Jay Som - Anak Ko

Bandcamp Daily

On her second record, Melina Duterte sings songs that move.

Wed Aug 21 13:47:08 GMT 2019

The Quietus

Jay Som’s stunning new album, Anak Ko, stands as a striking tear down of the oft-suggested mutual exclusivity of touching intimacy and riotous energy. Its 35-minute run time delightfully swings back and forth between ponderous balladry and punk-inspired brashness, as propellant bass accompanies a never faltering sense of honesty across all tracks. Anak Ko sees composer-arranger-performer-producer Jay Som (the moniker used by Melina Mae Duterte) expand upon and, in many ways, improve upon her previous two albums.

It’s and album that exudes positivity, even in its most hurt moments. The shimmering final cut that is ‘Get Well’ is brimming with this optimism as Duterte proclaims the lengths to which she will go to help the song’s addressee, adamant of a brighter future amidst swirling guitars and droning synths.

On the other end of the mood spectrum, ‘Tenderness’ begins with a lo-fi electronic drum beat over which gentle synths intone a looping chord progression that frames the soft and slightly muffled voice of Duterte. The cut is broken by a teasing second of cold silence that ushers in a wonderfully lush instrumental driven by tight drums and electric piano. Just before the groove begins to wane, an ascending key change inserts a vital dose of energy, seeing the track out as a highlight of an already glistening project.

Duterte’s ability as a producer is displayed majestically on this record, despite still being a home-studio-job. The sparkling summery guitar riding through ‘Superbike’ or the emotive cinematic string section elevating the tail-end of ‘Nighttime Drive’ to a gorgeous textural climax, are outstanding accounts of her prowess behind a mixing desk. She has abundant ability to tap into vividly colourful soundscapes , even amongst relatively simplistic instrumental arrangements. The warm tones seeping through this record, evident in distorted guitars, fuzzy synths and basslines that sound as if they’re being produced by a viola-bass à la McCartney, realise an orange sun hovering over a distant horizon, blessing us with its comforting heat.

Anak Ko sees Jay Som finalise a sound that has slowly bloomed into a delightful fruition. The project is stunning and displays a wonderfully acute understanding of what it should do. Duterte knows exactly where this album should stand within her own discography and that of the wider world. Its song-writing is calculated without betraying itself to rigidity and its honesty is telling without falling into a trap of timidity. Anak Ko owes a lot to Duterte’s awareness of how simplicity can breed beauty. Its greatest trick is the delicate fittings of nuance amongst deceptively uncomplicated compositions.

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Fri Aug 23 10:23:02 GMT 2019

The Guardian 80

(Polyvinyl)

Now on her third album as Jay Som, LA-based Melina Duterte began as a bedroom pop operative, writing and playing the entirety of her first two well-received albums. Her subtle, gauzy indie shared a love of 80s shoegaze with a cohort of US dreampop bands, but Duterte also drew, albeit elliptically, on her dad’s funk records and her teenage years as a trumpeter. Her Filipino heritage remains another influence disrupting the idea of indie rock as a white male playground.

On Anak Ko (Tagalog for “my child”), Duterte has gained a band, and while her production values have ratcheted up, this release is also quieter and more accomplished than Everybody Works, its 2017 predecessor. Crowd-pleasers such as Superbike still fetishise shoegaze, but as these nine tracks play out, “indie rock” no longer seems adequate to describe these shifting torch songs, with programmed drums and pastel keyboards; Tenderness sounds oddly like Prefab Sprout. Like previous Jay Som records, Anak Ko might seem slight at first listen, particularly Duterte’s winsome coo, but the payoff for lingering in her evolving dreamspace is hefty.

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Sun Aug 25 07:00:09 GMT 2019

Tiny Mix Tapes 80

Jay Som
Anak Ko

[Polyvinyl; 2019]

Rating: 4/5

In case you missed it, Everybody Works was the brilliant and tender 2017 breakthrough for Jay Som. It traversed a bevy of genres and moods, putting Melina Mae Duterte’s songwriting, arrangement, performance, and production talents on display. This made for a dynamic if slightly scattershot album. It showed a wide palette (and some serious jams), but it left me hungry for a more unified work.

