Written by Elijah P.
15 years is barely one-fifth of a century; trends and events have passed, figures have become monuments, culture has turned itself to the past and we’re here struggling to become a blender of something that happened 30 years ago. The veil of “OPM” is showing itself to become a rehash of what has been and what was. Indie pop, or pop music in general, has slowly become stale. Alternative music has become the starter pack of many younger listeners. The internet has inevitably redirected our view of alternative music forever. However, for seminal Bulacan indie-pop troupe Orange & Lemons, you’d expect them to dish out something different, all the while picking up where their influences have left off in their latest album titled “La Bulaquena”, their first album in forever.
The 10-track album is no way of showing merely tributes to legends and name-checking every little detail behind the scenes. It doesn’t pull off any excuses, Orange & Lemons simply show and not tell. The new album – although vying to become a balance of traditional instrumentation and modern flick of anglophile-inspired indie-pop – has no shortage of melodies through and through, but at what cost? The answer: this is Clem and company’s attempt at reinventing the genre rather than paying true homage to it. All of the tracks circle back to the meaning of what it was like to become scholarly of what is viewed to be archaic in terms of technique and sonics. But that isn’t the lone goal according to the band.
O&L loyalists may be surprised by the first couple of tracks. Like this isn’t any “Hannggang Kailan” or another “A Beginning of Something Wonderful”; it’s donned differently with less buttoned-polos and posters of your favorite slick-back C86 vocalist. “La Bulaquena” is treated with amplification of its traditions, wherein examinations of rondallas and kundiman as a whole are done like a pop quiz. The album is expected to behave like a gentleman in barong outfits, but rather Castro, the Del Mundos, and Neroda act as if this is what they have and they do it on their own terms respectively. The album clearly doesn’t imprison itself in its resources, especially with the title track, “Ikaw Ang Aking Tahanan” and “Yakapin Natin Ang Gabi”. There are tracks that exceed everyone’s expectations: headbanging to bandurrias couldn’t be any more exhilarating and refreshing.
Although there are tracks that stand out positively, there are others that are entertained as fillers, covers that are fit for a venue of seekers of kundiman, and actual placeholders in a museum. The album, from front to back, face value to its lyrical depths, is conserved as one that wouldn’t come out as rather more innovative or bold; It’s an Orange & Lemons album without their classic setup and yet the entire project keeps within bounds of their familiar sound, even after their 15-year absence of releasing newer material.
It is music that wouldn’t come across as material that would pave any of its contemporaries forward, but rather it crystallizes the thought of traditional music not exceeding its expected use. “La Bulaquena” has no tricks or rather little progressive ideas that are enough to gauge another project that would push the kundiman sound to another level in the future. The project needs a little bit of push in sonics: a little more outsider material and fewer instruments that are kept dusted on the inside.
Orange & Lemons have accepted that challenge and the result came out well, but remembering it as a body of work barely makes sense in this wide collection of music released this year.
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