Paper Satellites return with a two-four-beat smiler of a tune that promises to put a skip in your stride.
The last time we heard extensively from Paper Satellites, it was on the occasion of their 2022 release, ‘Manila Meltdown.’ They had some pretty portentous things to say then:
“[This album] represents the sound that we’ve wanted to create during [a particular] period of our band’s life: loud, fast, and festive. Now that we’ve got [that] out of our system, we’re ready to take our music to wherever our creative juices take us next.”
The answer – or at least part of it – is finally here. This week they’ve put out their first track since that pretty damn cool record: a track called “Dapithapon.”
Purportedly about young love and “how powerful and overwhelming it can feel” that even the most banal of things are imbued with some improbable weight, “Dapithapon” is a two-four-beat smiler of a tune that promises to put a skip in your stride.
Much of the track’s charm is, naturally, anchored on the earworm-inducing melody – the band has, time and again, proven their mettle in this regard – but I’d hazard a guess that it’s also BABYBLUE’s beat programming that’s rendering my right foot incapable of not tap-tap-tapping along to the accents on the ones and the threes.
Written after consuming “countless hours of cheesy coming-of-age Japanese media,” the band’s comeback single is like the audio equivalent of hard candy; its unflagging constancy may lull you into inattention, but in a good way.
In other words, if the song were a coffeeshop blind date, it would be conversant in a free-association, stream-of-consciousness way. Your focus might not be held captive, but not because it’s boring; it’s because you’re actively made to wander. It’s not tuning out per se; it’s tuning into a different frequency.
Cut from an interesting tapestry of influences which counts bands as disparate as Bombay Bicycle Club, Porter Robinson, and Daft Punk, “Dapithapon” is wide-eyed young love done right.
“Sonically, it’s a huge departure from our previous sound. After working on Manila Meltdown for almost half a decade, we wanted to try a lot of new things,” the band – singer-guitarist Jyle Macalintal, bassist Paulo Carpio, drummer Aaron Escueta – share in a statement. They subsequently also highlight the recent addition of Martin Cruz into the fold. And he’s in “Dapithapon” in a big way, being on guitar, strings, and keys detail.
Paper Satellites is eyeing an all-Filipino-language EP soon, and this new track is a good portent of things yet to come. Spin “Dapithapon” today. You won’t regret it.