” should always be as black-and-white as anyone who’s clearly expected to be black-and-white, like, say, Zach de la Rocha of the late, great Rage Against the Machine (or, heck, Bob Marley). The general feeling of suffocation, subjugation, censorship, et cetera dictates the lyrical content of The Resistance, the new outing by British power trio Muse. Musically, there is nothing new to be said about the band—which is not bad at all; I mean, it’s not their fault they peaked early (Origin of Symmetry is evidence enough of Bellamy’s mastery of both piano and guitar, which is apparently backed by classical schooling). Obviously, you won’t hear these guys dishing out Linkin Park songs. On “United States of Eurasia,” you can forgive the collegiate militant stance of “Must we do as we’re told?” because of the soaring changes and four-movement structure. (In short, it’s the rock equivalent of Lego: you can custom-fit it to any issue, political or otherwise.) There is, certainly, much to be desired about Muse—and it all appears in The Resistance: the tasty Queen-worthy harmonies; the requisite guitar-hero soloing, the lilting Jeff Buckley pitches. To be crude about it, it’s forgivable glam for the 2000s. It’s also, in a way, like sing-able metal for the iPod generation. And, speaking of metal, which prides itself with its affinity to classical, there is The Resistance’s coup de grace: the three-part symphony called “Exogenesis” (sub-titled ‘Part 1: Overture,’ ‘Part 2: Cross-Pollination,’ and ‘Part 3: Redemption’), all book-ended by moody keys and strings that could very well score a modern tragedy. After churning out playful cuts off of their previous record Blackholes and Revelations—“Starlight” and “Supermassive Blackhole,” anyone?—the bombast of Muse’s new outing will wash away their old sins (i.e., bad stabs at danceable rock, though, yes, The Resistance’s “Undisclosed Desires” threaten to commit the same dogged larceny). In the accompanying DVD (in the stateside edition, at least), you see a Bellamy going (creatively) amok inside the booth, at one point even directing bassist Chris Wolstenholme how the progression for “Guiding Light” (I think) should be played: mildly slapped, not crunchily picked; he also shadows the orchestral conductress like a micro-managing ninja (are ninjas micro-managers by nature?). Why am I bringing this up? Because, in the context of the-act-of-creation-as-an-act-of-love—incidentally, in the literal sphere, the act of lovemaking also gives cause to creation—the grand orchestrator, Bellamy, remains the dude on top, frozen in a missionary stance that pins down his (creative) lover(s) in the process. Perhaps this submissiveness in arrangement (the rhythm section being a mere accent of the musical theses being forwarded by guitar-and-voice) is what makes Muse a glorious in-the-pocket unit. However, this is why they can never be Nirvana or anyone like that (they’re too self-contained); and which is also why, in every new record, I can almost always hear a veritable “Bohemian Rhapsody” begging to be birthed (arena-rock traditionalism is always at play). It’s all grand and well thought-out, but perhaps, ironically enough, not revolutionary. Nor resistant.

There it is in the headlines, big, bold and, um, ambitious? Third Eye Blind goes political, or so do the press releases say. Yes, those guys who had been with my peer group during our tender days when we nursed our pretty little heartbreaks to the tune of How’s It Going To Be and had urged us to stage dive with much bravado after receiving our elementary diploma shouting, “Can I graduate,” have just gone to ply a different theme for their musical explorations.

Pretty much apparent if we’d simply judge it from the titles of the tracks in the band’s upcoming fourth studio album dubbed Ursa Major: Bonfire, Sharp Knife, About To Break, etc. And, hell, frontman Stephan Jenkins even admitted that this one’s going to be “more political” than the previous efforts of 3eb.

Ah yes, it’s first single, Don’t Believe A Word. Don a shirt with these words boldly printed on it when you pay the Senate a visit, and I bet people there would be so intrigued they wouldn’t be able to shut the schmuck up, instead go on and ask who you’d vote for in the 2010 election (if there’d be one) even if you’re just there to accompany someone conduct an interview for a school project. Uh-huh, that political.

And that blunt and tasteless, too, when we speak of the song’s lyrics. “We love thugs when they attack/We love crime all black on black,” “Give me back my photos, will you?/You fucking whore I’ll kill you”?! I mean, what’s up with that, Stephan? What happened to the wordsmith who made lines like “Where do we begin to get clean again/Can we get clean again” and “Turn my bones to sand/Just to see you/I’ll give you anything” bleed like they were meant to, or the casual bard who audaciously announced that “Icarus is not a tee shirt or a swan song” and told the world about “icing over a secret pain”?

