June 1, 2007

Rating:

The first time I saw a Rock n’ Roll Mafia picture in a teen magazine, they looked like a bunch of fresh-faced boys with a catchy name. When a couple of years later I finally got to see them performing live, they weren’t so cute and innocent anymore. The gig was marred by electrical failure, but the real problem was that the songs in their setlist were too long, far too long to bear except you’re high on something. Every song started brilliantly, asking you to dance along, but when you realised that the song seemed not to end so soon, you began to feel like kicking someone’s balls just to pass the time while the song lasted. However, their self-titled album made you thought that catching them live was better anyway.

So then, here in 2007, Rock ‘n Roll Mafia returns, with a new formation (some members have left the band, one departed to – gulp! – The Titans). Now they consist of a female singer, a male singer/guitarist, and a multi-instrumentalist (and a handful of additional players onstage). And with their album, RNRM once again joins the array of bands who want to reclaim the dance floor for indie kids – not only for ‘clubbers’.

While fellow indie dance kings, Jakartians Goodnight Electric, are more cheerful in general (witness their amazing Laser Gun Electro Boy), RNRM sounds bleaker, with themes like love scandals and loss (1000 Times Love Theme is a song for a grandmother who passed away a week after the song was written). Their new album, with songs like Dancing in the Echoes, Translove and Zsa Zsa Zsu, is mature and has a sense of direction, instead of a string of songs merely jumbled into an album. The sound production is astonishing, and like my friend said, perhaps ‘Outbox’ is the best record Fast Forward ever published. I begin to think that RNRM is even better than LCD Soundsystem. OK, some improvement is needed in lyrics section, but once you get the beats going, probably you won’t care too much about the words.

Credits must also go to the designer of the sleeve. (It is of interest that the growth of Indonesia indie music scene also spurs the healthy growth of young and creative designers and art directors; a good development, when you remember that many if not most covers of mainstream albums SUCK.) And a bonus: Jamie Aditya Graham, who lately seems to be ubiquitous, wrote the lyrics of ‘Too Many Questions’, and also sang the song himself.

Hey, you remember that TIME magazine earlier this year hailed Indonesia as having the best alternative music scene in Asia? Hell, they’re just correct. So go find your zsa zsa zsu.