MEGUMI ACORDA
Unexpectedly
SOMETIMES, heavy can be bent beautifully to channel softer impulses. On their four-track debut EP, five-piece OPM band Megumi Acorda summons the swirling atmospherics of the early‘90s shoegaze of Ride, My Bloody Valentine and Curve then grafts blockbuster melodies that will send pop fans on a giddy spin. There’s more. The interplay of drums and guitars twists, turns, pauses and explodes to provide a muscular base to the overarching distortion-laced musical fireworks.
On their Bandcamp page, the band’s music is described as “warm & fuzzy.” In a private message to SoundStrip, band vocalist Megumi wrote that her band isn’t going (exactly) for the shoegaze sound, explaining, “We’re more into dream pop; if we’re insistent on categorizing us, I’m just trying to write good songs that happen to be sonically similar to shoegaze.”
As such, the ‘gazey touch is nuanced, lighter that its experimental UK forerunners and the abstract detachment inherent in the vocals of the ‘90s original iteration is replaced by Megumi’s cool hushed voice that sings earnestly of physical love and desire. Lyrics-wise, her love songs have a lot in common with classic OPM, except that her band surrounds her with meticulously reverbed guitars and expansive synths to give her croons lonesome tones of blue. That’s not a gripe since Megumi Acorda (the band, that is) makes unapologetically glorious music.
The title track opens the album on a dreamy sprawl with pop hooks slithering through the haze. Ghost revives Eddie Peregrina from the sepia past imbuing his old time persona with present-day indie rock vitality. Aftershow displays new creative horizons for the bass-driven new wave. A virtual blizzard of phosphorescent chords on I’ll Get By ends the album on a “sugar hiccup” bliss. Dream pop is strictly headphone music for nodding off while staring at empty space. In the best hands like Megumi Acorda, it’ll take you to startling new places.
(In this year’s edition of Fête de La Musique-Manila, Megumi Acorda plays on the dream pop/shoegaze stage at WOKby 4900 in Makati on June 23.)
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Chasing After The Sound – Sunrise
THE dawn of a new day has always inspired the imagination of artists across different platforms. It’s likely the backstory behind the new compilation from FlipMusic Records. The album cover is quite simple—even childish, but the music inside unleashes some of the most seductive tracks to welcome the sunrise. The various music makers have one ear cocked on indie electronica, the other on whatever is left of modern radio, and all eight of them pulse with ‘80s synth pop and new wave beats.
Soul/R&B exponents Kat Agarrado and Jay-R put their best vocal performances forward in Constellation and Tropical Love, respectively, but it’s Radha who submits the sharpest turn in Sand Castles. Silverfilter lays down melodic, carefree sonicscapes while Bojam keeps it funky and hip-shakin.’ The compiler favors high tempos so rather than being an after-party comedown, Chasing After the Sound – Sunrise perks up the start of the day for the working class.
FlipMusic has started issuing tracks from a forthcoming release Chasing After The Sound – Sunset that may already be setting the online universe on fire. Stay tuned.
STING/SHAGGY
44/876
ONE-TIME soft-rock icon Sting and another time’s reggae phenomenon Shaggy get together for one of the least likely team-ups in modern music. The improbable partnership, however, can’t go wrong because from the starting gate 44/876 to the finish line Don’t Make Me Wait is a 16-track expanse of likable examples of reggae-pop, two are even of outstanding merit: the confessional Crooked Tree and the jazzy Sad Trombone.
And it’s hardly a lyrical wasteland either. Most of the songs deal with self-empowerment tidbits for the disenfranchised middle class but Sting can just as easily mess you up with common man musings, as in: “When the laws are wicked/ You’re forced to disobey/ Stand out there on the picket line/ Waitin’ for the break of day…” It’s a look back at the desperation of sending out an SOS in his time with The Police four decades back, and certainly much more ennobling than Mr. Boombastic.
In the end though, the unlikely pair isn’t immune to blahs such as “Clean your teeth and wash your face/ Look like you’re a member of the human race…” Or Shaggy keeping in-step with his Englishman partner with, “To this beautiful sunshine I’m a-rising up/Just a positive vibe mi use and build me up.”
These guys just wanna have fun and for the initial play, there’s certain pleasure to be had. Replay the entire gimmick at your own mental peril though.
THE STYLE COUNCIL
The Singular Adventures of… – Greatest Hits Vol. 1
WHEN The Style Council first broke into the UK music scene in the early ‘80s, their sumptuous soul-jazz engaged pop music fans and troubled critics. Paul Weller, also called “Modfather,” erstwhile chief provocateur behind then defunct punk-mod instigators The Jam, masterminded the new band.
Pop heads adored the magnetic appeal of The Style Council’s goose-pimple raising songs even as the critics, while berating the mildness of the music, couldn’t put aside the political storm suggested by the lyrics, especially off their proper debut Cafe Bleu which came out on March 1984. In tracks like The Whole Point of No Return and My Ever Changing Moods, Weller set his sights on the evil system and the prospect of nuclear apocalypse.
Subsequent releases would deflate the politics and amplify the jazz and soul fusion underlying the Council’s musical potpourri. At the same time, the band would veer away from the moody temper of their initial years and steer their course toward the happier “shouts to the top” of later releases.
The Singular Adventures of The Style Council, a single CD, presents The Style Council as a great singles band. The songs are not “audio-logically” sequenced so the listener constantly shifts moods with every other track. It’s no coincidence that pop fans will be drawn first by My Ever Changing Moods. Diehard Weller fans will miss a gem like The Point of No Return and admire The Modfather’s consistency in the non-album track, The Promised Land.
No Greatest Hits Vol II came out afterwards but there’s the box set The Complete Adventures of The Style Council released in 1998 for a more comprehensive quickie on a landmark Britpop band.