Clearly, Jenkins coming out of “a lyrical slump,” which accounts for Ursa Major being the first album from the band in over six years, can be traced just in this one song.

And aren’t we talking about a political song here? Pardon, but the instant comparisons with Incubus’ monster hit Megalomaniac or any other Rage Against the Machine songs are inevitable, in which Don’t Believe A Word measures up like a desperate politician snaring a victory based on cuteness. When you want a song to rouse people to march on the streets with placards containing all those angry and topple-worthy words, you don’t encapsulate it in a melody reminiscent of Never Let You Go. It just ain’t right.

And the coarse screaming part in the two minute-and-a-half mark of the song doesn’t pass as a gimmick, even if it’s meant to highlight the lyric “Pretty soon we’ll wake up screamin’.” It just reminds me of listening to Taking Back Sunday, a band I would never pick over the Third Eye Blind I’ve known.

Going political may be a gutsy move for the band. Or perhaps it was because of the pressure felt by most artists, which is to veer away from the usual stuff they do. But if the material 3eb would be giving us is as good as, say, Motorcycle Drive By or, yes, that seminal song that made us go too-too-too-too-toorootoo, won’t we all admit that still there’s a spot in our hearts for teenage angst and wild spirit? Hey! I’d still listen to How’s It Going To Be anytime I’m heartbroken.

Well, Don’t Believe A Word is just a portion of the package. I hope Ursa Major comes out a big bad bear eager to devour its listeners for the sake of quintessential alternative rock.

NOTE: Ursa Major was originally set to be released in June 2009, but was pushed to August of the same year. The album will be closely followed by 3eb’s fifth album, Ursa Minor. According to Jenkins, Ursa Minor will consist of songs that didn’t make the cut for Ursa Major.

It’s not by coincidence that I find myself burning minutes listening to the song a night after watching a couple of episodes of Grey’s Anatomy for the first time.* And I presume its likeness with the ditty by The Fray (How To Save A Life) used in the Ellen Pompeo-headlined medical drama—which doesn’t reside only on the theme portrayed by the songs’ titles but strangely also in some hallucinatory points in their melodies, the latter being a slower alter-ego of the former—isn’t of direct concurrence as well.

True to its title, the latest single from Our Lady Peace, a cut from the band’s seventh studio album dubbed Burn Burn, is replete with vitality. With vocalist Raine Maida’s inimitable voice providing fervent articulation, All You Did Was Save My Life can’t be mistaken as your usual Our Lady Peace oeuvre. Nevertheless, there is security in such sureness, which is the same hard-hitting alternative rock sureness that spawned hits like Superman’s Dead, One Man Army, and Somewhere Out There.

But then compared to other counterparts like Automatic Flowers and Naveed, All You Did Was Save My Life is a bit brighter, poppier, if you may.

OLP last came out with a studio album in August 2005 (Healthy in Paranoid Times), making the release of Burn Burn much anticipated. According to the facts, the album’s release will mark the longest gap so far between OLP studio albums. As such, the Canadian rockers have a tendency to break free from the long-drawn-out hiatus with much gusto—and this is clearly evident in All You Did Was Save My Life.

The simple innuendos (“Somehow I knew these wings were stolen”/“I’m not for sale but I’ve been sold”), vivid images (“Like the Red Sea, you split me open”/“Like a singer that sings the blues, you saw hope in the hopeless”), and direct yet arresting declarations (“I’m not dying”/“And I can finally breathe”) in the lyrics make the song discerningly relatable to listeners.

Despite being easy on the recall, its singability shuns its inclination of being hackneyed. Instead, it justifies, if ever he does, Maida balling his hand to a fist and beating it on his chest as he croons it all to the OLP legions. And no, people, that isn’t a Backstreet Boys gesture.

Meanwhile, the song’s racing progression, which sets off in Pavlovian explosion upon reaching the chorus, gives post-grunge babies a rush similar to what they feel while listening to ear candies the likes of Switchfoot’s Stars. And note how drummer Jeremy Taggart frequently assaults us with armalite-like fills in the song, which brilliantly come to an orgasmic high at the 02:46-02:50 mark. Truly pulls us out of that flatline!

All You Did Was Save My Life (released on May 25 and June 9 in Canada and the US, respectively) is the opening salvo of OLP’s return to a kind of music which Maida describes as “stripped down, full of raw energy,” eventually calling their most recent effort as a “proper rock album.” If that’s the case, we can expect something more from Burn Burn when it hits the shelves this July.

