Many of us are perhaps reluctant to admit that the pandemic brought out the most slouched, cartoonishly bored, and depressed sides of us. But an unproductive lockdown was not the case for Takahara Suiko. Though The Venopian Solitude may seem to be on a break from releasing new material, she chose to prolong the life of her solo project: Viona.

As Viona, her music largely focuses on the collective rakyat’s frustration — social criticism that arises when you pay too much attention to Twitter arguments while helplessly watching the world crumble before your eyes. This is evident in her pandemic singles, which snickeringly stab at everything from the 2020 political turmoil to the panic buying of Gardenia to survive the lockdown. These songs are told through fun fair synths, nursery rhyme-like melodies and cynical writing that captured the hellhole of those pandemic years.

But these pandemic projects are… pandemic projects. They were mostly born out of innate boredom, out of spite of the state of the world, out of the pressure to be a normal person with movements confined by regulations. Essentially, they were born out of a lackluster and self-absorbed desire to establish our voice in the world. For Viona — a prolific musician actively creating music during the pandemic — the result was a collection of songs that, understandably, failed to stand the test of time.

It can be said that Himpunan Lagu Rakyat is the magnified, evolved version of her pandemic singles. They circulate the same dormitory, knocking on the doors of familiar discourses — only if you have over 9 hours screen time and your most used application is Twitter. The album concept is developed around Malay proverbs that feature the words ‘satu’ through ‘sepuluh’. She opens the album by taking the role of a teacher and flips the book on Social Turmoil Fueled By Internet 101, from chapters of politicians embezzling duit rakyat to pyramid schemes to unhinged parasocial relationships with Taylor Swift. 

At its finest, her words are sharper when she goes beyond merely bulldozing an evil man’s hypocrisy and reflects on her role as an artist resisting. More than just anger, there’s also exhaustion, confusion, and never-ending disappointment filling the haystacks, evident in tracks like “Gesek Biola Bertali Empat” and “Gagak Dimandikan Tujuh Kali Seharipun Takkan Putih Bulunya.”

But as a whole, the album is less adventurous than her 2022 album D.I.V.O.R.C.E, an album that presents Takahara Suiko at her most hyper-personal, writing snapshots of a failed relationship boiling with fury, frustration and final goodbyes that don’t seem to wave hard enough. Its writing stands independently against the backdrop of torrential noises from other people’s perceptions. D.I.V.O.R.C.E is her best work to date simply because she dared to be free of her bottled anger and dial it up to its maximum.

That chapter is done and closed for good, as she announced recently. Within its context, that decision seems unambiguous to the rest of us. But to leave us with Himpunan Lagu Rakyat, where the messages are sometimes convoluted, the presentations have unsatisfying personalities with exhaustingly repetitive sonics (the average track length is 4 minutes when they could’ve been much shorter with more replay values), you can’t help but wish she hadn’t left us hungry for more this early.

Most attempts at revolutionary, socially critical music tend to feel bloated, posing as a messiah with a prophetic stance as if the world isn’t already aware of its own troubles. They often talk down to their audience, like explaining political news to five-year-olds at the dinner table. Their words speak to us, and not with us. Sure, when the apocalypse seems to be unfolding on our screens, there’s plenty to say. Everyone wants to speak out. Everyone wants to play their part. Everyone wants to be on the right side of history. But in Himpunan Cerita Rakyat, her voice gets lost in the noise of collective outrage. For the very people these songs were written about, they’re just more noise.

Stream Viona’s Himpunan Lagu Rakyat on Spotify: