The Memory Drawers
2016 was a landmark year for Memory Drawers. From landing a handful of overseas compilations to being championed by music acts like BP Valenzuela and Ang Bandang Shirley’s Owel Alvero, the band’s ascent to Internet buzzland feels vital at a time when local indie is closely associated with squeaky-clean crossover acts whose songs gravitate toward the holy trinity of hugot, sex and young love.
These guys take a good deal of pride in the fact that their music is a potentially risky gamble, aesthetics-wise. From the get-go, they make obscure, early ‘90s twee-pop that is liberated from any notion of cool. Their songs are comfort anthems for happy-sad pop geeks and outcasts who love their sing-alongs scrappy and syrupy, lackadaisical and melodic, small but affecting, and not the kind that subscribes to being the flavor of the moment—if you know what I mean.
It’s refreshing to hear a relatively young band favor simplicity and comfort over pop ambition and experiments. Sweet little ditties like Hart and For Any of This grab you by the collar as it strives for indelible songcraft in the most subtle of ways, while Lovingly, Leaving Me — a track that peaked at number three on Vandals On The Wall’s 100 Essential Filipino Tracks of 2016 — is one of those rare moments in music that find beauty in the freewheeling abandon of reality and life. There’s so much joy listening to their songs drenched in lo-fi noise and jangly guitars. There’s so much to celebrate about how their work articulates themes that aren’t often explored in “trendy” Pinoy indie tracks. Thank goodness for Memory Drawers, it seemed important for every other new act to embrace uniqueness, raise the stakes, and ditch the new normal with something that refracts ingenuity and earnestness back to the “Internet underground.”