The music video for the song, which was leaked to Canadian viewers through MSN’s website on May 22, was shot in a woodland near Ancaster, Canada and features 90210 star Shenae Grimes. Watch it here.

*And, to date (July 2009), I haven’t watched a single installment of One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, or even Heroes. I’m an indifferent dinosaur that way.

And then Adoro gets back like a tidal wave. His band, Markus Highway, released their album called “Behold, Rejoice! Surfernando Is Hear Nah” under Warner Music Philippines. Quoting Wikipedia, “Adoro explains that ‘Markus Highway’ is just a rock and roll name that he likes and he wants to keep at the moment.”

And as I start to listen to the album, I prep myself for some entertaining Pinoy rock alternative sound trip.

The first song in his album, “Lala”, caught me almost by surprise. It sounded like I was listening to a whole new kind of Eraserheads, yet, having its own identity. The album picks up pace in the following songs and next thing I know, I was humming along to his contemporary lyrics that talk about love, life and… travel.

His melodious statements in “Chef-Ra’s Forest”, “Wow Kalabaw”, “Bonfire” and Drive-Thru” give the impression of leaving and just letting go. It doesn’t matter if you’re riding a Carabao, a flying carpet, or if you simply walk, run, swim or fly! Point is, let go of the busy life and just stop to smell the roses!

The album’s musicality has a distinct rhythm, the one that makes you feel that it’s simply a good alternative from the usual music that keeps looping in your iPods or MP3 players. With 12 tracks, it may not be long enough to keep you accompanied all throughout the music trip, but it’s enough to refresh one’s LSS (the ‘Last Song Syndrome’ or the song that keeps playing in your head). Plus of course, Markus Highway’s comical lyrics and non-pretentious perception will make you smile.

Though Adoro is not new to the whole band thing, this mainstream album could turn out to be a hot buy even if we can’t see or hear him that much on TV or radio. After all, his music deserves to be heard and live up to the legacy they have set in the music industry. Right? Right!.

The night I popped Into the Wild in my player, the lights in my room turned out, the ensuing darkness enveloping the place grew cold, and suddenly, at the center, alit a campfire. From the scene emerged a background of dismal trees and faraway horizons. From the flame’s soft burning came the illumination of a familiar figure. There he was, Eddie Vedder. He was in a small group circling the campfire, gently strumming his guitar. He glanced at me and said with that deep voice of his: “Come sit here and join the circle.” I sat. He began singing. We were in the wild.

Into the Wild is the first solo album of Eddie Vedder. The album came to reality after Director Sean Penn requested him to provide the music for his film of the same title, which was based on the best-selling book of Jon Krakauer about the adventures of Christopher McCandless. According to the story, McCandless, a 22-year-old honor student and athlete, abandoned his family and possessions, gave away his $24, 000-savings, and hitchhiked to the Alaskan wilderness to “find himself” in the beauty and savagery of nature. He eventually died of starvation.

At the outset, it was tempting for me to watch the film first before reviewing Vedder’s recent opus. Perhaps to establish a stronger relation with the songs through their cinematic interpretations. But that exactly made me flinch from doing so. I thought it better to review Into the Wild (album) not as something to complement Into the Wild (film). After all, after spending a night—which consequently stretched to nights—by the campfire with all these faceless people and Eddie the Guitarman, I realized how the album can stand alone, even without picturesque movie excerpts. It wasn’t hard for me, too, to evoke my own vignettes of the excommunicated McCandless while adhering to Vedder’s album.

Which then brings me to the strongest point of this 11-tracker (12, including Guaranteed the Easter egg version, which features the guitar-accompanied humming of Vedder): its thematic mood that spreads out as infinite papyrus where Vedder’s simplified yet evocative verses come alive.

Wait. Maybe that is stronger than the strongest point: Vedder’s verses. King Jeremy the Wicked and the Man of the Hour (Big Fish OST) may not be in the current stories the Pearl Jam vocalist is crooning about, but the way he invites people to listen to him is just powerfully the same—vivid, novel, and magnetically compelling.

How telling the line “Burning back holes in dark memories” (Rise), pushful the line “On bended knee is no way to be free” (Guaranteed), and Hinduistic the line “Empty pockets will
allow a greater sense of wealth” (Far Behind). How arresting the lyric “This love has got no ceiling” (No Ceiling) upon looking up and beholding nothing but the clear sky. Truly, what we have here is a poet singing his poems more than a songwriter pursuing a poetic attempt.

