The Kitchen: Soft Pillow Kisses

Soft Pillow Kisses is a Manila-based indie-pop band formed around 1999. Their most active years

span through various eras and decades of indie pop. Band lineups change every now and then but they remain pure on their sound as times change. However, the main founder of the band Siegfried Allan Montero, who’s also the lead guitarist for Candyaudioline, and one of the core people behind BackBeat Productions, conducted the band in a linear direction consistently. Allan has tapped into different circles and members of the community, reaching out to members of other prominent indie pop bands like Apple Orchard, Moscow Olympics, populardays, Death by Tampon, and the list goes on. Throughout the early 2000s they’ve released a bunch of demos for other indie pop compilations (Mutual Admiration Society, Popscenemanila, Play It Forward 2, and many more), being booked in gigs by No Zone and The Awakening in Club Dredd Cubao, and subsequently in their own tight-knitted collective, Buzz Night with Richard Tan (a production formerly known as Afternoon Buzz) in Mayric’s Bar Manila.

Previously seen as “outsiders” in a scene full of grunge and heavy metal acts, the band has gained a loyal following of friends and family who’ve admired their efforts in the indie pop community over the next couple decades. Despite their lineup changing and members joining and leaving and joining again, Soft Pillow Kisses have become generational for their gentle guitar writing and infectious melodies. Soft Pillow Kisses touch upon the hallmarks of indie pop; boy-girl harmonies ruminating on jangly sunshine-y riffs and wholesome subject matter that deal with young love whilst carrying the tracks with their signature boy-girl chemistry. But these figures of speech stem from their love of eating out somewhere in the nearest dine-in after a late night gig. For more than about 20 years, the band’s influences consistently vary from new wave to classic indie pop; citing the entire Sarah Records as influences, specifically The Cat’s Miaow and Blueboy. Soft Pillow Kisses are also known to adjacently produce heavy-sounding indie pop whereas they apply denser material. Much like shoegaze, the dynamic continually overwhelms the piece into something more epic or grander as it progresses

Around 2000, they released a rare 5-song cassette EP titled “As You Whisper in My Ear” during their Cebu tour alongside other close indie pop bands such as Sodajerk and Sonnet LVIII. Recently, the band released a compilation titled “Waiting For Your Words”, a collection of their early recordings from 2001-2003 around Valentine’s Day of February 2021, more than 20 years since they’ve formed as a band. It was also the first and only time Soft Pillow Kisses formally released their music. The compilation is mastered by prolific musician Jerome Velasco, making it widely available for everyone.

The compilation is available through the Shoegaze Pilipinas bandcamp for free. With 12-tracks unearthed by its members, the demos turned into crystal clear portraits of those good memories of indie pop; signature saccharine melody writing and bright/loud chord progressions: angular song structures, gradually fuzzing to the very end. Highlights in “Waiting For Your Words” includes “Harsh Words”, “Vodka Ice #3”, “I Don’t Know What To Say”, and many more. Most of which have maintained their upbeat ditties that’s close to perfection.

When you think about indie-pop in the context of underground DIY music, Soft Pillow Kisses is the first band that comes to mind. When the world is in complete stasis, the compilation was released at a time where we need to look back and learn where almost 80 percent of the indie pop ecosystem was built around. This was the time when ‘indie’ wasn’t a buzzword nor it was capitalized as a marketing tool. The folks behind Buzz Night, The Awakening, and No Zone proved their loyalty to the scene for years and influenced so much of the scene that came after their first lineup. Indie pop adjacent bands like Tall Ice Lung, Breakfast Clouds, Your Imaginary Friends, and The Strange Creatures can also attest to their influence by playing music that’s adjacent to their sound.

But that’s just scratching the surface of many other indie pop bands that followed after Soft Pillow Kisses. Majority of the bands from indie pop’s yesteryear may have come and gone but they were able to solidify their legacy by photos and actual stories from the band themselves and their affiliates.

As You Whisper in My Ear (2000)