The Break-Up

For a while there, Orange and Lemons were poised to become the next big thing in OPM. Their debut album, Love in the Land of Rubber Shoes and Dirty Ice Cream, was a fun, jangly collection of New Wave-influenced pop songs that invoked the spirit of The Housemartins, The Smiths and even The Beatles, yet still very much kept its Pinoy (by way of Bulacan) sensibilities through its winsome and breezy lyrics. They maintained a relatively small but devoted following; adherents and disciples of the New Wave invasion flocked to their gigs and got their fix of covers from Morrissey, The Wild Swans, The Cure and their ilk.

Strike Whilst The Iron Is Hot was an appropriate title for their sophomore release. Now signed under a major label, the album introduced them to a much wider, less particular audience. Less stuck-up and more accessible, the foursome began to break out from their usual nighttime haunts and into noontime variety show territory. It was the phenomenal single “Pinoy Ako” though that catapulted them from being arthouse darlings to mass hysteria-inducing hitmakers. The song became so big it even became the country’s unofficial theme song during the 2005 SEA Games held here in Manila. Orange and Lemons exploded in a big way into the consciousness of every radio-listening, TV-watching person in the country.

There was, of course, the controversy surrounding the song, which we don’t need to delve into here. Suffice it to say that the band managed to overcome this difficult period and trudge on ahead to work on their next project, the concept album Moonlane Gardens. Anyone who has followed the careers of the ONL would agree that this was their most ambitious and most accomplished album to date. Apart from the first single, the rondalla-infused throwback to traditional Filipiniana “Ang Katulad Mong Walang Katulad,” the band veered away from the commercial road they had been on and went back to appealing to a more specialized, high-end audience by creating a tapestry of songs that reflected their primary influences. It was a bold move, and one that loudly proclaimed to everyone that this was what ONL was all about. It won Album of The Year at the 2007 NU Rock Awards, a very generous ego-booster for the band who had a difficult time convincing the label that it was worth the risk. Sadly, the album would also turn out to be their swan song; the final product from the collective genius of four unassuming boys from Bulacan.

So what really happened with Orange and Lemons? Those in the know point to the growing creative chasm between the two main artisans of the band, Marco Fundales and Clem Castro. Friends since high school, the two built the band from almost nothing back in the day and nurtured it until it became one of the freshest most exciting OPM acts in recent memory. I have had the opportunity to talk with both Mcoy and Clementine about the real score and in both conversations, I took away the impression that, yes, it was grave creative differences that ultimately drove a wedge between them. Whatever else people assume about the cause of the break up – inflated egos, questionable career moves, petty squabbles and infighting, and even alleged dalliances with the opposite sex that affected their professional and personal relationships with each other – these were all rooted in the fact that one did not agree with the other on the direction the band was taking and that neither was willing to compromise. And whether there was a specific incident that finally broke the band apart, we can only surmise that it was serious enough for friendship to take a back seat.

However much we mourn the demise of Orange and Lemons, we can at least take comfort in knowing that two other bands rose from its ashes: The Camerawalls is the new band fronted by Clementine with new cohorts Law Santiago and Brian Sarabia, while Kenyo is the new project of Mcoy Fundales along with the Del Mundo brothers Ace and JM. Longtime fans of ONL may be missing their one-of-a-kind energy and vibe, but it’s good to know they’re still making music and that there’s more of it to go around, and that’s something we should all be grateful for.