It’s The Bloomfields’ riff-churning-machine era, and we’re all for it.
“Get Up,” the new Bloomfields single, shies away from the heady psychedelia that permeated their three previous singles. In lieu of stabs at ‘Pepper’ and ‘Pet Sounds,’ we get good old-fashioned riffage that skews more towards Kinks-meets-Oasis territory than cosplaying 1967 (as has been their wont these days).
Described by the band as a “pump-up song” dug up from 2019, they say it’s the sound of the band breaking out of its mold. “We veered [away] from the usual pop song structure and just followed [the] raw jam form,” the quartet offered in an advance release.
That, of course, is a brave pivot for a group whose best-known material are the farthest things from “raw jams.” But make no mistakes about it: that signature fastidiousness is still on offer; they’ve just become more loosey-goosey on the brainy-arranger front.
In other words, they’ve embraced the abandon only loud, in-your-face riffage can provide.
We’ve always associated Lakan Hila’s playing with jingle-jangle airiness, or calculated arpeggios, or anything nominally textural. In “Get Up,” he trades in all of those for the loud, the brash, and the crude. Rocky Collado’s singing, moreover, takes on an uncharacteristic swagger, and the great thing is it doesn’t feel put on or mimed.
Louie Poco’s bass playing and Nathan Abella’s fretwork also get top marks for fortifying that already-mad monolith of a slab-of-sound.
When Collado repeatedly calls out “get up now”—amid a backdrop of some seriously funky riff cycles—it’s like he’s channeling James Brown by way of protest-era John Lennon. In fact, let me back up a bit, now that I mention funk in the mix:
What “Get Up” offers is not so really a cop-out/cock-out gesture of traditional rock ‘n’ roll that has overstayed its welcome. In the able hands of The Bloomfields, trust that we’re never ever really just dealing with anything straightforward: there are dialed-down hints of moody psychedelia; funky Ray Manzarek-flavored synth work; Liam Gallagher-style phraseology; and an overall mid-‘60s-meets-mid-‘90s aesthetic that (I imagine) will tickle lots of us pink.
Spin “Get Up” today wherever you listen to music.
Or better yet, hear it live alongside all the other great Bloomfields tunes—old and new, but I favor the latter, if I’m being honest, especially since they’ve been a (good) mindfuck of incalculable proportions—at their twentieth-anniversary show ‘Byaheng Mahiwaga,’ happening October 25, 8PM, at Fin & Claw on Timog Ave. in Quezon City. The High Targets are also playing.