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If you still don’t know Hannah+Gabi, it’s high time you get introduced to it. It already has two records on its discography after all: 2010’s Haha Yes, and the recently released Years Gone.
Both records are calming and quiet; and if you listen to them enough, they will both lend a cinematic feel to your days — as though your life was a movie and the songs are its OST.
Hannah+Gabi is the one-man band of Mikey Amistoso, one of Metro Manila’s most talented and most prolific songwriters/musicians. He’s more popular in the scene for his long-standing indie outfit Ciudad. In 2010, he ventured to this solo project in 2010, an avenue for his ‘quieter songs,’ Mikey says.
In June, he put out his sophomore release, Years Gone, which is available on iTunes and at bandcamp. While there are five years between the records, Mikey tells us it actually only took him three months to complete Years Gone. Impressive, we know.
It took you 5 years to make this followup. What kept you busy?
Ciudad put out an album, Follow The Leader, in 2012 and a couple of singles in 2014. Plus, I got married and settled in a new life last year.
It didn’t feel like 5 years. I still felt like the previous album (Haha Yes) was fairly new, with the newfound attention it had been getting thanks in part to the movie Ang Nawawala and Ramon Bautista’s show Tales from the Friend Zone.
But around March this year, I did realize that, YES, IT HAS ALMOST BEEN 5 YEARS since Haha Yes! So I put myself into panic mode and wrote songs so I could have a complete Hannah+Gabi album within the year. And that led to Years Gone by June. It was such a rush — I had an album launch scheduled for June 6, and less than 2 weeks before that, I was still writing songs, finishing [writing the] lyrics with my wife, and figuring out how to print the CDs.
May I ask what Years Gone is about?
It’s about the number of years that quickly went by under our noses without a new Hannah+Gabi album. So 5 years gone, to be exact. Hahaha! But seriously, I guess it’s about adulthood and how fast time flies.
How has getting married changed your songwriting process and outlook in life?
I guess nothing much has changed. Just because I’m happily married now doesn’t mean my songs will become “happier.” Marian and I have always been attracted to sad songs, I think there’s more beauty in them. The good news is that you don’t always have to write about yourself. There are lots of good stories out there involving other people’s experiences. Years Gone still has that sad/poignant feel, most of them though aren’t autobiographical.
That asked, I noticed your wife wrote a few songs with you! How was that like?
My wife, Marian, has always been my co-writer for some of my songs’ lyrics, even before we were married. She co-wrote a few songs in “Haha Yes” and even half of Ciudad’s Follow The Leader. The difference today and with Years Gone is she’s now always beside me so I can just turn to her and ask for help in the lyrics anytime. We spent a lot of sleepless nights with a laptop in bed trying to finish the lyrics for the songs in this new album.
Writing lyrics has never been my strongest suit, and I consider myself a lazy lyricist, so Marian being there is perfect. She’s a writer and she has made a lot of my songs 100 times better. I have quite a number of songs with lyrics that didn’t make any sense at first, but after her touch, have now become my favorites.
Is there a song here that gave you a hard time, that you were ready to shelf for a while?
I made a score some time ago for an AVP, and I think I got carried away because I found it too beautiful to be just wasted on an AVP. So I decided to rework it a bit and include it in the new album. I however couldn’t find space in it to put in vocals and lyrics. I was really hesitant to put in an instrumental in an album. But I let Marian hear it and she liked it.
I asked her if it’s okay even if it was just an instrumental, and she said yes. At that time, she was googling all about Sweden as we were quite obsessed about visiting and living there. The instrumental didn’t have any title yet, so I asked Marian, “So what should we call this song?” She just looked up from her laptop with a smile and blurted out, “Sweden.” I smiled too because the images of Sweden’s countryside filled my mind and they really fit the mood of the song. And once again, just with the title alone, she made this song 100 times better.
Speaking of shelving, is there an old song here that was once shelved but has found it’s time and space in Years Gone?
“Sweaters” was written and recorded at around the same time Haha Yes was being prepared. It’s actually a Christmas song. I didn’t include it then in Haha Yes because the instrumentation and Christmas theme didn’t fit in the album’s mood.
Think of it as a modern, more vague and less cheesy “Pasko Na Sinta Ko.” My dream is for Jose Mari Chan to have a version of this song.
Oh cool! That’s one of my favorites along with “Finlegs”. What’s “Finlegs” about?
“Finlegs” is vaguely about someone who is waiting by the sea for a lover who happens to be a mermaid. I always imagine the low voices in the song to be the mermaid’s escorts, themselves ocean creatures as well, sitting on the beach rocks singing “ooooh,” as they wait for sunset when then they will escort the mermaid back to sea once again. Yes, it’s creepy. But also beautiful.
You have a number of other projects going on. How do you know when the song is for Hannah+Gabi?
Hannah+Gabi started out as a venue for my quieter songs. It would be unfair for my Ciudad bandmates if we’d record “New Window,” for example, and our guitarist would ask, “So what should I do in this song?”… “Uhmm nothing, it’s just me and an acoustic guitar.” “What about drums?”… “Hmmm, no drums.”
So when a song asks for a certain restraint and quietness, and some sparse instrumentation, that probably would go to Hannah+Gabi.
“Sucks to Be Away” has a certain power. I didn’t like it at first but my goodness what an earworm! What’s that about?
It’s the last song to be written for the album. It was less than 2 weeks before the scheduled record launch, and I was scrambling for another song to complete the album. And so I came up with this. It’s about a love/hate relationship with someone. You can’t stand him/her, and yet when that person’s away, you miss him/her. Again, it’s not autobiographical but I’m sure there are people out there who have this kind of relationship with another person.
Do you have a favorite?
“Finlegs” is my favorite. It’s my wife’s favorite Hannah+Gabi song of all time, too! We actually used it for our wedding march. I just love the imagery, and the fantastical elements of the song. And also the vagueness of the story, how it just fades out in the end without you knowing what happened next. Will she take him away to sea, as well? Or will she go back to sea and leave him alone once again by the beach, back to his regular earthly life? If ever, will she come back? Will he follow her into sea? Anyway, I don’t want to give more details. I don’t want to spoon-feed the song to you. You can come up with your own story. 🙂
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