REVIEW: The persistence of memory

They said it wasn’t a nostalgia concert and I believed them. After all, Aia de Leon, Barbie Almalbis and Kitchie Nadal are all still active, with fairly recent releases under their belts and new material in the works. But after their triptych concert dubbed “Secrets” last Saturday, it’s tough not to drown in a sea of remembering.

I suppose it was inevitable — sharing the same stage were three of the most important singer-songwriters of what is now a lost era, that sweet spot between the innocent grunge ‘90s and the post-rock social media aughts. We were all so different then — some of us were still students, some of us on our first jobs, all of us so much younger. The three performers have gone through their own transformations. Aia, now a jazzier, funkier solo artist, was once the power vocalist of one of the most recognizable rock bands on radio. Barbie, now a mother of two and frequent cover girl of parenting magazines, was once the crush ng bayan of the NU 107 set. Kitchie, now more active in social work, was, at one point, the biggest rock star in the country.

But this isn’t the same recording industry, this isn’t the same country, and these aren’t exactly the same people. When you hear them play their hits live, it’s almost as if they still are, and for those of us who no longer are, who were inside a sold-out Music Museum listening to the soundtrack of a pivotal part of our past performed in front of us, it was all the illusion we needed.

‘Not like a Throwback’

“It’s not like a throwback for us,” Barbie Almalbis said after the concert. “Maybe for some people, it’s like they haven’t heard us in a while. But for us, gradual siyang nangyari.” She brings up a good point: songs cannot exclusively belong to a specific time if you never really stopped hearing or playing them. But audiences are bound to have a different experience; even Barbie can attest to this. “Siguro hearing each other’s old songs… like yung Pangarap Ko, favorite ko yun ni Kitchie,” she said. “We used to play that together in gigs. I haven’t heard it in a while so I was excited to hear it.”

Creators will always insist on being immune from their audience’s nostalgia because constantly moving forward is part of the job description. Creativity is a force that is always in sync with time. But time does something to songs and there’s nothing any musician can do about it, not even Aia de Leon, who said after the show: “Songs are always songs. They don’t feel like old songs.”

When Aia performed a mic-less, stripped-down acoustic rendition of the Imago classic Sundo off the stage and closer to the crowd, she couldn’t help but cry. “I’ve sung Sundo many times… but the action itself, I’ve never done it,” she said, her voice cracking up. “Like really reaching — that’s what the song is about. And to hear the crowd sing it… it touched me so much.” Aia — who has admitted that her now-infamous failed audition for The Voice was an attempt to “start over” during a difficult period in her life, who thanked Barbie during the concert for “taking care” of her when she was down, who prefaced her set by flashing “I’m single. But no time to mingle. Chos.” on the LED screen behind her — has the most baggage to unpack among the three and knows, more than anyone, that songs always change.

This is true even in the case of Kitchie Nadal’s career-and-era-defining Huwag Na Huwag Mong Sasabihin, which she now performs with a breezy electronica beat and a lightness that softens the rough edges of the 2004 single. Gone is the raw emotion that made it the most relatable and hugot-worthy song of the mid-aughts. The iconic guitar intro that used to sound like a plaintive wail, now merely traipses in so that you barely recognize it. It sounds exactly the way a happily-married woman in her 30s would sing an old song about the grievances of a heartbroken 24-year-old. Now, Kitchie, who walked away from the limelight a decade ago to see the world and find her spirituality, has moved on to more adult, real-life concerns. The highlight of her set, in fact, wasn’t Huwag Na Huwag Mong Sasabihin, or even other hits like Same Ground or Bulong. It was a rap duet with the Junior Rappers — a trio of boys whose deft street-rapping had gone viral and who Kitchie is helping through her ministry for street children.

Barbie never changes

Some things never change, though, and among these things, Barbie Almalbis is one of my favorites. She looks and sounds exactly the same as she did almost 20 years ago, when Hungry Young Poets’ Torpe became a surprise underground hit. One of the thrills of being a music fan is when your favorite artists hardly change — there’s comfort in seeing and hearing things we still recognize in a world that’s getting increasingly unrecognizable. Among the three, it’s Barbie whose original sound has been preserved the most: there’s still that warm guitar tone, her penchant for heart-tugging chord progressions, her voice that’s still so delicate and expressive that it seems to always teeter beautifully on the brink of breaking (during their group performance of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, Barbie gave a transcendentally fragile rendition that I had no idea was still possible with that oft-covered song).

In the middle of her set that was filled with familiar gems — Tabing Ilog, Firewoman, Money For Food and Say Goodbye, among others — she reached deep into her discography and into her past with Shiny Red Balloon, a great ‘90s memento of adolescent angst. “Songwriting is a lot like writing a diary,” she said, introducing the song. “And may mga memories na ayaw na nating balikan,” she laughed.

After their individual sets, the three finally shared the stage for a group performance full of fond memories. “Now we wanna share with you some of the songs na jina-jam namin nung nagsisimula pa lang kami,” Barbie said, addressing the crowd. “Baka maalala niyo ‘tong mga songs na ‘to.” Sure enough, they were familiar ‘90s tunes, starting off with Hallelujah (it was technically a tribute to Leonard Cohen, but the version they did — as with 99 percent of artists doing Leonard Cohen tributes — is actually the John Cale/Jeff Buckley version), then picking it up with The Cranberries’ Dreams and Nirvana’s Smell’s Like Teen Spirit, which came with the added bonus of an unusually animated Barbie shredding Kurt Cobain riffs. They were all visibly having fun, like the kids that they probably were in those songs’ heydays, playing tunes with no plans of stardom or complications ahead, just music. It was beautiful to see, especially on a night that was not supposed to be about nostalgia. Songs are always songs. But some of them are leitmotifs in our existence.

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