ENTERTAINMENT: She’s Only Sixteen’s Whatever That Was Album Review
By Javo Pacheco
Rating: 3 / 5
“Whatever That Was” was an album that had to be made. After all the hype from their 2012 self-titled EP release, the band was set to make an album. According to frontman Roberto Seña, the album’s songs have been made years before 2017 and the album is a cumulation of the band from the start till that release. During the years between their extended play release and the album’s release, their individual members have found their own success outside the band. Their drummer King Puentespina has found success under the moniker crwn and Roberto Seña has another band under the name St. Vincent and the Grenadiers. All those days past has led them to finally release a full-length album. For them, it was finally the right time.
You could tell they worked hard on this. Some of the songs could hit you like a slugger at batting practice and make you feel. The problem with Whatever That Was is that it’s not very good at landing hits. It packs a punch but doesn’t land it. The album lacks in innovation, and any attempts at it appears forced for the sake of sounding new rather than for the quality of its sound.
The first half of the album starts off with Leave Me Out of It. You can clearly tell that the band was influenced by bands such as Arctic Monkeys and The Strokes. Seña’s voice is so similar to Alex Turner’s that some critics have accused him of copying Turner’s style. Even though he isn’t original, boy is his voice beautiful. Seña kills it in this track; however, the lyrics are a bit too angsty and immature (which consistently show in this album except for a few exceptions). Don’t get me wrong– the music in the track is great. It’s one of the stronger songs in the album. But Jesus Christ, by the end of the track, the singer sounds like he’s only sixteen. He literally sings “I kill myself / ’cause I can’t be / with someone else”.
The rest of the songs in the first half of the album are lackluster. The bass work is shoddy and forgettable, exemplified in the track Does Anyone Remember?, which tries to lure you in with a slow feel and a line repeated for ages. The next few tracks are boring songs with excessively long fadeouts. The last couple of songs, including the title track and Conversational Liar, are the band’s biggest attempts at incorporating weird experimental elements in their album. It ends up playing poorly and sounding weird. They seem to do this for the sake of making it weird, not in the sake of good taste.
One strong point in this album is its solid guitar work with a balance between peaceful and energetic playing. Favoritism, Monologue, and Coke Head show an effective use of dynamics which almost solidify the second half of the album. They give a fresh feel after a draggy first half. It feels almost like having coffee and a cigarette after a long day at work. The tracks are nothing groundbreaking, but these are songs that’ll make you contemplate the cosmos while laying down in bed.
The last song is She’s Only Sixteen’s signature track, finally released on record. Magic and She’s Only Sixteen is like Michael Jordan and the slam dunk. When someone talks about the song, the band comes up. There are many different versions. The non-album demo version was the first version I listened to, and it truly was a great rendition. I was moved the first time I heard the track. The vocal delivery was amazing on the demo. The guitars provide a catchy tune. It even brought tears to some people’s eyes. The enchantment I experienced upon hearing the demo made hearing the album version much more disappointing. It was a shadow of the demo. The last track encapsulates the whole record: overproduced, dated, and inconsistent.
This album was released too late. It lacks any true innovation. In this day and age, the distorted guitar indie pop sound of The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys is overplayed. Whatever That Was would have been way better if it were released when they had more energy and more rawness.
Even though the album was lackluster, I believe it will still lead the local music scene of the Philippines to a new direction. Whatever That Was marks the start of new Filipino albums with even better quality. The album was disappointing, but what it represents isn’t. The title of the album, Whatever That Was, ends up a good description of the album.
