Hello, loyal PEP (Philippine Entertainment Portal) readers! Here begins a new feature in Open Mic, the occasional album review. It’s a win-win for me, as I get to hear what’s new out there (forcing me out of the rut my iPod has made for me), and I get paid an extra million pesos by my already gracious bosses here at PEP (one can hope, right?). A few notes before we start, o loyal reader:

I’ll be reviewing the songs in chronological order as they appear on the CD.

I won’t waste my time, or yours, in reviewing a clunker. If I write about a song, I most probably liked it enough to grace, or litter, the precious memory banks of PEP’s online servers.

Today I’m reviewing Julianne’s debut album Grateful.

Happy reading!

Tulak Ng Bibig. This was the first single off the album, and what a great choice to kick off public awareness of this prodigious new talent. Julianne’s stark powerful vocals show off another of her greatest strengths—this young woman plays a mean rhythm guitar! Her fresh voice carries the relaxing melody very well, without the effected and contrived stylings that modern “R&B” singers seem to espouse these days. That said, wonderful lines, such as “Pasensya ka na lang, hanggang dito na lang tayo,” don’t seem supported by the otherwise groovy arrangement, and the idea of the song gets lost in the shuffle. Still, a fantastic song, and wonderful playing by the musicians!

Grateful. Virtuoso guitar playing by an immensely talented young artist peppers this great title track! My favorite song on this CD, “Grateful,” hypnotizes with a lilt that takes you places in your head—a hallmark of all great songs—and you can’t help but bask in the uplifting joy she obviously felt while singing this. “Grateful for the day you called my name”… I love it when songs say “I love you” in creative ways, rather than blurting it out!

Choose To Believe. “The promise of serenity” is fulfilled in me by this “Gospel” song. This is praise the way I like it, espousing Him and His truth without bludgeoning you with the usual tired clichés. A true celebration of belief in a higher power, the song has a more modern accompaniment that is never overbearing. Think Paul Simon’s album Surprise, with the synths and strings that help the song along without getting in the way. I’m a believer!

Queen In Me. Another shining example of Pinoy musicianship! The band turns it up on this one, and Julianne has a ball grooving her strong melodic refrains into the pocket they’ve prepared! “The Queen In Me” pays homage to the organic live vibe of Joss Stone and Macy Gray; a nod to a time when R&B meant “Rhythm and Blues”, and was synonymous with such groovemasters as the Motown band, the Stax horns, and Aretha—NOT the overkill vocal calisthenics of Aguilera and Mariah Carey. Sweet!

Let It Rain. A freewheeling ode to the abandon she feels (both negative and positive) in the midst of a deluge, this song starts off with her great guitars and a rainstick, and takes you through “The thunder and the lightning” of her fears and hopes, stanza by beautiful stanza!

Unsaid. This song is a bit bizarre for me, as it shows the polar opposites of the album’s qualities: This song, I believe, has Julianne’s best singing, and yet it’s the “least strong” number on the CD. (Pardon my description, but I just couldn’t get myself to describe any song as “weakest” on an album this good!) The bassist (or was it the bass programming?) should have been much tighter, and the track suffers from the absence of Julianne’s best accompaniment: her rock-steady guitar playing. It’s very hard to groove to something when it simply won’t let you, but it’s to her credit that her singing is simply stellar in spite of this drawback.

Healing. Her propulsive guitar is back, and so is Julianne’s groove on this track! For me, “Healing” is her strongest upbeat song on the CD, with its empowering tribute to her strengths and inspirations. Check out the line, “Exclude me from this selfish game you play”—haven’t we all wanted to say that offhandedly to some loser in our lives? And she does it in the most matter-of-fact kick-ass fashion that you can’t help but grin and tip an imaginary top-hat to her wit!

Empty Chairs. Piano, flute and hypnotic guitars underscore the “moments” she illustrates in this beautiful, beautiful song. “All I see are empty chairs I have to fill”—what an awesome way to look at relationships and breaking up. The great lyrics perfectly capture (for me, at least), the cyclical nature of this game we love to kill ourselves playing. The refrain is perhaps one line too long, but that’s a minor gripe to this otherwise untarnished treasure.

Thank You. The liner notes pay credit to producer Mike Luis, who’s at the helm of this project, and his genius can be best heard (or should I say unsung!) on this final cut. The stark, clean arrangement that let a song breathe, the tight unpredictable vocal harmonies that lift the listener without bombast or the frequent crime of overproduction. (Of course, with a first name like Mike, how could Julianne go wrong?!)

