In her third full-length album, Nadin Amizah masterfully demonstrates how to address pain and darkness with grace, composure, and emotional intelligence.
There is a reason why many newlyweds in the Western part of the world decide to get a dog before starting a family. (See the 2008 American film, Marley & Me, as an example.) Getting a dog as a pet is often seen as a sort of ‘simulation’ or a ‘practice run’, as many believe there are no significant differences between raising a dog and raising a human child. That logic indeed makes sense. Pet dogs, just like human children, require love, routine, discipline, sustenance, and, most importantly, reliable companionship. A good dog owner—just like a good parent—is not the perfect one, but the one who shows up and is willing to be present in their dog’s life.
But here’s the misconception that I, as both a music journalist and a dog owner, need to correct for everyone out there: contrary to what is assumed by most people, dogs are not creatures of blind loyalty. Dogs can actually bite the hands that feed them—that is, if what that hand feeds turns out to be rotten and poisonous. Dogs can sense danger or any disturbing presence in their proximity. Also, pet dogs never leave their home—they run away once their nest no longer feels like home. There is no such thing as a bad dog. Only a bad dog owner.
That is why, privately, I’m never comfortable with anyone who doesn’t like dogs and thinks lowly of dogs. People such as the Soviet scientists back in the Space Race era.
Nadin Amizah’s latest full-length album, Laika, Yang Ditinggalkan, puts a dog at the centre of her colossal yet agonising metaphor. The title of this record alludes to Laika, a female stray mongrel from Moscow, Russia, who was sent to space in 1957 and became the first living creature to orbit the Earth. Obviously, since Laika was a stray dog, there was no need to ask her whether she actually wanted to be launched aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft by the Soviets. Laika died hours after her launch due to hyperthermia, and the scientists anticipated that she would definitely perish—or be sacrificed for the benefit of research, as some would say. Laika was still very much a puppy, only 2.5 years old at the time of her death.
Nowadays, people regard Laika as a legend, her sacrifice commemorated and memorialised in Russia as a statue and even a postage stamp. However, only an artist with a sharp eye, such as Nadin Amizah, can see the cold, dark truth underneath the sugarcoated legend. Laika’s story was not one of sacrifice. It was a story of one-sided banishment—abandonment at its worst. Sounds relatable to human experience, am I right? Well, Nadin Amizah might be the first human to notice that.
In terms of sonic direction, Laika, Yang Ditinggalkan may be Nadin Amizah’s first album that deliberately and unapologetically avoids genre labels. It features elements of arena rock (“Amarah”), folk (“Ditemukan Sebuah Bangkai”), gospel (“Putih Merana”), ethereal wave (“Moonlight”), and dream pop (“Laika, Kau Mudah Dicinta”). However, the production ultimately emphasises emotional clarity over traditional technicality and conventional impacts, resulting in a subdued, sometimes unsettling, yet effortlessly revealing soundscape. Musically, Laika, Yang Ditinggalkan is a bold invitation to explore darkness, whether it be the space above the clouds or the unfiltered thoughts within a human mind.
The execution, true to Nadin Amizah’s character, is both clever and unexpected. I don’t know exactly what kind of vision that Nadin Amizah had in mind during the album’s development process, but every track manages to transport its listener to a compelling, almost cinematic state of mind. The build-up epilogue of “Moonlight” delivers a fuzzy yet explosive tightrope between peace and danger, capturing a young soul too innocent to know whether they are going to fly to the moon or a ball of fire. “Kematian, Jika Aku Jadi Kekasihnya” is delivered with a sweet panache despite its lyrical subject matter, as Nadin Amizah elevates the traditional English phrase “sweet release of death” to a whole new level.
A dismissive music audience might ignorantly call Laika, Yang Ditinggalkan an ‘angry album,’ which would be totally false. In actuality, Laika, Yang Ditinggalkan presents a remarkable level of emotional intelligence that I haven’t seen in a record by any Indonesian artist for a long time. The anger and pain in “Reservasi Untuk Dua” are conveyed with such composure—no cliché scream and shout—as well as the kind of self-awareness that unmistakably comes with age. Here, Nadin Amizah addresses adult fury—the kind of anger that has been digested via life experience, appropriate mental processes, and a wide-open pair of eyes. Real adults know that wounds do not go away with time; rather, time simply makes the wounds clearer and less mysterious. In “Tamu Berwajah Itu”, civility is no replacement for a broken trust. Meanwhile, “Amarah” conveys the difference between anger and hatred, and why forgive-then-forget is not necessarily the best course of action.
But then, something more unexpected transpires: sensitivity. It is very subtle, but here and there, Nadin Amizah spreads a couple of hints that the Soviet scientists in this grand metaphor are not necessarily like the supervillains in the James Bond movies. At the end of the day, as frustrating as it is, everything comes down to human imperfection. “Putih Merana” chronicles the price a person has to pay for someone else’s indecision. “Ditemukan Sebuah Bangkai”, sung by Nadin Amizah with arresting gentleness, obliquely warns that there are no winners in the battlefield of loneliness. The album‘s closer, “Laika, Kau Mudah Dicinta”, delicately leaves a food for thought: love is actually easy to do, yet humans keep making it unnecessarily difficult.
As I continued listening to Laika, Yang Ditinggalkan over and over again, I came to realise that, unlike Nadin Amizah’s previous albums, this one does not send off its listeners on a peaceful, jubilant note in the end. With that in mind, I couldn’t help but recall what Oleg Gazenko, a Russian military officer and one of the scientists responsible for sending Laika into space, said after the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1998: “We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog.” It was, indeed, an expression of regret that caught the world of science by surprise. There was also some truth in that statement as well. Certain pains don’t leave a feel-good lesson at the end of the rainy day, and certain mistakes can never be justifiable. Any artist would be tempted to go easy on their listeners and maintain a sunny vibe by forcing a happy ending in their album, but not Nadin Amizah. And personally, I like an artist who’s not afraid to tell the truth: more often than not, it is not the red thread, but the barbed chain that connects us as humans.
Oleg Gazenko died at the age of 88 back in 2007. As a dog owner myself, I have a weird feeling that perhaps, in Oleg Gazenko’s final hours on Earth, the thought that might pop into his head might not be about his achievements, but about Laika the Space Dog instead. After listening to Nadin Amizah’s Laika, Yang Ditinggalkan, I couldn’t help but wonder if, on the day Oleg Gazenko died, the spirit of Laika made a reservation for two on the other side. As I said at the beginning, the reason why people say that having a dog is no different from raising a child is that dogs and humans share a lot in common. For example: both never forget.
All images are courtesy of Sorai.