MILES EXPERIENCE
Soberhaul
THE second album from fusion/pop-jazz inclined Miles Experience is likely to draw comments of “diluted and shallow.” It’s easy to find fault in music that’s easy on the ear and attractively melodic.The bottom line is that it all sounds simple, though it’s definitely not. Badly produced, an entire record of sugary concoctions can induce critical earache. Or, the tracks may remind of bands from a generation ago even if the new group—in this case Miles Experience—is actually re-contextualizing substance beyond nostalgia.
In Soberhaul, the varied ways by which Miles Experience delivers hooks more than compensate for a preternatural focus on the rhetoric of physical connection. All the Love, Feels, Hero and Mannequin pretty much say their common theme in their titles. Sunshine and Spaces, however, feed on yearning of a different sort. Add splashes of hot horns, slick guitar lines, emotive vocals plus the occasional bluesy ambiance and the whole experience veers away from the typical soundscape that accompanies the exhausted boy-meets-girl storyline.
SLAPSHOCK
Atake!
AS the world turns and fresh noise spews forth from the scrap heap, the proud traditionalists in Slapshock refuses to bend to the call of doom, death or black metal eruptions.
Twenty years on, the five-man band continues to wipe out the competition with their “old-school” take on thrash metal.
The twin guitars of Lee Nadela and Lean Ansing, the relentless rhythm of Chi Evora and Jerry Basco as well as the malleable voice of Jamir Garcia rack up a loud dissonance that attracts metal heads, punks and rebels of all stripes. It’s all about the loudness and the roar since Slapshock seldom traffics in politics.
Then again, the band’s latest studio album Atake, their first since 2011 and seventh overall, might as well be on a rampage for a greater cause. In the title track, Garcia calls out, “Lalaban ka/ Pasulong, walang umaatras/.” He exhorts, “Sumigaw, at ikaw ay magliliyab!” in the raging Magdusa Ka. In the album closer Bandera, he’s ready to reclaim lost territory with: “Susugod sa giyera/ Itaas ang bandera.”
The war in words gets its primal boost from heavy metal seething with fire and brimstone. Sugod mga kapatid, indeed!
THE SCRIPT
Freedom Child
AH, the rock trio. It’s the perfect format—critics and musicologists theorize—to a whole lotta power riffage. Oh, there’s Cream, The Police and Motorhead, to check the three. Now comes Irish trio The Script and the line of best fit may be a little bit shaky. Not shady, okay? On their newest and best album so far, The Script try their darn-est best to glue together electronic-dance music, power pop and R&B into a sunshiny beast. The sonic radiance is in the ear of the listener so get your fix in the dance-pop with falsetto glow of opener, No Man Is An Island, the calypso-hugging dandy that’s Rain, the Maroon 5– moonlighting-as-Coldplay-luminescence of Written In The Scars and the quiet tune with a big heart in Make Up.
The magic wears off in the more politically-correct tracks like Rock The World, and Divided States of America. True perhaps to the hippie idealism behind Freedom Child, the band’s hope for a new global village a la We Are The World, or the greatest economy in the world in shambles rings shallow, if not empty.
Leave the bragging rights to where they belong. The Script are better off mining fertile ground for future further explorations.
(The Script revisit Manila for their “Freedom Child” tour at the MOA Arena on April 14.)
PATTI SMITH
Easter
IT’S Easter the world over so here’s a throwback that in its own way pays tribute to the idea of resurrection and renewal.
‘70s punk poetess Patti Smith was going nowhere with her musical career. During the recording session for her third album, Patti took a chance on a Bruce Springsteen composition Because The Night that, upon its release in 1978, gave the Patti Smith Group the commercial breakthrough they richly deserved. Smith (not to be confused with Scandal’s Patti Smyth) would later on produce better-crafted songs but Easter cemented her legacy among the greats.
Also check out: Rock and Roll Nigger, High on Rebellion and Easter.