I’ve been putting this off for the longest time, so here it is, DBAC’s first ever album review. I like to think what sets apart this blog from all the other music blogs, I mean blogs, is that it focuses on both local and international musical talents. Well, in this case, it isn’t really as local as how we would normally define local, but since the artist only originates from a neighboring country, that’s as close to local as we’ll ever get.Peter Pan is an Indonesian pop rock band and has just released their new album called Hari Yang Cerah… (A Bright Day). The band has achieved a wide success due to their laid back, one-of-a-kind versions of pop-rock tunes that stands out among the other rock music in Indonesia.
I first came to know them through their song, ‘Mungkin Nanti’, which had gained them instant success here in Malaysia. The song felt like, finally, amongst all the dull and droning tunes, plus the reality TV shows, there was something that sounded real and different.
However, for the latest album, overall it sounded like their music are a bit restrained and has embraced the notion of mellow songs. When Asians creates mellow songs or slow songs, due to the fact that we Asians like to elongate our vowels to massive proportions, the tune would always turn out really sappy.
The record starts off with a typical slow-pop number ‘Menghapus Jejakmu’ (Destroying your tracks) which wouldn’t look out of place to any of the mainstream pop songs available in America. It then switches to a different track, ‘Hari Yang Cerah Untuk Jiwa Yang Sepi’ (A Bright Day for the Lonely Soul) that carries the Brit-pop vibe of bands like Coldplay and Travis while still maintaining the usual Indonesian contemporary music sounds.
Through out the record, I was yearning to hear some tracks that would be Indie rock influenced, the way I always felt about the country’s contemporary rock music. But, disappointed to say, there were none as such, well at least not in this album. Songs like ‘Bebas’ (Free) and ‘Melawan Dunia’ (Fighting the World) is the band’s attempt in creating rock-ripping tunes but missed its mark, while ‘Sally Sendiri’ (Sally Alone) contains a catching intro but quickly loses it spark as soon as the vocals starts to stream in.
I may not have a lot of good things to say about this album particularly that it sounds no different from their rest, but Peter Pan’s die-hard fans will always be in support of them, whether the band chooses to be static or dynamic in terms of their song-writing.
|mp3| Peter Pan - Menghapus Jejakmu
|mp3| Peter Pan - Hari Yang Cerah Untuk Jiwa Yang Sepi
