TRCK REVIEW: IV OF SPADES - MUNDO
“Anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment”
By now, almost everyone in the scene had heard of IV of Spades. Referred to as the youngest band in your uncle’s playlist and one of the biggest bands in “Filipino indie” at the moment, they’ve been making waves. This level of hype was made possible through several factors aiding their music. Their constant live shows, their uniformly retro aesthetic, and several media articles hailing them for being what they are: being a glorified throwback.
I have nothing against the nostalgia-laced sound of IV of Spades. I always find myself enjoying their previous singles, from the suave Ilaw Sa Daan to the irresistible groove of Where Have You Been, My Disco. The band incorporating these into their gigs along with tracks like Hey Barbara and Sentimental showcase their sonic range, which is from straight up disco worship to indie rock staples with a tinge of disco. Limited but enjoyable, arguably a novelty, such is the polarity of a band that heralds the Manila Sound. One personal exception, however, was the live renditions of their then unreleased track Mundo. Mundo successfully merged all their capabilities into one song. When the muted intro riff plays, the crowd is guaranteed to be livid, in anticipation of an exremely solid hook. The whole song gradually swells to a breaking point, in the form of Blaster’s extended guitar solo. It’s a traditional song structure, one that IV of Spades did justice to. For several months, fans have constantly clamoured for an official studio release of Mundo, to encapsulate the ecstasy in a tangible, replayable format. IV of Spades had smartly teased their fans about the song, even going so far as to reveal that it would be the last song of their album. Mundo itself was enough to properly hype the whole album, and it seemed that the next best move would be to bide their time and release the album, letting the fans get to Mundo in all its glory. Three paragraphs in, and you can deduce that this was not the case.
In all aspects, the studio version of Mundo was a short-sighted disappointment. Sonically, the song lost almost all its bite. The drums overpower literally everything else in the mix at some points, and it doesn’t help that the band opted for a drum machine sound. The added synths in the song only serve as a distraction and don’t mesh with the drums most of the time, while almost always clashing with the guitars. The song had no room to breathe, even in the already predictable “quiet” moments. The only redeeming moment Mundo had was its chorus, the drums and synth work in unison for once, and the layering of the vocals had at least captured some of the magic live iterations of the song had better imparted before. The second half of Mundo just has the song making all the wrong moves and falling apart in the most unpleasant manner possible. The mixing removes all the momentum of the auditory calm before the storm that is Blaster’s guitar solo. It goes a step futher and neuters the storm altogether by having the lead guitar too low in the mix, cutting it short, and further buries it with repeated iterations of the line “hindi ka maliligaw”. This was the only time a long, indulgent guitar solo would have worked and they held back. Even in the last few seconds the song still manages to find a way to disappoint though the awkward positioning of the last line, and how it cuts a melody that is already fading out. It just emphasizes how lifeless the studio version of Mundo really is.
I’m not the right person to comment about marketing, but in my observation, the release of the studio version at this time only seems to bode ill for their debut album. IV of Spades has been taking their time in making their album, to hear one of the most hyped songs come out as a sterile mess will only satisfy the hype for a short while. The fact that they chose to release this subpar version of Mundo on Valentine’s Day instead of promoting another track on another day hints that the rest of the album might not have the same quality. They could have easily released the studio version of Sentimental and still achieve the same effect without sacrificing the quality and the bargaining power of the allure of Mundo’s studio version. But what’s done is done and can never be reversed, and we got a disappointing track out of it.