OVERVIEW AND AFTERTHOUGHTS. It took so long to write this review and I have a cop-out, I mean, a valid reason. It takes so long to make an album. The songwriting, the arranging, the rehearsing, the actual recording, mixing and mastering—not to mention the photo shoots and layout sessions. A nucleus of maybe three to ten people might have given difficult birth to a CD, and months or years might have been spent nurturing it, and watching over its gestation. I simply wanted their vision (in this case, Julianne’s) to have an opportunity to grow on me if it wasn’t altogether easily realized by this listener. Congratulations then, to Julianne and her production team and musicians, because Grateful is easily one of the best albums, local or otherwise, to have been produced all year! Four Stars!

Grateful indeed!

Hello PEP reader!  Before I run myself ragged trying to find tickets to the new Transformers movie (it’s coming out a day from now), let me fill you in on another awesome recording gig I had just recently. Once again, it involves the Megastar, Sharon Cuneta, and one of her younger daughters—only this time instead of Frankie (who wowed me with her singing prowess in a previous project I’ve written about here), it was Sharon’s youngest angel Miel who shared the limelight in a high profile ad campaign!

Our loyal PEP readers probably remember one of my blog entries from previous months detailing my delightful experience working with 8-year-old Frankie and her mom on a burger chain commercial. A few weeks ago, I got the call to co-write another song for the brand, and what a timely theme it had for me. If you haven’t heard the jingle, it asks every parent’s biggest questions: Am I raising my child right?  Am I teaching him or her the right things?  Am I hammering the right ideals home, or am I pushing too hard?  An insightful theme to be sure, but it was all the more thought-provoking for me, as me and my wife, singer Bayang Barrios, have recently been blessed with a bouncing baby girl, Mayumi!  So when I sat down to write the music for the project, I had Miel and Mayumi in mind at the same time.  How cool is that?

Now back to the story!  This time around the singing was done by the ever-professional Sharon, and not one of her ever-professional kids.  Baby Miel’s only line in the whole ad was an infinitely cute “Mommy” during one of the stanzas in the full song version.  This, however, was the most fun part of the recording, as we had a ball asking the little girl to call her mom through several degrees of lambing and inis. The outtakes alone would’ve made for a great video!  We recorded Miel first, while her energy was at its apex.  Then it was Mega’s turn, and it was the start of another easy half-hour for me.  As I’ve mentioned previously, Sharon is an absolute perfectionist in a recording studio.  But the beauty of her professionalism is that she’s an absolute perfectionist but not at the expense of the sanity of the engineer and/or producer.  Instead of tiring each other out learning the song as we went by, Sharon makes it a point to learn very word, every note, every nuance by heart before she takes a step inside the booth.  That way, we were only focused on the delivery of the best possible performance, FROM THE FIRST TAKE.  To see such love and care done to my work is the penultimate compliment; that it should come from the Megastar made it all the more special! 

Thirty minutes later, we were pretty much done except for a few arrangement revisions that I could address when Sharon and her Miel had left for home.  I thanked Mega profusely for yet another extraordinary recording experience, and wished them well on their upcoming endeavors.  I also thanked the Advertising Agency (DDB) for letting me work on such a timely song in my life as a new father.  Realizing that I’m completely responsible for someone else’s well being was at first the most frightening thing I had ever felt.  Seeing my child smile and realizing that she is completely responsible for my well being, makes this the happiest I’ve ever been in my life!

Be well, everybody, and God bless!

Now about those Transformers tickets…

Songwriting as a craft has always been near and dear to my heart. Not only because it’s my bread and butter, but I firmly believe that the skill of invention (in this case, of music and of lyrics), is the utmost proof that we humans were made in the Creator’s image. (A few Bible verses don’t hurt either, but you get the idea.)

Years ago when I taught guitar, I always added basic music theory to my lessons, in hopes that it would jump-start a writing binge in my students. I’d help them pick apart their favorite Eraserheads tunes, chord by chord, just to help them see how Ely Buendia built the framework for “Ang Huling El Bimbo” or “Torpedo.”

Wide-eyed with a newfound understanding of this magic, the kids would strum away at their guitars excitedly, with pen and paper nearby to serve as a net as they fished their imagination.

Fast forward to here and now, where I write in celebration of the resurgence of Songwriting, and the long-forgotten stardom that could come with this skill. Of particular interest is the brilliance of singer-songwriter Yeng Constantino.

This young girl took a very different road to fame and fortune. Yeng is a solo singer with a unique voice, whose poignant and extremely popular songs struck a chord among millions of Filipinos young and old. She had the immense fortune of being introduced to countless families through the boob tube on a nightly basis (thanks to ABS-CBN’s Pinoy Dream Academy), and though hard fought, her stardom bypassed the usual obstacles met by the traditional up-and-coming singer—no recording companies to woo, no slow and steady audiences to build in club gigs, no singing festivals to stamp her mark. In a competition of up-and-coming talents, hers was arguably the least manufactured, and the hardest to fake—Yeng is a songwriter, and I think that’s what won us over, and won it for her.

