More Music

In the past two months while living in Bangkok, I've experienced sort of another renaissance in my understanding of Thai music. Music has always been important to me, so I am nothing short of elated that I now have a favorite band, a favorite record label, and have begun to branch out in genres. It's a little strange to think that just a few months ago I had resigned myself to never finding a Thai song I really liked.

This story begins in sort of the same place my last music post did: the synthpop band TELEx TELEXs. I realized that Bangkok, as the capital of the whole country, is really the cultural capital of Thailand as well and there was a good chance I would be able to see TELEx TELEXs in concert. I paused on one of the venues to watch videos of other artists performing there because the place had next to no online presence and I wanted to see what it was like. By chance, I clicked on an upcoming performance by a band called Two Pills After Meal. Their album had come out barely a month before. For the full Two Pills experience, start with the first video, which is the opening track of their album. For a more normal song, try the second:

For me, this was sort of a love at first sight kind of situation. I don't think there's a single bad song on their album (highly subjective, I know). I even bought the CD. I like the gimmick of the two singing octaves on every song, and the overall aesthetic sensibility of the music. I think of it as normal pop music with the energy of a jam band, which I think comes from the fact that they're actually playing live instruments rather than DJing. I ended up having to miss their concert in order to go to a different concert with my host dad, but if I had gone, it would have been beautiful: 20 people in a record store, with the band playing acoustic guitar and keyboard with no amps or mics, not even for their voices. (The whole thing was livestreamed on Facebook). The added bonus has been that they have done as much for my Thai grammar-wise as the Memrise app has vocabulary-wise. I regularly find myself singing TPAM lyrics to remember words as I fill in vocabulary quizzes.

When I bought TPAM's CD, I found out that a member of another band, the Jukks, helped write most of their lyrics. The Jukks are easily my second favorite band to listen to right now:

After that, I started exploring the Smallroom Bangkok Pop record label that both bands are on, and the best comparison I can make is for me it's the Pixar of Thai music: every one of their bands is good.

With this kind of post, which I'm not even sure I should be doing (somebody could comment if they care about the music I listen to or not), the organization is always a challenge. Although I was pretty upset about missing TPAM's concert, the other concert I went to was also quite enjoyable, and I was happy for the bonding time with my host dad. My favorite band of the night was a father and his two daughters, and unfortunately I haven't been able to find if they have any studio recordings, but their live sound is quite good.

I also found the youtube channel with all of Carabao's music. I think I will actually get to see them in concert a few days before I leave in July.

Those guitars kill me

I also found that infectiously catchy song in the Chang beer commercial that's on all the time. This is Indira's favorite Thai song:

No comment on the early 2000s video quality

As far as branching out, I've gotten a little bit into higher tempo luk tung.

This is pure joy

Metal, courtesy of my friend Mint

"Kluay" is a transliteration of the Thai word for "banana"

And dance rap:

This is just a small sampling of the wonderfully diverse world of Thai music, which I am really just starting to discover.

Look out for a Songkran post at some point. I'm still editing together all the videos I took, but I might start out the blog with just photos and add the videos later.