Rocked by Two of 2009’s Best Rackets

Gossip / Music for Men / Columbia / Sony BMG Music Group

Hilera / Nut House / PolyEast Records

Despite the Internet-age travails that have been bedeviling the recording industry, despite the lack of truly fresh genres, and despite the to-the-last-drop mashing up and exhausting of existing ones, great music continues to abound. At least two 2009 releases—one homegrown, the other Stateside—bear this out, and they transcend the traits of their period. No matter the future time, these two CDs should remain as listenable and laudable as they were last year and still are now.
First is Music for Men by the band formerly called The Gossip. Now simply Gossip, this US trio has been around since 1999 and Music for Men is their major-label debut, produced by no less than sought-after sonic hombre Rick Rubin. Some critics elsewhere have sighed that, having gone mainstream, this essentially punk band has lost its raw edge. But even if we overlook Gossip’s previous releases—three full-length discs among them— Music for Men is an enormous package, filled with the band’s affinity for tough yet hooks-rich rock, spiced with monster beats that echo disco and appear to be meatier updates of earlier, female-fronted bands such as the 1980s’ The Motels and Blondie. (Speaking of that decade, early in the Music for Men track “Love and Let Love,” singer Beth Ditto whispers, “Ah, push it”—a low-key homage to the 1987 Salt-N-Pepa hit.)

The trio of Ditto, guitarist Brace Paine and drummer Hannah Billie, however, are not just about being ballsy. Sure, the band gladly plays up its queerness quotient: Billie—an out lesbian; ditto Ditto—appears on the front cover as a Keanu Reeves meets K.D. Lang visage; then there’s that in-joke album title. Yet tunes-wise, they wisely opt to touch on universal themes that include love, sexuality, troubles and relationships—the overtness of “Men in Love” notwithstanding. Personal labels aside, Gossip is hands-down great—confident and capable of churning out refreshing rock worth our eardrums, a ray of hope amid a sea of ho-hum acts. Liberating in an almost spiritual sense, Gossip, through Music for Men, has made us love new rock again.

Likewise brimming with raw power and lust for life is Hilera, as evidenced by Nut House, their second album. The threesome of vocalist-guitarist Chris Padilla, his drumming brother Bobby Padilla, and bassist-vocalist Ivan Garcia, has been together for five years now, a compelling, self-contained unit whose apparent template is rockabilly but also imbibe the restless, smackdown-ready attitude and short-bursts brevity of punk rock. Chris Padilla can likewise pull off English lyrics (Nut House’s sole tune in Tagalog is “Wala Akong Alam”) better than most, and wisely avoids the annoying penchant of other acts to force (often non-colloquial) Pinoy lyrics into their own compositions. And Hilera may generally embody angst, yet it is not so devoid of humor that they cannot divert and go out of character, as they do in “Doo Wop Pop” and the heightened catchiness of “Floating in a Freefall.”

Nut House may be dogged by the album’s comparatively inferior sound quality, and its 16-song lineup may contain one or two forgettable tracks, yet it is a commanding package. The prominent “Radical” may be catchy as heck, but “Not This Time,” “I’ll Get By” and “Another Face,” to name a few, are even better, both as melodic numbers and as epitomes of the band’s don’t-let-the-bastards-get-you-down bravura. Criminally overlooked when the trophies were handed out at the 2009 NU Rock Awards, Hilera are the latest boys to deliver headphone heaven and reaffirm the joys of noise.