PYOG
The Pinholes, Youth Of Gold EP – The Pinholes are icons in Singapore, where they’re one of the country’s best bands performing original music. Their music is happy music that revels in the legacy of cool old Sixties Singapore bands. Together since 2002, gigging since 2004, this is their first proper studio recording that I know of (the earlier “Acoustic Sessions” seemed to be a bit of a warm-up, if anything).
The opening song “Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll” is a cool fun guitar pop song with a great driving beat and a cheerful chorus (which, of course, can be said about all of their songs). There’s also a cool and funky guitar solo. Yay! “Preferably” is even more upbeat and faster and popper than the previous song, its “my life has been so wonderful and miracle” keeping things bopping along quite fancifully. “Sunshine” is sweet and very simple, with simple chords ringing out, and weird falsetto “la-la-la” backing vocals, it sparkles and shines like it should, given that title. The “Youth Of Gold” song is dominated by a very catchy riff and is a bit faster and edgier than the other songs, the only one that I would say doesn’t quite sparkle with that Pinholes usual joie de vivre, but a great song nonetheless. The Pinholes apparently wrote it for the Youth Olympic Games, and there’s a bit of a child choir coming in at the end. Very nice.
The day I bought the CD EP I found out that they had a free gig planned the following day, a Saturday (yesterday, actually, ha ha ha…), so I tricked my wife and son into going; I played the CD for them in the morning, they liked it, then I got them to the right place at the right time, had dinner, and then after dinner strolled past the concert location and said – “hey, check it out, it’s The Pinholes! They’re playing tonight!! What a coincidence!!!” The band was playing three sets, we only caught the first one, an “acoustic” set (this meant that at least one of the guitarist played an acoustic guitar during the set). They played it in street clothes and went through two songs from the EP, as well as covers such as a slowed-down version of the Shangri-Las’ “Be My Baby”, The Beatles “If I Fell”, and a totally unrecognizable cover of Nirvana’s “Lithium”.
The songs were good fun, and Famie’s inter-song banter was very charming, introducing the band between nearly every song, over-using the word “actually”, and all sorts of other fun nuttiness.
The other two sets were electric sets, and for one of them the band was joined onstage by a full horn section! Wish I could have seen that. I wonder what songs they played, originals or covers, throughout the sets.
Check out the Pinholes’ cool videos below: