Written by Gabriel Bagahansol Starting off your band’s much-awaited sophomore album with lines like “I wrote some lyrics but it’s ten years later / I’m always worried that I’m past my prime” is a ballsy move when it’s been eight years since your first. Even more so when you’ve added these lines to a song you’ve been playing for more than a decade. A close up of the artwork for 2017’s Whatever That Was flickers on an old TV in a sunlit living room, as though that period in the band’s career were glory days they can only reminisce about. You could be forgiven for thinking SOS is staging a farewell, but this is the façade of nostalgia and reflection they have formed over their brand new album It Was A Moment, and that includes the opening track “Amore”, which finally saw completion after being a long-beloved live number by fans of the band. One listen and you can see why people have been clamoring for this for years: an energetic jangle bounces off from everyone in the band, amping things up with a rousing chorus that just makes you want to dance. All of that is very much intact here in the definitive version of “Amore,” except the uptight, aggressive iteration once heard at Route 196 and beyond is nowhere to be seen. Roberto Seña, along with fellow guitarist Andrew Panopio, has seemingly traded his fuzzbox for cleaner tones, has given the song a carefree environment to live in, and not only did the two of them make space for an acoustic guitar, apparently, there’s a synthesizer now? Outside of its nostalgia-tinged cover art, there’s hardly a trace of the band’s distant past in It Was A Moment. For the last eight years, many things have happened within the SOS camp. They did side projects outside the realm of rock n’ roll. They opened a recording studio above the sandy shores of Elyu. They even signed a brand new record deal, on James Reid’s Careless Music label, of all places. Somewhere in the middle of it all, after more than a decade of playing the same old song, they finally decided to fuck with the formula. 2020’s The Other Side saw SOS dabble with disco beats, synth layers, and a softer approach to their music. While a cynic can dismiss the EP as a mere experiment at a time where their guitar-based alt-rock would’ve felt out of place, it was otherwise a necessary shakeup in their musical palette. And now, with the addition of keyboardist Ram Alonzo into the lineup, SOS has turned the cozy, colorful landscape of The Other Side from a brief excursion to the first phase of an artistic evolution. You can hear them take the next few steps into this path on songs like “Roses”, a respectable synthwave track about trying not to ruin a new love affair, and “I’m Kidding,” an anthemic exercise in irony with a sing-along chorus about bottling yourself up and never saying what you really feel. After these two songs is the pensive elegy to lost youth that is “It’s History”, which also affirms you, the listener, that in spite of your failures, all of that is in the past and that you’re more than just your shortcomings. While these three songs showcase Seña’s eloquent way with words and imagery, musically, something is amiss. Despite superb performances by the band, held together by Anjo Silvoza’s melodic bass lines and drummer King Puentespina’s steady but dynamic drumming, these are moments in which SOS seem like they aren’t willing to change up their sound much. They feel more like a compromise between slightly less jagged guitars and marginally pop keys, ultimately stalling the record after the shot of adrenaline that is “Amore”. Where SOS really shines in this record is when they fully commit to challenging their artistic identity. A hi-hat-heavy drum machine and a floaty synth line welcome listeners to the smooth R&B number “French Exit”. Seña sounds so seductive and self-assured as he sings about a casual love affair and how he’ll leave a lover before they even know it, a far cry from the jittery expressions of 2017’s “Favoritism”. Meanwhile, on “Money,” a rigid but groovy electro-funk beat coexists with frustrations toward someone else’s attitude towards money, especially when Seña talks about the frustrations of being a musician in today’s economy. While the song is sullied a bit by his overzealous vocals, it offers an otherwise noteworthy insight on being a struggling artist today. These two songs highlight SOS’ potential in holding their own across other genres, reaping the rewards of their expeditions outside the band’s walls. The back half of It Was A Moment, then, is further proof of how far SOS can break the lyrical and sonic barriers that have been placed against them. For one, “Please Lang” and “Seryoso,” the band’s first Filipino songs, show Seña successfully making his ramblings shine in our own language, his acerbic tongue more potent than ever as the Taglish words help him convey the strongest emotions in the simplest of words. Meanwhile, the remaining three songs give us a vision of what a fully-electronic SOS could sound like. Two of these, “Yumi & The Apocalypse” and “Love Kept Us Warm,” show two sides of a doomed relationship: wistful hopelessness faces off against cautious optimism in an atmosphere of sparkling keys, unrelenting drum patterns, irresistible chord progressions, and even a fadeout that’s delightfully-’80s. The title track that closes the album sees the band complete their transformation from guitar heroes to electro-pop stars through a moody number on the end of a relationship that should’ve been taken seriously. Regret permeates the song’s sparse instrumentation that recreates the lightheaded feeling of being alone with one too many drinks, the bridge even introducing chopped-up vocal samples straight out of mid-2010s Tumblr. However, it feels as though there’s more to this than meets the eye, with all the talk about phases and the references