And he did not stop there. If it be that the instrumental Tuolumne is named after a California river near where McCandless could have traveled, then I’d say that the piece is just as fluvial. Makes you want to close your eyes and imagine yourself for a while, a minute to be exact, kayaking on a sun-splashed river.

On the one hand, The Wolf, another instrumental, this time punctuated by wails from Vedder, which, according to All Music Guide’s Thom Jurek, is “where the well of Vedder’s power as a singer gets touched but never dug,” is the type that draws goose bumps all over.

The album’s musicality, meanwhile, misses out on some dynamics. We hear here acoustic guitars, banjos, a mandolin, and the like. Quite plain. But then such simplicity speaks of an audacious aural depth, engineered perhaps to present the music to be organic as nature. Nature drunk, as Vedder sings in the album’s opening track.

Apparently, Into the Wild is moving. Although it came in short. Literally. Hard Sun, originally written by Gordon Peterson, may be running at the 5-minute mark, but most of the other folksy cuts progress for only a minute or two. Bitin as in the Tagalog lexicon. Had songs like Setting Forth (1:37), which has the catchy “Keeeeee-heeeheep/Setting forth in the universe,” been given a longer playing time, the audiences in Vedder’s first solo tour slated April 2008 might be able to sing along as stirringly as those which Vedder played Better Man on. Well, it’s Eddie Vedder so that can still happen.

But this I know can happen: after submitting to an Into the Wild song, already singing along, the song will leave you for silence. I can remember how, during our first campfire meeting, Eddie would peruse our circle after closing a song, waiting for somewhat a sign of approval from his crowd. We wouldn’t be able to react right away as we were kept hanging on the last chord he had struck, clueless and wanting for more.

But then maybe that’s just how it is. Like magic, Vedder’s songs appear and disappear in a poof!

The other night, Eddie confessed to us how surprisingly easy it was for him to penetrate the thoughts of Chris during his odyssey as he wrote his songs. I went up to him and said, “Can you penetrate mine right now?” He gave me a vacant stare, and instantly, there I was, back in the earthly order of my room with Eddie’s CD still running.

Perhaps when Don Clark, main man for the art direction and design of Foo Fighter’s sixth studio album, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, came up with the idea of laying out a bomb (with a vintage guitar amplifier tube in it) as the album’s iconic image, he was unconsciously thinking of something beyond the creatives – people, this one’s gonna explode in your anticipative faces.

And, boy, does this 12-track machinery blast the roof off!

Echoes… ignites inherent bedlam with its first single, The Pretender. Remember Monkey Wrench? Let’s just say that The Pretender, winner of Best Hard Rock Performance in the 2008 Grammys, bears its very same intensity. That which makes you lock yourself up in your room, escalate the volume of your player to the fullest, and spare not a fuck for grandma, who’s calling for you to tone down, while you bang your head in the air, hands wildly air-drumming or air-strumming, whichever suits your Woodstock delusions.

As with all Foo records, things have just got to roll (and rock!). Hence, Echoes…’s bigger explosions—not necessarily bigger than its monster of an opener—in the form of Erase/Replace and Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make Up Is Running). The illusive rock star display in your room, which may be award-winning as well depending on how impressive you shadow-mosh, finds continuation in these songs’ incessant guitar sputters and solid drum fills that drown the drone.

On the other hand, Long Road To Ruin, the album’s second single, is a catchy highway radio piece. Many might instantly recall its comic music video, but hey, listen to the song, man. Just listen to the song and enjoy the breezy road trip.

Echoes… further evolves with tracks like Let It Die, Come Alive, and But, Honestly. If you’ve been around for Foo for quite some time, say 11 or 12 years (the band marked its tenth year with the 2-disc record In Your Honor in 2005), then these progressions will not disappoint. Though, in these songs, Foo’s hard-line accents are seemingly overlaid on a more popish arrangement, they still emulate the sure-fire Foo formula: a rock-steady pace which is bound for gradual blow-up (it’s a quick notice: frontman Dave Grohl’s voice leveling up from casual singing to balls-out screaming). Foo can’t seem to get enough of feeding the crowds this scheme. Well, it’s fine. We love it that way anyway.  Do-ho-n’t WEEEEEEEEE!!!

