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By Paul John Caña, Contributor
At the Camerawalls’ album
launch last week, frontman Clementine started the set with an
excerpt from “A Beginning of Something Wonderful”—a song from
his old band Orange and Lemons’s first album.
Of course, the irony is not lost
on those who were there; Clementine refers to himself as the
“unwanted one” in his old group, and that he chose to open with
a song from his old band speaks volumes of how he has already come
to terms with what happened and that he is now ready to move on with
his life. Well, that and the fact that the song itself speaking of
the promise of brighter things ahead.
Pocket Guide to The Otherworld is
the title of The Camerawalls debut album. The band is a three-piece
composed of Clementine, guitarist and chief songwriter, bassist Law
Santiago, who incidentally is also Orange and Lemons’ original
bassist, and drummer Ian Sarabia. The band was formed soon after the
dissolution of OnL, ostensibly due to major creative differences.
It’s not surprising that
Clementine, who many say was the driving force behind the music of
OnL before, would bounce back after the whole sordid episode with
his new band. It’s not easy to bring down a man with his music in
his veins. His father was a rondalla instructor and made him and his
siblings play, before he discovered the guitar early in his teens.
OnL was a success story, a band that started out as an independent
group and was launched to superstardom within a few short years. But
afterward, it was Clementine’s desire to keep making music, the
kind that he loves and is passionate about, that made him trudge on
ahead.
After finding the right people to
work with, Clementine immediately hunkered down and started writing
songs for his new band. “The major difference now is the
songwriting,” he says. “I try to be different this time. It’s
not the usual theme of love and sex, not your typical concepts.
We’re writing songs about moving on and changing jobs, about the
bad people in the world; about medical wonders, and reincarnation.
We felt there are so many interesting things we could write about.
We want to be socially relevant. At the same time, we felt that our
music should be more personal.”
Ian says their music is an
amalgam of all of their primary influences injected with their own
Pinoy sensibilities. “It’s impossible to describe. It’s got a
bit of rock, a bit of blues. Something going back to New Wave.
It’s got all them sounds put together.”
The product of “nine months of
writing and recording, mixing and testing,” Pocket Guide reflects
the band’s extensive musical palate. At the launch last week,
friends and fans, both old and new, crowded around Clud Dredd to
hear the band play songs off the album, plus a few covers from The
Smiths and their primary influence, the Beatles. It was a
vindication of sorts for Clementine, who saw his old cohorts regroup
to form the new band Kenyo and release a debut album of safe,
middle-of-the road covers of 80s songs.
The Camerawalls strikes us as the
band with the sound that OnL might have had if they had continued on
and Clementine had had his way. But things rarely ever work out the
way people plan them, and for now, with Kenyo enjoying mainstream
success and The Camerawalls playing to a far smaller, more
fastidious audience, we’d like to think that everybody is happy
everything turned out just as it should be.
The Camerawalls’ debut album,
Pocket Guide to The Otherworld, under Clementine’s own Lilystars
Records and is now available through the band’s MySpace Music
account at www.myspace.com/thecamerawalls and their official website
at www.thecamerawalls.com.
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