Sakit, pare.
Nothing would be a more apt summary for what Ashley’s Kryptonite’s new EP, Tayo, is about. Or I could be mistaken, and behind the opening line Galit ka ba / sa buhay mong / kinulang sa saya? which reads initially as a frustrated and frankly juvenile confession of emptiness is really just a wry and flippant youth speaking of a life that, in reality – and he knows it – overflows with joy. Sure, things might suck – your love life is in the trash can once again, and you just know you’re going to pull it out again soon once you’ve received your daily fix of hope – but this façade of melancholy is exactly what comprises tayo. It is the tayo that gives purpose, energy, and meaning to everything – the litany of random objects in the sleeve photos are suddenly loaded with history, meanings and memory already half-forgotten and only half-real. The tayo is very real, and, at the same time, there never was a tayo – whether it only existed in the mind in the music, it cannot be denied that we experienced it, and these songs call out to that experience and know it for what it is: uncertain, half-formed, recurring, beautiful.
To speak of tayo, Ashley’s Kryptonite resorts to tightly composed rock numbers that never overstay their welcome. Each song bursts with personality, and there is no thematic inconsistency to speak of: a preoccupation with the bittersweet birthed these songs, and certainly all of them speak of the certain experience in such general terms, with such energy and earnestness, it knows we’ve all been there, and it practically begs us to affirm it. And yes, we have been there.
Isaw – the title, which is a play on the word sawi, relates fantastically to the image of random found objects photographed in the EP sleeve design – it sounds exactly like what the cover looks like: sweet, suburban, still, fraught with gentleness that is simply waiting to explode. But it is patient, and it has been here for a while: see the flower petals that have settled there. Soon, piano scales and bass gracefully enter the scene, prolonging the inevitable collapse by gently cushioning the fall. And then it hits: the song Tayo bursts through with Cholo Ledesma’s propulsive drums, bides its time in the prechorus, and then realizes – wala namang tayo – and the song loses itself, charged with angst without all the edge or sharpness. Even at its loudest, the band performs sweetly, though certainly it is not only because they know exactly what to make us feel and how to make us feel it, but because they feel it as well.
Labandera, one of their older songs, goes for a more clever turn of phrase with its lyrics, where the last syllables of every line in the verse lead into the first syllables of the following line. Lalakad palayo kasi ako’y nalulum- / bye bye na sayo kasi ‘di mo pinapansin, among other lines, but the same figure is present in the titular line – maalala ba / maala-labandera. A concrete experience whose pain and pleasure is diverted onto a completely separated image – it all makes too much sense. We feel it.
It’s hard to explain how the band manages to provoke such empathy. The precision of the feelings drawn out by the music certainly makes it feel like that band’s zeroed in on a formula of their own. Tangibly, there are continuities across the songs – embittered and resonant vocals that simply beg for sing-a-longs, a powerful lead guitar by Josh Jimenez placed forward and serving as a counterpoint to the vocals, the tasteful bass by Mike Tee that never overpowers, the drums that direct the tide with cleverly deployed fills. But just as you pick up on these, there are just as many disruptions that arise – the first song, in particular, follows a completely different and acoustic structure; certain instrumental breakdowns and variations in guitar effects and production across the album reveal another dimension to the universal melancholy. And it is precisely from all that I listed that give each song their own unique form – the compositions are consistently compulsive, high-wired, free-wheeling, impassioned, always performed with charismatic know-how. The band is completely in touch with the experience of tayo – knowing when to deviate, insert a segue, fixate on an afterthought, or brood, even. It speaks with expertise, knowledge, but it never insists on its own coolness – thankfully the compositions do not veer into self-indulgent territory – but rather sticks to what it knows. It plays a game every time and knows how it’ll end, but never to prove a point nor itself, but simply because the tayo is inevitable to it.
I suppose this is what keeps the EP sounding fresh every replay – it sounds like they’re going through another round at it every time, narrating an iteration of tayo and reveling in the bittersweet while constantly keeping an eye out for cities and streets yet unexplored, for how it may be made new. Here, on this particular listen, the streets are coated in vines, the roads are coated in flower petals, and she isn’t leaving him yet. This is because he never had her. Not on this listen, and not in the previous. Perhaps in the next.
February 27, 2016
Source for the album art: https://www.facebook.com/events/430287647173201/
Original Article: http://amplitubeonline.tumblr.com/post/140100239869/ano-nga-ba-tayo-the-sublimity-of-beauty-in