HABLAS ESPANOL? HABLO POP’N’ROLL SAYS BRYAN ESTEPA
- Bernard Zuel
- Jun 12
- 6 min read
Updated: Jun 13
THE FAR TOO EARLY WINTER DARK – it’s just gone 5pm for goodness’ sake, and we’re in Sydney not Manchester - doesn’t hide the weary eyes, weary voice, and weary speculative looks over his shoulder in case one of his kids comes into shot. Bryan Estepa is flagging from “report season”, his day job as a schoolteacher allowing little room for downtime as he was gearing up for the release last week of his new album.
“It’s just doing my head in,” he sighs. “There’s so much going on.”
Estepa doesn’t reject outright my suggestion that he get himself a stamp he can apply to each report saying, “working well, room for improvement”. In fact, he may have it better.
“We have this thing called ‘verbal feedback given’. It’s a lazy way of saying I looked at your work, you did okay.”
What would he say if his album was reviewed with “verbal feedback given”?
“At least I’d know you listened to half a song,” he chuckles. “Verbal feedback given, one and a half stars.”
Estepa does perk up at the reminder that his album, I See It Now (“for fans of Wilco, Radiohead, The Beatles, The Smiths”, his PR material says – more on that in a minute) was released on the same day as Jimmy Barnes’ new record. Not because he welcomes the competition but at least one interview in the lead up involved talking about his favourite Jimmy Barnes songs. And Estepa is nothing if not a music head, always ready to nerd out or fanboy out.
But we are not here for Jimmy Barnes queries; I’ve got a bigger question, a tougher one for the singer/songwriter/guitarist who recorded this album in Barcelona. Yes, that’s Spain. Where they don’t do early winter dark or care about Estepa’s inexplicable love for the Canterbury Bulldogs, despite him being a regular visitor there for years.
How does one say can you turn my vocals up in the mix, in Spanish?
“Oooh,” he says. “Ah…. Mate, you’ve caught me. That’s when I turn to Santi, my tour manager – he’s playing keyboards – I look at him and I do the old point at the foldback/look at the mic.
”I’ve just made a fool of myself too many times in Spain, because I understand Spanish better than I speak it,” he goes on, confessing that at one gig he tried to tell the enthusiastic audience that they were all crazy drunk, but instead called them crazy horses. Which is the heaviest and funkiest song by The Osmonds, but that probably wasn’t the first thing on their minds at the time. And no, his attempt to explain he meant to compare them to Neil Young’s band Crazy Horse, wasn’t convincing.
It is tempting to say, listening to the sometimes hard-nosed guitar work and the penchant for pop of his records, that with Neil Young and The Osmonds we do have another corner of the Bryan Estepa influence triangle. (It helps too that though he only has two siblings, he has three children, one of whom sings on this new record, so a family band is not out of the question.) But would that be too much?
“You’re kind of not far you know,” he says. And so, with the aforementioned Wilco, Radiohead, Beatles and Smiths, and now Osmonds/Young, that does leave one more bit of the triangle. Maybe it’s guitar pop geniuses/obscurities Big Star, or maybe it’s the high gloss/big hooks/good grooves of the yacht rock he sings in one of his side projects (and whose style can be hear in last year’s stand-alone single Is There Anybody There?).
What has playing in that (quite super actually) yacht rock band taught him about what he likes and doesn’t like in his songs?
“I think the biggest thing I learnt was it’s the hook: there’s gotta be some melodic hook,” Estepa says. “Whether it’s a guitar line or a horn section or keyboard part, that’s the biggest thing for me. There’s gotta be something melodic that people will either hum or know when that part comes back.
“I grew up with AM radio and that’s the thing. I grew up in Manila in the ‘80s, still hearing Summer Breeze on the radio in 85/86, Eagles. And Air Supply, I love Air Supply. I’m not gonna lie to you.”
Now hold on. Just wait a goddamn minute there. There is a line. Seals and Croft, okay. Eagles, okay. Air Supply? No, sir, not here.
“Mate, I’m Filipino. That was a staple. You could not escape it,” Estepa counters, without shame. “I remember once driving from LA to Vegas and my auntie just played the entire Air Supply greatest hits and I knew every fucking word. And it freaked me out.”
In this moment of personal trauma for him, and for us, we should draw a veil over this and move on, maybe back to Spain.
The album’s producer JJ Extremera (Javi to his friends) was more than his collaborator, with Estepa saying “I think without JJ this record would not exist” because of his faith in the songs in the first place. So making the album in Spain, where he has a regular band, was a no-brainer.
“It’s always been a dream of mine to record albums with my Aussie band and my Spanish band because these guys are like family to me: I have been playing with them for nearly 20 years. On the last tour, last April [2024] I knew this was the band and this was the right time to do it.”
So in October, he returned to test the waters in Barcelona, and after the first couple of songs, as at-least-better-than-Air-Supply-locals, Mondo Rock, might have said, the chemistry was right, the chemistry was there. So much so that when their recording yielded 30 minutes of music and nine songs, they decided this was a sign and that was enough. Or, as another of his influences might have said, they knew when to hold them, they knew when to fold them.
For all its dedication to the pleasures of pop, with I See It Now, one thing Estepa didn’t do was walk away or run from some really difficult things. The artist we heard six years ago on its predecessor, Sometimes I Just Don’t Know, floored by a crumbled relationship and wondering how to maintain a life as a father and a man, is different this time. Where then he didn’t know, now he sees it.
What’s he like this new Bryan Estepa, the one who sings about finding “the best version of me” even at the worst times?
“The circumstances that happened a couple of years ago, no one ever expects: the end of a marriage, the breakup of a family. I took it hard and didn’t really talk about it with friends, so for me the only thing I could do was to go in the studio and write songs,” he says. “As much as I enjoy that record, it’s pretty full on emotionally, but I needed to do that. That’s why, five or six years later I was able to write more honestly. I got a lot more clarity about what went down, mistakes I’ve made, lessons I’ve learned.
“This album feels like I’m examining that cycle that happens to you with the beginning of a relationship, the middle happy lovey moments, and then the doubts occurring, and the fall. I’ve become more of an optimist now I’m feeling more settled in myself and happier.”
Last time it felt raw, this time it feels more considered.
“Yes, absolutely. That was me spewing things out with less of a filter than I do now. I just needed to get shit out. It’s perspective in the end. Just trying to see the good in myself.”
Which, I think we can all agree, is a hell of a lot better line to trot out than I am all out of love what I am I without you. Yes, that is verbal feedback given.
I See It Now is out now, on Lilystars Records and Popboomerang.
READ MORE
LISTEN MORE
BANDCAMP: Listen to Bryan Estepa – I See It Now
APPLE MUSIC: Listen to Bryan Estepa – I See It Now
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