Anak Ko maintains the stylistic depth of that debut but incorporates it more seamlessly. It shows musical growth from Duterte, who now wields her vivid genre vocabulary as a toolkit from which she can pull different shades, hues, and textures. Across the album, varied grooves, harmonic modes, auxiliary instrumentation, and production effects contribute to its overarching sound. Add to that the fact that it was written mostly within the course of a week and a cohesive stylistic voice emerges. It’s less of a tour of different rooms in the house than Everybody Works was. More so, it feels like the light in a room subtly shifting, effecting the mood over the course of a day.

Consider the brusque track-to-track shifts of tracks 2-5 of Everybody Works, which moved through sunshine pop à la Liz Phair and Natasha Beddingfield on “The Bus Song;” dreamy guitar washes of “Remain” that sound like a missing Roxy Music/Fleetwood Mac collab; The Breeders-y fuzz-jam of “1 Billion Dogs” that would’ve fit in the catalog of label-mates Alvvays; the light funk of “One More Time, Please” that held a groove with the cold distance of Art of Noise. Maybe this quick back-to-back tour de force was a necessary move for Duterte to showcase her breadth and deep skillset, but Anak Ko seems to have come from a place of greater comfort and confidence. Many of these same influences find space amongst each other, transitioning seamlessly within songs and coming through layered elements.

That poppy Liz Phair energy finds space immediately with Anak Ko’s second track, “Superbike.” I was grinning while walking and listening one day, feeling like an idiot for the pure sentimental joy the song wrought upon me: its slow-building bridge, its swelling reverb, the emphasis on its relative minor chord in its resolution; all of it bares a sincerity and ingenuity that embellished rather than disrupted the mood it set. Other tracks — “Peace Out,” “Devotion,” “Tenderness,” “Crown” — use stripped-down arrangements in percussion and guitar/bass doubling to experiment within the limits of the “Spotify sound” that has come to dominate both the indie rock and pop landscapes. Jay Som enlivens a decidedly non-dynamic sound via cleverly cycling riffs (articulating unlikely beats; that 14 beat “Peace Out” verse riff is heavenly), layering percussion or omitting usual drum kit elements variably, and writing intuitive but well-constructed melodies (the vocal pickup to the chorus of “Nighttime Drive” brilliantly contains most of that chorus’s action, anticipating it and climaxing in the same five-note breath). The newfound funk of “Peace Out,” “Tenderness,” and “Anak Ko” revolve around lopsided patterns that emphasize elements of the songs themselves, avoiding genre-pastiche and, all the while, grooving harder for it (the mid-song instrumental 6/8 bridge of “Tenderness” is a particular highlight).

Duterte avoids familiar pitfalls of similarly positioned bands (especially in Los Angeles, it seems), which is a sort of flattening, de-stylization within arrangements. This trend is seemingly an effect of the use of session/for-hire musicians and arranger/producers without a determined stylistic vision or a spirit for experimentation. Add that to the professionalism and sheen expected of the L.A. bar scene, and the results tend to be inoffensive and predictable by design. (Of course, some have made brilliant work within these parameters — Hand Habits and their latest album placeholder come to mind.) Anak Ko, however, proves the emergence of a stylistic auteur in indie rock. There’s little apparent by way of concept, lyrical wit, and aesthetic quirk — qualities that illuminate the work of many of Duterte’s colleagues — but ambience, style, and ingenuity are well at work, making the album a vibe-y classic worth hanging onto.

Fri Sep 06 03:50:43 GMT 2019

Tiny Mix Tapes 80

Jay Som
Anak Ko

[Polyvinyl; 2019]

Rating: 4/5

In case you missed it, Everybody Works was the brilliant and tender 2017 breakthrough for Jay Som. It traversed a bevy of genres and moods, putting Melina Mae Duterte’s songwriting, arrangement, performance, and production talents on display. This made for a dynamic if slightly scattershot album. It showed a wide palette (and some serious jams), but it left me hungry for a more unified work.

