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AlbumREVIEW: 'Jalur alternatif by Marcello Tahitoe
Aside from certain senior citizens, neglected 15 year olds, hyper-religious practitioners and AM radio purists, does anybody still consider rock music at all out-of-the-mainstream? Or â assume dramatic voice â Music for the disenfranchised?Symbolic tattoos and overused black T-shirts notwithstanding, this particular notion of au natural rebelliousness seems as threatening as a teenage scowl
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Aside from certain senior citizens, neglected 15 year olds, hyper-religious practitioners and AM radio purists, does anybody still consider rock music at all out-of-the-mainstream? Or ' assume dramatic voice ' Music for the disenfranchised?
Symbolic tattoos and overused black T-shirts notwithstanding, this particular notion of au natural rebelliousness seems as threatening as a teenage scowl. Kids no longer just dream of being rock stars but know the actual steps it takes to be it, and rock festivals are without a doubt one of the biggest economic certainty in the entertainment biz (hip hop is big, but has there been a major rap festival?).
Its imagined individuality sure doesn't sound convincing in a crowd full of macho beards, muscled opinions and darkly-monochrome getups.
That's to say that Indonesian alterna-pop star Marcello Tahitoe's fifth and latest album, Jalur Alternatif (Alternative Path) is all about that vague rebellion.
No longer bound by his own sense of sustaining commercial success, the narrative goes, Marcello now wants to rock out because that's all he'd wanted to do all along, see? And now, man, he's going to wail and stomp on his distortion box because dude, he just does not care.
Thing is, he probably does. His third album was called Realistis/Idealis (Realist/Idealist) and in it (well, at least the title) the singer-songwriter tried to inject some young adult dilemma, though the surefire hit singles were probably clear enough about where the man stood on his own-wrought arguments.
Jalur Alternatif certainly had a few more fuzzboxes used during its production (or at least expensive software presets set to 'American Radio RAWK'), but in its essence, this is crowd-pleasing business as usual for the 32-year old.
The songs here would have sounded much more 'rebellious' as Marcello intended had it been recorded in a cheap studio or at least partly live. As it is however, anything that resembles a crunch pretty much stays underneath the vocals-loudly-above-everything nature of mainstream local music production.
At its level, the musician's sneer-singing sounds almost satirical. At its best, the record asserts the crisp radio-ready crunchiness of American man-rock a'la modern Foo Fighters, Daughtry or whatever band the designated 'rock guy' TV singing shows tend to cover.
Consider album opener 'Putus Cinta Itu Biasa' (Falling Out Of Love is Normal), one of the record's contextually-hardest tracks, which bogs itself down prematurely with its title, but more so with its much-too-literal lyrics. The song itself, like the Foo-Fighters-aping 'Pergi' (Leaving) and 'Apa Kabar Sang Pencipta' (How is the Lord Doing?) are power-rock with immediate verse and choruses.
If it isn't clear, Foo Fighters' latter day sound is the biggest ingredient in the pot here. Dave Grohl and co's arena-prepped sound is all over the quasi-country of 'Gengsi' (Prestige) like a hillbilly to a bible, the hop-pity-hop staccato of 'Aku Ada Di Belakangmu' (I'm Right Behind You') and the octave-ridden mid-tempo dirge 'Apa Boleh Buat' (What Can We Do), which has the kindness to throw in some English lyrics here and there for rhyming's sake.
There's a much-too-careful concern here that goes against everything Marcello says the record is. It doesn't throw caution to the wind as much as it invites the breeze to his house for a free massage. The only thing remotely unhinged here is the vocal affection the musician thinks gives the record an 'edge'.
By the time the pop-shuffle friendliness of 'Hanya Kamu' (Only You) runs by, most rockers ' even the aforementioned distortion-thirsty ones ' will find very little to rock out to here. Marcello shouldn't care though, the kids will still lap it up, and if they are going through puberty, this will sound even more rocking
