Elf-centered

When you give your band a name like Ourselves the Elves, you have to accept that it creates certain expectations, particularly when you declare on your Facebook page in all caps that you WILL PLAY FOR CUPCAKES. Nevertheless, lead singer Aly Cabral maintains that they are not a “cutesy” band, though admittedly the label attaches itself to them sometimes. “I think it’s because we play ukuleles at some of our gigs, and a lot of our songs are twee pop. We don’t really mind that much, actually,” she laughs, “but we like to play gritty songs too.”

“The band started as a little dream of mine and Telle’s,” Aly says. “Without any certain genre or goal in mind other than to just play music, we started looking out for a drummer and a second guitarist since Telle (last name, Delvo) already wanted to play bass and I already wanted to sing and maybe play rhythm guitar or keyboards or something. We were really enthusiastic but not so much serious, so we didn’t really rush it. Then eventually we got lucky and became friends with Ponch (Salvador, drums) and Akira (Medina, guitar) who are really good at what they do and have almost the same interests as we do. We started playing together in October 2011.”

As for the name, Aly explains: “Ourselves the Elves is like a pluralized version of Herself the Elf, which is a song by the fictional band Sex Bob-omb, from the Scott Pilgrim comic by Bryan Lee O’Malley.”

There is a sweet, displaced-in-time charm to the songs of Ourselves the Elves, not least because of Aly’s voice, which sounds like something lovingly recorded over half a century ago and only recently unearthed. This charm is evident on songs like the jaunty work-in-progress Sunny Side Down, the smitten, yearning Silly Little Song, and particularly the lovely and LSS-inducing Galavants. (“Most of them are cheesy love songs,” Aly says self-deprecatingly of her compositions.)

“I mainly write the songs — though there’s one that Telle wrote which she sings too — so Telle and I lend our voices and words and melodies. I only go so far as the lyrics and melody plus the rhythm guitar that goes with it most of the time, so Akira adds the guitars that make these songs flourish. He sings too, for some songs. Ponch makes beats that go with the flow of the song but also adds his own little take to them sometimes. So Akira and Ponch make the songs sound better.”

 â€œWith regards to music taste, we all just really like anything and everything,” Aly says. A partial list of acts they love: Best Coast, Arcade Fire, Metric, Beck, Pixies, Cults, Alex Turner, Death Cab for Cutie, and The Lonely Island. On the local front: “We LOVE Ang Bandang Shirley because we are in love with their music and with them as individual people.” Not that the members’ tastes are identical: “I think that Telle and I lean towards the lighter/pop side of things and Akira and Ponch lean towards the edgier/heavier side of things, ha-ha! So we kinda balance each other out.”

“Pakinggan ang sarili mong duwende,” says the Kidlat Tahimik quote on their page. “I got the quote from my Film 100 class,” explains Telle. “When we finally had a band name I remembered the quote, and realized that it could be a good reason to be elves or ’duwendes’ because Kidlat Tahimik was referring to the creative voice inside your head when he said ‘duwende.’”

As for what’s next, Aly says: “Maybe an EP? Ha-ha, we haven’t really made plans about our future yet, but what we’re sure about is that we want to keep playing more and more gigs. And keep making more and more songs.”