Prank Sinatra
Footlong Players
D-Chord Records/I Did It My Way Music/Monopond

I remember buying my first Prank Sinatra CD (THE f DEfECT) at one of those big music chain stores. They had stocked copies on the shelves that same day. The girl at the cashier had a good laugh about the odd pricing, then asked if I was friends with Iman (the indie mastermind behind Prank's themed album/s). I told her I didn't really know him (and up til this day, I still don't). Before making off with my purchase, she deemed it worth mentioning that I was the first person to snap up a copy.

I was already familiar with some of Monopond's previous releases and their underrated appeal (for those with some degree of appreciation for lo-fi). Prank, however, stood out as being the slickest of them all - from color packaging to the excellent home studio recording that managed to emulate lo-fi sensibilities, mainly bilingual antifolk ditties at their most whimsical. I read this competently written but uncredited review in the online version of Manila Bulletin, which mentioned that the recording fee was discounted by Iman's A&R exec friend. But that ended up being waived altogether, when his buddy opted to be paid in the COMPLETE Guided By Voices discography instead (mostly downloads). Makes me wonder what sweet deal was made in the recording of Footlong Players that topped Iman's painstaking P2P effort in the acquisition of those priceless GBV mp3s.

My copy of Footlong... also came from that same chain store, since I haven't come across anyone from Monopond in the past year or so, to perform the more decent act of buying an indie straight from the source. I actually enjoyed this release more than The f... (which has now been relegated to "mood music"). The tempo is more upbeat, even as the song structures from the previous record are pretty much similar. And the re-listen value is so much higher. It helped that Prank's second offering kicked off with "Glorify D-I-Y", an instantly unforgettable battle cry peppered with hints of sarcasm (which Paolo described in hindsight as the "cheesy handyman Tim Allen kind of D-I-Y") and hilarious examples to boot (for instance, a mock-sexy reference to jerking off -- "Take matters into your own hands -- do it yourself!"). While a strong opening track, it manages to stretch its sonic equilibrium all the way to the latter half of the album.

The retro-kitsch aesthetics of the cover, coupled with the fancy wording of the song titles are both lessons in semiotics and semantics, respectively. The Wangaratta Rovers football team "metamorphoses" into a hotdog sandwich once you open the sleeve (though not quite the footlong I spotted on a billboard along C5, while listening to this album in my car. Talk about irony of ironies). And I remember how "What's the point!" blared through my headphones as I studied the track listing, and upon realizing how the track was worded ("What's the .?!"), I just had to crack up. God, am I reading too much into this? By far one of the more clever local releases I've heard in a while.



Recommended if you like: GBV, Flaming Lips, Beck, Radiohead, anything on the Elephant6 roster
Closest Asian approximate: Wilson Tsang (from Hong Kong)

Labels: music, review, Sound Trip

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 1, 2008 at 6:21 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.