I was lucky to have worked with Yeng recently, when I was asked to arrange, produce and write the melody for Globe’s “Kantabataan” theme song. When I found out who the talent was, I was ecstatic! I was about to co-write a Songwriting Festival’s theme song, and Yeng, one of our best young composers, was singing it!

When she showed up at the recording studio (Hit Productions in Makati), she was shy and unassuming, a girl in her teens with the weight of her fame an unfamiliar burden. But behind the microphone, the sweet and soft-spoken persona gave way to a powerful and self-assured vocalist who knew her way around a rock song. She didn’t need much in the way of guidance, and she was phrasing the words around her singing style like a singer-songwriter would.

Yeng is a far cry from singers who grew up with karaoke, merely mimicking the vocal parts verbatim. A songwriter would normally just have his or her guitar as accompaniment, and thus be more flexible with her singing. Yeng’s identity as a vocalist became easier to flesh out, because she would put her own spin on the accompaniment. As a result, it was one of my most enjoyable recording experiences—the song seemed so suited to her, it sounded like she wrote it!

So, thanks Yeng, and good luck! I hope your success helps bring about the end of the cookie-cutter non-talents that the big networks used to peddle to the audience, and inspires our young singers to pick up a guitar or learn to play the piano. If they never write a song, at least their singing will be improved immensely. And if they catch the muse? Then they, like Yeng, will experience the incredible highs of composing, of walking the listener hand in hand into the melodies and words of our hopes and dreams.

Hawak kamay indeed.

FROM MIKE VILLEGAS: They’re irreverent, mentally suspect, and have been the musical mirror of the Filipino’s sense of humor for over a decade now. They’re the ever-popular Parokya Ni Edgar, and their disciples number in the millions (yet another demographic our religion-courting politicians might try wooing over)! I’ve been a fan for years, and I thought I’d share some great memories with you, o treasured PEP reader!

I recently got to hang out with the band a few weeks back, and it struck me how tight they were. Not just musically (where they’ve taken great strides, their grooves seemingly locked-in from years on the stage and in the studio), but also as friends—and I’ve been around too many manufactured groups to know the difference. They genuinely care about each other. Something as seemingly inconsequential as a quick voice over for one member can turn into a full blown laugh-in, as the entire band almost always shows up to support every other guy during recordings.

Speaking of genuine, I remember meeting vocalist Chito Miranda [frontman of the band Parokya Ni Edgar] for the first time about ten years ago at a recording studio in Makati, and being blown away by his penchant for comic relief. I was there producing Bayang Barrios’s first album for Universal Records, and it was always a blast hanging out with the boys between takes. One evening they approached me to borrow one of my guitars, a nylon string acoustic, for one of their songs. (I never did find out which number immortalized that six-string!) I remember walking into their studio’s control room a day later to ask how the session went, and hearing soft laughter coming from one corner of the otherwise empty room. Just one voice, snickering a joke and giggling away quietly, over and over. It was Chito—face down, on his feet, and rocking slightly to a rhythm—and laughing at his own verbal inventions.

It cemented certain things in my mind about this group—that they’re not just easy antics and quick fart jokes; they’re the real comic deal—and they were going to be huge.

Fast forward now to numerous platinum records and every Award you could think of—the Awit, the Rock, you name it—and Parokya Ni Edgar are still at the top of their game. I’d like to think this is so because they aren’t a Comic Relief band (a term which they supposedly coined). They’re a bunch of great songwriters who not only excel at comedy, but also compose some of the best—dare I say—serious songs out there. I say no one is more insightful than the comedians in our lives, and this band proves that adage. They have an edge in observing true human behavior (being their bread), and writing about it (their butter).

As guffaw-heavy as their humor is (I once had to emergency-park my car along EDSA for fear of crashing, as I had tears in my eyes from laughing at “The Yes Yes Show”), it’s the slightly more sober songs like “Halaga” and the brilliant “Tsokolate” that I feel will cement their place among OPM’s most revered company.

Singing about the similarities between our favorite confection and the other brown stuff is relatively easy; comparing chocolate’s deformation to the trust irrevocably lost between two parties drifting apart is another thing entirely. And there lies the genius of Parokya Ni Edgar: They’d rather look like they’re underachieving and then surprise us than make a big fuss and end up disappointing. That’s smart, that’s hard, and that is so genuinely Pinoy.

So here’s a shout-out to the Irreverrends Chito, Vinci, Gab, DinDin, Buhawi and Darius: Thanks for helping us, your converted, hang on to our sanity for the last ten years! Mabuhay kayo!

Amen!