Reality Club Presents…
Album Review
2023
by Sulthon Kamil & Adib Arkan
Reality Club is at the height of their creative peak. After the heavily alt-rock inspired last album What Do You Really Know? They’ve come up with an ambitious follow-up that spans wide from a full length album to high-budget mini film. Now describing themselves as “PH berkedok band”, they dedicate themselves in making visual companions to each song from the album, even conducting an album screening in a local theater. The effort paid off; they have won at the Munich Music Video Award 2023 for the “Dancing in the Breeze Alone” music video which they admitted that they were also surprised. But, it’s better to not let the grand news be a distraction from the actual content of the album.
Like never before, the 10 tracks applied different sound from many musical influences, it did not result in a sonically cohesive album; but it’s in theme with the concept of “cinematic universe” that they have constructed. Probably like an anthology movie; where every director applies their own distinct style under an overarching theme, which in this case: romance. These “mini-monuments of love” encompasses the many possible romantic scenarios. “Desire” talks about one of the central aspects of love; the inherent passion and impulse. While, “I Wish I Was Your That Joke” which the songwriting seemingly hinges on one metaphor — “I wish i was your joke / use me then you’ll ignore it / i don’t mind at all — analogizes bar flirts to submissiveness.
Fortunately, they are capable of producing the differences of sound they envisioned. “Dancing in the Breeze Alone”, which was inspired by the video game Red Dead Redemption, nailed the Spaghetti Western Morricone sound. They are a good observer: they include eagle’s screech, horses’ gallop, marching war drumming, bending whistle, ring of a bell from a lonely church; they seem to tick all the boxes on cliches. It becomes caricatural, and, rather than an excellent application of influence, a style exercise.
They still revisit their original roots of guitar-based alternative rock sound. But like digging back to decades old favorite 2000’s indie rock records, they seem to have worn it out by now. The bouncy cut “Am I Bothering You” sounds like a high school the Strokes cover band trying to make their own material that came to a fruition by jamming on “Hard to Explain” riff.
The excellent moments come along when they pushed themselves further to their creative extremities. “Tell Me I’m Wrong” shines by being the least-Reality-Club-sounding Reality Club song. The bond-theme-like 50’s vocal jazz approach, reinforced by a stunning croon from Fathia Izzati, only reveals how much technical talent they actually have at their disposal. “Desire” beat switch is a testament of their most unexpected moment of musical twist; it transitioned the electro rock song into an interpolation of modern 808 trap beat.
The discourse of imitation in art and music seems like a perpetual dispute. There’s a saying “good artists borrow, great artists steal”, and to an extent it arguably rings true. Many artists — like Reality Club — have been wearing their influences on their sleeves. Ahmad Dani has never been subtle about his love of Queen, and he effortlessly wed baroque glam rock with Indonesian pop tradition into a one-of-a-kind sound. the Jansen emulated classic Ramones’ mid-tempo punk formula with Indonesian lyricism that took cues from The Adams’ “Konservatif’’ innocent young love and momentary bliss: “Sore di Kebun Raya / Di atas kain kita bertamasya / Silau matahari terhalangi / Sebaya kita berakhir di sini” before it took a left turn into nihilism: “Bicara tentang masa depan / Hilang sudah raut wajahmu / Mampus dihajar harapanmu.” With all these efforts, it is clear that lyricism became their dedicated fight with their anxiety of influences. And they did well on it. If genuine feelings are well-expressed in words, the music doesn’t even have to be that far from the roots to shine with originality.
When interviewed by Soleh Solihun about their Arctic Monkeys imitation allegation, Faiz Saripudin said “There’s nothing new under the sun kan, semuanya juga ya tangga nada cuman berapa, chord progression juga udah ditemuin semua” and he continued by saying “the only unique thing you can do is put your own story on it”. If there’s nothing new under the sun, why do we still get fresh-sounding, completely unique music every year for more than a half century of popular music? A new challenge also appeared: how worthwhile are these stories that they’re trying to tell?. Faiz seems to emphasize that their real strength is in the songwriting.
In reality, the main thing that bogged down the album is the poor songwriting. Lyrics are crowded with convoluted metaphors; rather than direct treatment to the subject, they seem to actively trying to search for witty other ways to express it: “I wish a was your joke / passed around on sordid bars / when you can’t drive your car anymore / you’ll keep me in my back pocket” takes an inefficiently winding route to depict romantic abuse. This resulted in an uninspiring, dishonest lyricism, with lack of genuineness showing; rather than trying to be real, they look like they are trying to be cool.
Alex turner songwriting of idiosyncratic imageries and metaphors has never been amazing to begin with, however sometimes he writes fairly intriguing ones: “I took the batteries out my mysticism / and put them in my thinking cap” , “if you’re gonna try to walk on water / make sure you wear your comfortable shoes’’. When compared to Reality Club’s lyrical ideas — which is compared only since they admitted to be heavily influenced by the writing of Alex Turner — their imagery falls flat. “With an empty harmony / we’re dancing in the breeze alone” is a poorly conceptualized, unimaginative metaphor for deteriorating relationships. It continues to “well only the weak / could ever abide and play that game” in which Faiz explained in a lyric breakdown video that “weak” is synonymous with being “sentimental & emotional”, which is an absurd view since what he just described as weakness are usually what fuel great writers.
Poorly written lines like “wait for your heart to fall / I’m your lover boy, baby doll” and “made a promise to my baby / I swore I wouldn’t let him go / lately it’s been crazy ’cause we won’t take it slow” are lines that you might find scribbled in a high school bathroom stall, not in a song written by an artist who claims that their stories are unique. The grand closing “Love Epiphany” seems to do what great songwriters have been avoiding for lifetimes; trying to explain everything. It’s such a daunting task to encompass wide spectrums of love in all stages of life, which he expectedly failed and resulted in a preachy, patronizing, know-it-all tone. The frequent use of “you” and “we” in the lines such as “you use your finite sense of humor / but you’re always wondering what she’ll infer” and “we’re just as clueless as the rest” sound like its coming from a didactic sermon of a self-claimed love prophet side jobbing as a romance philosopher. The sermon ended with lines that, at best, sounded silly, and at worst, sounded dull: “flirty 30 / romance has thawed / nifty 50 / my sex drive drops”.
Fathia Izzati claimed in an interview that “nggak mungkin” that a musician makes music that “completely beda” from their main influence “pasti ya namanya influence kan ada”. However, this sentiment arguably affects their musical identity. “Arrowhead Man” does not sound like Reality Club doing the Beatles sound; but it sounds like Reality Club doing Arctic Monkeys doing the Beatles sound. When Hindia explicitly expressed that he copied Bleacher’s song for his song “Evaluasi”, not many batted an eye, because people were too focused on the discourse around the music itself. When you’re making music and the first thing people notice is that you’re copying someone else’s style, it probably means your work is not good enough to distract them. The crime is not in the act of stealing, it’s in what you’re doing with the stolen goods.
