My Unfathomable Desire To Love This Album Back After A Carcrash
My love for 98-05 is geometric; all the lines, angles, curves and slopes, there’s an unequivocal charm to its melancholic disconnectedness. Oftentimes, I can see it right through the cracks of the disfigured mirrors in the houses you used to be in. Eggboy sounds cliche, and morose to an extent, but its cheerfully heart wrenching in the most emotionally shattering ways wherever you listen to it. Even in houses you’ve long abandoned, it pulls you back in to retell those stories in vivid detail. You didn’t ask for it, but you needed it when time was heavy.
All of those lonely nights are put to waste in your 4-track recorder, and you might be wondering where all of those feelings went. Diego Mapa’s past in rendering a relationship in the brink of its collapse is somber and melancholic. You’d know that by the end of the day he’s trying to rearrange things where they’re supposed to be, but you just can’t deny the fact that you’ll be lost in the middle of everything. Despite being a professional of bringing a party to the house, this lone ranger persona in torn-up band shirts is the complete opposite of a banger: It weeps and asks for assurance through a tiny amp, grains of distortion and lyrical lo-fi-isms that make you lean closer to its intimacy. Don’t wipe the tears off your ugly face, be proud of it. I’d feel bad if you feel bad about 98- 05.
98-05′s brimful of catatonic anthems from front cover to back cover. Diego’s sluggish guitar playing drags but picks up the pace early on. How many times do you have to shout “Paalis nanaman” or “Kayang kaya” in cathartic volumes when your mouth’s full of sticks of reds. Uniform tones in dimmed streetlights, lying down on the concrete waiting for someone to answer the door for you. Eggboy’s willing to let you in.
Its 15-tracks doused with seminal “loser pop” — I could ask for more, but that’s just the sadistic side of me wanting to hear myself be in pain for more than an hour. I guess you could say that I just couldn’t get it over.
