Rico Blanco's Dating Gawi: Album Review

So I finally was able to purchase a copy of Rico Blanco's brand new album, Dating Gawi. I was pretty much surprised with Rico's direction for this new album to the point that I kind of got alienated with this new/old sound. It is actually ironic for me to feel such because I have always been drawn to Rivermaya because of Rico's penchant for creating easy sounding Pop-Rock melodies. Maybe I was far too removed from the sound of Rico Blanco's Rivermaya days (and has accepted the fate of it) that I would never expect Rico to go back to those types of song. Dating Gawi is Rico's back to the basics attempt at creating an album with a band. "With" being the operative word, because this is the first time in years (not heard since his Rivermaya days) that Rico wrote and completed a whole album with the same set of band members from start to finish. And what band members did he get for this album with no less than one half of the legendary Pinoy Rock Band Eraserheads joining him. Former Eraserheads band members Raymund Marasigan (drums) and Buddy Zabala (bass guitars) joins Hale guitarist Roll Martinez (guitars) to complete Rico's new crew. Each of them have already recorded and performed with Rico at different points in Rico's past two albums, so familiarity with them isn't new. And Rico with a band could sound fresh and also a case of deja vu for those of his fans who either have moved on or could not move on with the Rivermaya Blanco.

Rico Blanco and his "New" bandmates. (Photo from Philstar,com)

The chosen carrier single for Dating Gawi is the song called "Videoke Queen", a bombastic sounding ditty that probably is taken out of the pages of Marasigan's sound book. Rico has stated in interviews that before recording the songs, he brought along stick and bones versions of the songs for the whole band to pick on or pitch in their ideas. The guitars in this song prances all over from high to low, and crashes all over the place when the chorus comes. The song leaves you a slight case of last song syndrome if exposed too much to it. The opening track "Parang Wala Na" harkens back to Rivermaya sounds like "Elesi", "Umaaraw, Umuulan", and others like it. My personal favorite in the album, "Sorry Naman", meanwhile evokes the earlier sounding Sugarfree songs of Ebe Dancel when he was still hanging around with Rico Blanco more often. Another favorite here is the song "Wag Mong Aminin" which is a pseudo ballad sounding song that gives us another Rico Blanco masterpiece that aims to tug our heartstrings. The rest of the songs are your standard Rico Blanco songs that really does give you a sense of deja vu if you are familiar with his body of work while he was still with Rivermaya. I listened to the whole album in a loop for countless of hours and honestly at first it gave me a straight line experience. I guess I just missed (in a good way) the innovative, experimental, weird, and big on surprise sound that has been spoiling us since Rico left Rivermaya. Erasing that kind of Rico Blanco songs in my system is hard to flush out in the same way when I had a hard time flushing out those Rivermaya songs of Blanco when he started going solo.





To conclude, Dating Gawi is a beautiful album for all his fans to appreciate on. It won't matter at which part of Rico's musical journey you have come into, this album will appeal to all of you nevertheless. My only gripe is that Rico has left me hanging with only eight tracks in this album.