Barbie’s Cradle picks up where they left off
If Barbie’s Cradle’s new music sounds just like the Barbie’s Cradle of old, it’s not because they’re trying to recapture their former selves, but simply because they’re being themselves. “This is how we sound because this is what we know—this is still who we are,” says lead vocalist Barbie Almalbis, who, together with guitarist Kakoy Legaspi, bassist Rommel dela Cruz, and drummer Wendell Garcia, recently surprised fans with the release of three original songs—their first new material in more than 20 years.
That’s not to say they’re stuck in nostalgia. Their respective journeys after disbanding in 2005 “definitely changed” them, and it has always been in their hearts to grow and find out what else life has in store for them
It’s just that, sometimes, those changes don’t always show themselves right away.
A midlife crisis
The song “Emergency,” for instance, probably wouldn’t feel out of place on the same playlist as their songs from the late 1990s and early 2000s. It has that same breezy, folk-inflected sound many of us came to love, and exudes a similar gentle optimism that, once in a while, masks internal turmoil.
Written by Legaspi in his 20s but completed now in his mid-40s, the song is about a part of us that wants to “keep up with the Joneses” and the idea that you must accomplish certain milestones at a certain age. And that mounting pressure is expressed through Legaspi’s and Almalbis’ duet of overlapping voices that leaves almost no breathing room.
As it turns out, anxieties don’t magically disappear as you grow old—they just take the form of a midlife crisis, because, well, they have reached that stage in life.
“It doesn’t really end,” Almalbis says. “I used to look at people in their 40s and then later, those in their 50s or 60s, and think they’re all settled and doing okay. Pero kapag kinausap mo sila, gano’n pa rin pala sila. You still have to figure life out.”
Back to basics
And when life seems to get more complicated still, sometimes it pays to go back to the basics. They were all once a bunch of budding artists who loved writing songs and learning their instruments, without so much as a care whether music would end up being their careers. Then it “became serious” and “had to be a real thing.”
Perhaps it was only fitting that the “natural ebb and flow of life” brought them together, not only for new songs, but also for a reunion concert—“a pocket where anxiety can’t encroach.”
“I’m so thankful that collaborating is like going back to that time, when there was no pressure, and we just wanted to make music. There’s freedom in that,” says Almalbis, who will share the stage with Legaspi, Dela Cruz, and Garcia on Aug. 1 at the Music Museum.
“That’s how we feel when we play together,” she adds. “We’re able to enjoy a routine of just being musicians without any agenda, without giving into anxieties.”
Like brothers and sisters
If performing new songs allows them to show “who we are now as musicians and human beings,” revisiting their essential hits and fan favorites—“Tabing Ilog,” “Goodnyt,” “Shiny Red Balloon,” “Everyday,” “Limang Dipang Tao”—is a chance to reconnect with and reinterpret the sensibilities of their youth from a more seasoned perspective.
“Ayaw namin ‘yong parang kino-cover lang namin ‘yong sarili namin o na dapat katunog lang namin kung ano ‘yong nasa album,” Almalbis says, adding that her relationship with her earlier work isn’t all about reminiscing the stories within, but conveying them how she sees them now.
“If we find ourselves surprised, then others will be, too… We’re kind of the same people, but also kind of different.”
And when you look at it, that’s what the reunion really is all about. The group didn’t have a dramatic or angry fallout; life just pulled them in different directions. It happened naturally—and “maybe it was even meant to be,” Garcia muses. Still, they kept in touch, and there was never a time they didn’t want to see each other.
They would exchange ideas and play gigs with one another (though never the four of them all at once). Before they knew it, they had three new songs—and then a concert to show them off. “We’re like brothers and sisters, and that wasn’t really lost even when we were doing our own thing,” Almalbis says.
So if Barbie’s Cradle still feels like the Barbie’s Cradle of old, it’s because they’re just “picking up where we left off.”
