Laila’s Lounge - kosong

[uzair]

There are plenty of bands out there, Malaysian or otherwise, with Radiohead as their huge (if not main) inspiration. While it is fairly easy to fiddle around with your guitar and pedals, insert electronic noise, play around with different time signatures and generally pretend to be arty, to actually have the ability to write tunes of Radiohead-like quality or ones that approach that standard is an altogether much trickier matter.

After years of false gods being trumpeted as “approaching Radiohead in quality and sense of adventure” in the Malaysian media and hipster circles, especially in the more “urban” and English language media, the real, true heir to that throne arrives in the form of Laila’s Lounge, a bunch of humble, down to earth dudes from Johor Bahru.

Sounding like a combination of Radiohead circa The Bends and OK Computer, what makes Laila’s Lounge truly stand out from the hordes of Radiohead worshippers out there is that they’ve actually bothered to write real tunes with real memorable hooks. And only after that do they fiddle around with the sound and arrangements. ‘Mawar Khayalan’, one of the theme songs for Kami: The Movie, is already a radio hit–a remarkably upbeat pop song wrapped around Radiohead-styled arrangements–with ‘Wajah’ also gathering pace in the radio airplay stakes.

‘Warm Cherry House’ could easily be slotted in The Bends and no one would even complain, and ‘Prindu’, despite it being sung in Malay, sounds like something that could come out of the sessions for OK Computer–and this is no exaggeration. The only song on this five-song EP that deviates from the Radiohead template is the shoegazing ‘Stargazer’.

A gem of an EP, it’s scary to think about the sort of album that these guys could make. Malaysia boleh!