Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Klinar – Klinči, Aleš
Label: Dallas Records
Release: 2013
Rating: 3/5
Does turning fifty bring on a creative spark? Hardly! Aleš Klinar, known to everyone as »Klinči«, is without a doubt one of the central figures of Slovenian »mainstream« rock and pop, especially in the eighties and nineties.
Klinar has always been regarded as a master of packaging. Honestly, nobody in Slovenia can touch him at it. It’s precisely this flexibility, or let’s call it adaptability, in his musical craft that earned him his reputation and success. The album »63 Special« is basically a cross-section of Klinar’s musical personality, and you can’t get much closer than that. The first disc is the proper studio record, while the second is a bonus retrospective one. It holds some of the most recognizable songs penned by Klinči, which, one way or another, properly shook up the top of the radio charts across Slovenia’s main airwaves through the eighties and nineties (from Agropop to Martin Krpan and so on).
Let’s dig into disc number one. That’s the studio album. It’s superbly produced and superbly arranged. Klinar really thought of every last detail. 61 minutes of grand musical theater, with no shortage of excursions into operatic and symphonic waters, pumped up with a hefty dose of bombast, unfolding in the true spirit of marrying rock punch with a clearly defined lead melody. Klinar is known as a great aesthete when it comes to handling melodic catchiness.
In the pompous, wound-up opening title track (an instrumental), you honestly have no idea for a long, long time where he’s going to take the album. That intro could easily have been steered into a power metal record. It charges headlong into an operatic turn of events. Then suddenly the moment is cut through by a bluesy solo from Franci Zabukovec on slide guitar, with even a whiff of »Gilmouresk« in there. The opening instrumental 63 Special thus leads us into the deeply personal Stari klovn, a cheeky, rascally but nostalgic tale of Klinči’s long rock ‘n’ roll road, with the basic message: »I’m still here, still moving, still kicking!« His voice, authentically »wrecked« by endless rock parties, will ring in your ears for a long time. Putting a song like that right at the start of the album is a logical choice.
So far, so good. To untrained ears, the album sounds truly close to perfection. Close to songwriting perfection. But here’s the little stumbling block. Those who know some of the widely recognized classics and evergreens of rock’s recent history will very soon notice a striking similarity between some of the motifs on »63 Spceial« and well-known songs by Yes (Changes, Hold On), Styx (Renegade), Kansas (Carry On Wayward Son), Scorpions (Rock Me Like A Hurricane) and Deep Purple (Speed King), while the song Ogenj, led by Trkaj’s vocals, could easily stand in as the main theme for the »soundtrack« of the movie »Godzilla«. Those are facts that, sadly, dent the reputation of this record. If those obvious similarities weren’t on »63 Special«, I’d bow down to the floor right away to Klinar for his songwriting brilliance.
Otherwise, though, it’s all strengths. Zabukovec once again played all the guitars on the album with top-class brilliance, confirming yet again that he’s one of the most accomplished hard rock guitarists of Slovenian rock ‘n’ roll time and space! There’s a string of excellent vocalists here, and each of them contributes their optimal vocal performance. Klinar picked his singers carefully, and the songs masterfully play up the recognized expressive character of each vocalist’s approach on this album! The contrasts of mood are painted in vivid color and underlined through these vocal essences. Sergej Škofljanec is once again put to superb use in Sence, Rock ‘N’ Roll, Speed Queen and Ne morem brez nje, the throaty vocals of Vojo Djuran add an exceptional cherry on top with their particular character in the closing Zate dal bi vse, Samuel Lucas is a more than fitting choice for the songs Sanja and Kralj sveta, and then there’s the recognizable vocal approach of Klinar’s life partner Anja Rupel (Ljubezen še živi), and so on.
The songs have no shortage of a certain playful cheekiness! It’s captured in the many decorative transitional passages that Klinar masterfully weaves into the main motifs from a compositional standpoint, adding extra juiciness and character to the songs. To put it bluntly: exceptional pomp! A touch of bombast! Klinar comes at it like a trained musician, holistically in his arrangement solutions, so you can’t shake the feeling that »63 Special« unfolds in the spirit of a rock opera. The addition of synth pads with that authentic eighties sound, along with masterful solutions in harmonizing the vocal melodies, give this album a heartfelt charge of AOR aesthetics, which is an extreme rarity in the Slovenian music world today. It’s a virtue, or rather a skill, that only musicians who breathed the eighties on stage can pull off convincingly. And Klinči is one of them.
Like I said. The album is wonderfully pretty, varied in its string of moods, and generally rich in sonic and arrangement detail. Gloriously »evil«, if you like. Both in sound and in the compositions. It would have deserved a clean five out of five stars. Sadly, though, it’s marred by that remark about the repackaging of well-known rock evergreens, cited in one of the paragraphs above. If you approach »63 Special« as a kind of parody of Aleš Klinar’s rock ‘n’ roll journey through his first 50 years, then you’ll enjoy this album completely carefree. From the first second to the last.
Despite all that, »63 Special« confirms that there’s probably no other hero in Slovenia who could pull off an album of this kind of full-on bombast, marked by an exceptional knack for blending rock punch with melodic catchiness, quite like Aleš Klinar. Let’s hope he follows it up with another rock album! Of his own songwriting ideas, of course.
It matters, after all, that the old cats keep up their activity on the Slovenian music scene. Together with the young retro-sounding rock bands, it gives Slovenia a kind of team hard rock spirit. That’s exactly what we’ve been missing all along, and why in the early eighties the punk movement took over the central focus from the hard rock current, which literally shattered into its prime factors and stayed barely noticeable for the next two decades. New releases like Aleš Klinar’s »63 Special« and/or Matjaž Jelen’s »Nov dan« are very important records when it comes to bringing together a true hard rock community in 2013. These days there are quite a few promising new bands in Slovenia that come from the foundational tradition of the old hard rock and rock ‘n’ roll school, and new releases from Slovenian rock veterans can only have a positive effect on the new »retro-sound« wave.
Congratulations, then, to Klinči on his first 50 years. The class of ’63 definitely produced a special vintage of musicians! The Abraham years have caught up with Klinar. But only by the standard rules of basic mathematical axioms, because at 50 Klinar remains, sincerely, a childish entertainer. And that’s also the album’s basic line of defense: »63 Special«.
Line-up
Aleš Klinar Klinči – vocals, keyboards, backing vocals
Franci Zabukovec – guitar
Segej Škofljanec – vocals, acoustic guitar, backing vocals
Cveto Polak – bass guitar
Boštjan Vajs – drums
Miha Gorše – keyboards
Anja Rupel – vocals
Samuel Lucas – vocals
Nuša Derenda – vocals
Rok Trkaj – vocals
Anja Baš – vocals, backing vocals
Vojo Djuran – vocals
Production
Aleš Klinar Klinči
Track list
CD 1
01. 63 Special
02. Stari klovn
03. Ogenj
04. Sence
05. Sanja
06. Ljubezen še živi
07. Rock’N’Roll
08. Speed Queen
09. Najdi me
10. Ne morem brez nje
11. Kralj sveta
12. Zate dal bi vse
CD2
01. Vulcano
02. Svobodno sonce
03. Samo milijon nas še živi
04. Cela Slovenija je žgala rock
05. To ni političen song
06. Skarjni čas
07. Od višine se zvrti
08. Lep je dan
09. Poglej me v oči
10. I’Am Not For You
11. Rokerji (live)
12. Eno srce
13. Mesto sanj
14. Kje si ti
15. Pojdi z menoj
16. Odšla bom še to noč
17. Yugo
18. Ne lažeš me ti
19. Vem