Since Echoes…, dubbed as “Foo Fighters’ most varied album to date,” presents a bolder foursome of Grohl, Nate Mendel, Chris Shiflett, and Taylor Hawkins, it is not limited to the usual and the anticipated. It rises amid Foo’s signature din, imparts various modifications from lighter shades to hints of 70s rock, which Hawkins confirmed in an interview with drum magazine Rhythm. The strongest presence comes from Statues, a piano-driven ballad that brilliantly sums up how the inspiration from ex-Beatle Paul McCartney (and the likes) has grown on Grohl through the years. The same lightness, now only coupled with a certain kind of solitude, finds its way to Home, a heartfelt song conveying how the lung-busting Grohl can also bare his weary soul in silence, in front of a mirror, “just lookin’ for shelter from the cold and the pain.” The song comes with a Post-it for most to take note: The man’s got a voice beyond the parched screams.

The record, however, has its share of misfires. Stranger Things Have Happened feels a bit, um, strange. Even its central apostrophe—“you are not alone dear loneliness”—which can settle in your thoughts for quite a time cannot make up for its insipidness. Ballad Of The Beaconsfield Miners only makes it because of its interesting history, y’know, a song (an instrumental piece, actually) Grohl promised to compose in honor of the two trapped miners in Tasmania who asked for an iPod with Foo Fighters songs to listen to while waiting for their rescue. Yeah sure, it may be one of the many adventurous takes of the album (in Echoes…, the hard-hitting Hawkins left his Tama kit for a classic Gretsch), but it’s easy for the cavalier listener to skip it. It’s just…un-relatable.

So there’s the lowdown. Only the question is, will you hear and consequently listen to even the Echoes in this album’s Silence with great Patience, hoping for true auditory Grace? I dare you consume—or be consumed by—the bomb, wholly.

There was the obvious worry that her music would sound like a knockoff of her old band’s. Having a voice as unique as Dolores’ is both a blessing and a curse; there was no mistaking The Cranberries for any other band, not with that distinct voice at the helm. The downside of this is that we’d gotten so used to the sound of The Cranberries that it was going to be extra challenging for Dolores to branch out on her own.

And then there was the question of the lyrics. After being in a band that did the whole mushy love thing (albeit in a cool way) and the patriotic/ political thing (which was great at first, but later became tiresome), I wondered: what’s she going to do that would set her apart from her past?

The answer, unfortunately, turned out to be a little worse than I suspected. Are You Listening? sounds like a half-baked Cranberries (sans lush arrangements) album most of the time, and a half-baked Sinead/ Bjork/ Enya hybrid during others. I don’t even want to talk about the lyrics. I’ve heard better rhymes on Sesame Street. I mean, I’ve never heard the Cookie Monster rhyme “sea” with “sea” and “me” with “me.” Unfortunately, Dolores does just this in “Stay With Me.” Other songs are similarly impaired. “When We Were Young” starts off with Cranberries-style vocal acrobatics, and features a chorus with the lyrics “I wanna get out, I wanna go home/ Is anything better than you on the phone (Repeat x2).” Not exactly something you’d expect from a grown-up, respected musician and mother of two.

On “In the Garden,” Dolores channels Sinead O’Connor by way of the music’s simple arrangement and vocals before segueing into a chorus that’s all her. Heavily laced with rock, the chorus complements her beautiful, strong voice. Unfortunately, again, I’ve heard better lyrics on children’s television. Points for effort, though. “Human Spirit” is a quirky mix of pop laced with traditional Irish influences. Unfortunately, the pipes and fiddles only enhance the piece so much, such that you get the feeling that they could have used other instruments to get the same effect. Still, the song has a nice, engaging beat, sort of reggae—but not quite.

“Apple of My Eye” is a soft, simple song whose lyrics fit the arrangement well enough to be more than listenable, though if you listen hard enough, you sort of expect Dolores to segue into “Free to Decide” at any moment. Still, it counts as one of the high points of the album. Another high point would be “Black Widow,” which was supposed to be in the last Spider-Man movie but was pulled out at the last minute. The minimalist use of the piano and Dolores’ soft crooning shows off the depth and range of her voice.

Just like anyone who’s listened to and loved The Cranberries, I want nothing more than to have Dolores O’Riordan’s solo album succeed, and it breaks my heart to face the reality that it’s just not all there. Dolores has still got a powerful set of lungs and one of the most beautiful voices in the industry, but if she wants to succeed as a solo artist, she’ll need to get a new lyricist and maybe a new arranger.

So, to answer the album’s bold title: Yes, I am, but I’m not sure I like what I’m hearing.