Anak Ko maintains the stylistic depth of that debut but incorporates it more seamlessly. It shows musical growth from Duterte, who now wields her vivid genre vocabulary as a toolkit from which she can pull different shades, hues, and textures. Across the album, varied grooves, harmonic modes, auxiliary instrumentation, and production effects contribute to its overarching sound. Add to that the fact that it was written mostly within the course of a week and a cohesive stylistic voice emerges. It’s less of a tour of different rooms in the house than Everybody Works was. More so, it feels like the light in a room subtly shifting, effecting the mood over the course of a day.

Consider the brusque track-to-track shifts of tracks 2-5 of Everybody Works, which moved through sunshine pop à la Liz Phair and Natasha Beddingfield on “The Bus Song;” dreamy guitar washes of “Remain” that sound like a missing Roxy Music/Fleetwood Mac collab; The Breeders-y fuzz-jam of “1 Billion Dogs” that would’ve fit in the catalog of label-mates Alvvays; the light funk of “One More Time, Please” that held a groove with the cold distance of Art of Noise. Maybe this quick back-to-back tour de force was a necessary move for Duterte to showcase her breadth and deep skillset, but Anak Ko seems to have come from a place of greater comfort and confidence. Many of these same influences find space amongst each other, transitioning seamlessly within songs and coming through layered elements.

That poppy Liz Phair energy finds space immediately with Anak Ko’s second track, “Superbike.” I was grinning while walking and listening one day, feeling like an idiot for the pure sentimental joy the song wrought upon me: its slow-building bridge, its swelling reverb, the emphasis on its relative minor chord in its resolution; all of it bares a sincerity and ingenuity that embellished rather than disrupted the mood it set. Other tracks — “Peace Out,” “Devotion,” “Tenderness,” “Crown” — use stripped-down arrangements in percussion and guitar/bass doubling to experiment within the limits of the “Spotify sound” that has come to dominate both the indie rock and pop landscapes. Jay Som enlivens a decidedly non-dynamic sound via cleverly cycling riffs (articulating unlikely beats; that 14 beat “Peace Out” verse riff is heavenly), layering percussion or omitting usual drum kit elements variably, and writing intuitive but well-constructed melodies (the vocal pickup to the chorus of “Nighttime Drive” brilliantly contains most of that chorus’s action, anticipating it and climaxing in the same five-note breath). The newfound funk of “Peace Out,” “Tenderness,” and “Anak Ko” revolve around lopsided patterns that emphasize elements of the songs themselves, avoiding genre-pastiche and, all the while, grooving harder for it (the mid-song instrumental 6/8 bridge of “Tenderness” is a particular highlight).

Duterte avoids familiar pitfalls of similarly positioned bands (especially in Los Angeles, it seems), which is a sort of flattening, de-stylization within arrangements. This trend is seemingly an effect of the use of session/for-hire musicians and arranger/producers without a determined stylistic vision or a spirit for experimentation. Add that to the professionalism and sheen expected of the L.A. bar scene, and the results tend to be inoffensive and predictable by design. (Of course, some have made brilliant work within these parameters — Hand Habits and their latest album placeholder come to mind.) Anak Ko, however, proves the emergence of a stylistic auteur in indie rock. There’s little apparent by way of concept, lyrical wit, and aesthetic quirk — qualities that illuminate the work of many of Duterte’s colleagues — but ambience, style, and ingenuity are well at work, making the album a vibe-y classic worth hanging onto.

Fri Sep 06 03:50:43 GMT 2019

Pitchfork 73

Melina Duterte’s second album as Jay Som sounds exploratory and playful, like a jam session among friends that’s just hit its stride.

Wed Aug 28 05:00:00 GMT 2019