Everybody Wants To Rock The World: Because the rest of the world needs heroes, too
MANILA, Philippines - Born because of their unwavering allegiance to a pinky swear, supergroup Us-2 Evil-0 will be invading Singapore with another Filipino band, Arigato, Hato!, soon. Aside from their 2009 debut album, “Dirty Debutantes,” (the first single of which received significant screen time, accompanying pasta and Anne Curtis’ face), some gigs here and there, a handful of videos and, so far, unfulfilled plans to write songs for a second album, they haven’t been doing much. But they’re working on it.
Comprised of members probably more known for their day jobs, the band is often too busy to meet up and write songs together. Frontman Quark Henares says, “It has actually been busy as hell for the band members... Mich [Dulce] is traveling around the world. Wincy [Ong]’s writing and directing and acting in a movie; I’m finishing mine. Bogs [Jugo] and Nix [Puno] are freelancing like mad.”
Aside from an exhaustive variety of careers among them, they also seem to have an odd mix of tastes and influences. Collectively, the ideal band list for the band’s Hypothetical Ultimate World Tour of Decreasing Worldsuck includes Passion Pit, Rage Against the Machine, Rod Stewart, Pedicab, and Phoenix, as well as bands like Sex Bob-omb, Crash and The Boys, and Clash at Demonhead, all of whom exist only in Scott Pilgrim’s world.
They mostly agree on something, though: yacht rock. “We might be going for something more adult contemporary,” Quark says, as more than half of them is immersed in music by Michael McDonald and the Doobie Brothers, Kenny Loggins, and Hall and Oates. Especially Hall and Oates! Guitarist and keyboardist Wincy gushes, “I would love to play with Hall and Oates definitely! It will be like Henares and Dulce with Hall and Oates. That would be so fun. And we’ll have a cover of ‘Sara Smile.’ Or probably, ‘I Can’t go For That (No Can Do).’”
This strange brew of personalities and ideas is probably why it’s hard to explain their sound, without having to procure examples of what they sound like. With jangly melodies, coupled with endearing sentiments and strangely relevant lyrics (with allusions to Superpoke and initialisms popularized by the Internet), they sound like the quirky love-child of slightly edgier twee and Frank O’Hara poems. Add to that an imagery and nowness that is reminiscent of lo-fi 90s band, Pavement, whom pop culture journalist Chuck Klosterman refers to as the “Greatest. Indie-est. Band. Ever.” (He obviously hasn’t heard about Us-2 Evil-0 yet.)
Scheduling nightmares and conflicting schedules are to a band what Yoko Ono was to the Beatles. So, what makes them stick around? For Wincy, it’s “the awesome company I have with four such beautiful and loving people.” Bassist Nix (maybe) jokes that it’s the “hope for a better tomorrow.” For Bogs, it’s “knowing that the side of good will always prevail.” Quark looks forward to spending time with his bandmates. “These days, Us-2 Evil-0 is more of an escape for me,” he says. “It’s like my happy place.”
So, are they still winning against evil? While there are many faces in want of punching (arrogant geeks, who are, according to Wincy, “no different from bullies,” backstabbers, and Boga “because he is too handsome”), Nix claims that they’ve already won. But, for Wincy, the pwnage of evil is really hard. “Sometimes you just want to give up. But, hey, we’re still fighting it.” And, they’re taking their fight to the rest of the world. Playing in time for the food festival next week in sunny Singapore, they just might cross paths with a favorite band, Broken Social Scene. Remarks Quark, “Being on the side of good is paying off, it seems.”
