TIDE/EDIT
All My Friends
THE band’s Bandcamp page welcomes you with: “We are tide/edit and we play happy music.” Happiness is such a warm gun that over the course of their sophomore album, the Pinoy indie quartet fires up smile-inducing slices of carefully constructed post-rock.
The progressive rock fixation of most post-rockers is all over the new album, although not in the technical/djent/mathy craftsmanship of the genre’s better-known international counterparts. Where ascending epic chords and pummeling drums are the norm, Tide/Edit keeps the chords in forward motion—for lack of a better description—and the backbeat, on a typical jangle. If you know loud-soft dynamics, theirs is soft-a little loud-soft nuances.
For a good part of the album, there’s fire kindling in the happy conjugation of chords and rhythms you’ve likely heard before recalling the post-new wave jangle pop of Aztec Camera and The Smiths. To their credit, Tide/Edit tries and successfully executes a number of stylish disruptions from the standard operating procedure of their chosen genre and skirts what could be a formulaic drive into well-trodden territory. Top-of-mind would have to be the elegant Mr. Crame, the weirdly rocking Twelve and the somber mood turns to rumble riffola of Afterglow.
At heart, All My Friends is the catchiest thing you’d get this time of the year aside from common colds. It’s also a welcome break from all the shenanigans that’s growing fiercer and bloodier each week.
THE NEXXUS
The Nexxus 2.1: A New Beginning
THE Nexxus is a ‘90s OPM band that specialized in toothpaste commercial-worthy songs like I’ll Never Go and I Keep On Saying. You’ll likely to hear them every once in a while if you still tune in to radio stations that laugh at themselves and their audience.
The five-piece group comes out of semiretirement this year and puts out a new eight-track album that’s supposed to mark a fresh start. Pleased to report that The Nexxus’ flair with hooks remains intact; a bit sad to say though that none of their new materials can match the gleaming sparkle of I’ll Never Go, a pinnacle of songwriting prowess.
Instead, “A New Beginning” aspires for true pop-rock revival within the formulaic wimp wing of Pinoy rock. The synth covers a lot space in most songs to establish the slow rock mood, although in “Minsan” and “Ikaw,” the guitars and drums conspire to push mere love songs into rock and roll territory not heard since the last boy band revival bannered by Bamboo. Listen to how vocalist Jason Singcol makes trite lyrics like “Ikaw ang buhay ko…” sound hot and burning under the cover of his compadres’ poaching of Van Halen by way of Survivor.
Decades after their acclaimed hit songs, The Nexxus isn’t producing the most original music. They have however ambled into a variety of ways to broaden their sonic palette without losing their original essence.
PAUL MCCARTNEY
Egypt Station
HARDCORE Beatles fans will find it difficult to separate solo Sir Paul McCartney’s music from those of the genre-busting Fab Four where he once butted heads literally and figuratively with the late temperamental John Lennon.
Case in point: the opening piano of I Don’t Know slips in the nostalgic whiff of Let It Be. Follow up Come To Me resonates with something like smooth blend of “Lady Madonna” and “Obladi-Oblada” but by midsection, the fiery pysch-soul horns blow the memory away.
Thereafter, the acoustic reverie in Happy With You, with its intimations of our musical idol drinking too much and getting stoned, sets listeners to less starry zones. A bit of ZZ Top’s blues rock swagger in Who Cares, dalliance with bossa nova in Back In Brazil featuring a sideways wink at Stevie Wonder, a noisy jam in Caesar Rock and a final number, Hunt You Down/Naked/C-Link that slides from ‘80s pop-metal to a waltzy holding pattern to electric blues rock, completes the cavalcade.
In an interview, McCa’s one-time collaborator Kanye West said the latter has a little more angst than he—something in the mold of Lennon. Some critics inferred from Kanye’s observation that music-making for McCartney is as natural and easy as breathing air.
In reality, the Beatles’ bassist, now 76 years old, admits he looks at life with humor and an easygoing attitude. He has his own way of growing old gracefully and continues to charm the socks off everyone who ever loved the Beatles.
BRUNO MAJOR
A Song for Every Moon
ENGLISHMAN Bruno Major writes and sings tearjerkers. No, not the kind that warbles about queen of hearts and such crap, but like Home off his latest album.
In an emotional delivery accompanied by an acoustic guitar, Major starts, “There’s no life, without love anyway/You’re a mystery to me some days… / That’s what keeps me sane.” In the chorus, his voice dripping with sadness moves to a higher pitch: “I don’t need to build a house of stone… /Wherever you are’s where I call home.”
Home is the centerpiece of Major’s new album. Strategically, it divides the record into two parts: the first half steeped in pop balladry, and the second part flirting with blues, jazz and a little Billy Joel fascination via Just The Same. Penultimate track Fair-Weather Friend even imagines Gottye and Paul Simon harmonizing over a doo-wop remake.
The simple playing is first-rate, the materials are strong and the production, unfussy. Major is the latest argument that good love songs and great singers can still make the world go ‘round.
(Karpos Live presents Bruno Major in Mix 3 of 2018 at the Vertis Tent, Ayala Vertis North Complex in Quezon City on October 23, which will also feature chanteuse Jess Connelly.)