Artist: Vatrene ulice
Label: Dallas Records
Released: 2009
Duration: 46:26
Rating: 4/5
Vatrene ulice, a Croatian band based in Zagreb and, as they put it themselves, with their first real album! At last! A band whose beginnings go back to 1990 but who weren’t destined to live out and flourish musically through the nineties. In generational terms you could say they caught the last rays of the new wave that left its mark especially on the Kvarner Gulf in Croatia!
At last, a first real album from a band that’s now a tightly knit, compact quartet. Frontman and singer Goran Filipančić – Fila is the lyricist: he brings in the raw version of the songs, and the quartet shapes them and polishes them to the end. Vatrene ulice are an interesting phenomenon above all because they’re incredibly hard to stuff into a genre box. They caught the breeze of the eighties, so in places some songs pick up a gentle whiff of eighties “post punk” (the album’s triumphant detour in the song Ne okreći mi leđa), while at other moments, in their riff-smear and the nature of the sound, they go down easier with ears that lean toward “grunge” (Sve u meni nestaje, with a rolling riff in the verse and a catchy attack in the chorus – a superbly functioning combo; Dok padaju glave, with a verse combined with a chorus steeped in that typical ex-yugo rock nostalgia). They can also steer the story into punky rattling, fanned especially by singer Goran’s vocals (opening track Huligan gradskih ulica). Anyway, these are only occasional “twinges” that the listener’s ear may register, and the easiest label would be to simply call Vatrene ulice “rock”.
Raging rock. It’s obvious the guys held this rage inside for a long time, and, true to the band’s name, it finally blazed up on “9 po Richteru” in real flames, just the way they wanted. The production is alive. Vatrene ulice work in the studio as a “live band”, and the songs breathe with the full lungs of captured three-dimensionality. That’s the key thing here, because it gives the performance itself that “realness”.
Vatrene ulice show exceptional quality especially when they go the sophisticated route, the opposite of what the band’s name suggests. In the parts where they weave loosely and build atmosphere slowly. The song Visoko, for example, is an excellent case of melodic weaving of a dramatic story, in which the heartfelt vocal is especially intense. The song comes alive in the chorus and hits a dramatic peak, its concise melodicness fanned mainly by a raspy guitar riff.
Generationally, guitarist Marin Jovanovac stands out in the quartet. The kid is a bit younger, and that’s hugely welcome in the dynamic stirring-up of Vatrene ulice’s expression. That’s most likely where we get that “grunge” touch, especially in the sound and in individual guitar phrases, which, in conversation with the other three, blends into a balanced mix through which the essence of Vatrene ulice beats. I’d like to single out Marin because he has an elementary feel for the dynamic development of the guitar part in the songs. Born for the guitarist’s seat in Vatrene ulice, in other words. The man deftly steers a dialogue that combines blazing riff-torching with clean phrases (backed by “reverb”) in the verses. The guitarist’s many layers and musical “resourcefulness” come through especially in songs like Samo bog zna, or in Ne okreći mi leđa.
Vatrene ulice are a band that, right at the core of its own expression, covers a nice range of blended genre forms that marked individual eras in the history of rock music (punk, post punk, grunge). That proves that, regardless of the fact that “9 po Richteru” is, as they like to say themselves, their first real album, this is a band with a long stretch of miles already behind it. Perhaps the loveliest manifesto of that is the song Usnuli grad se budi, which the band opens in a particularly tasty and very flavorful bluesy manner. The chords are clean here, and in this cleanly built sound, in the interplay between rhythm line and guitar, Vatrene ulice conjure up a powerful moment of sorrow and melancholy that a song like this badly needs. The vocal, in its sensuality, magnifies and gives meaning to the very point of the verses especially well. The leap into the intensity of the chorus, with a feel for a compatible motif flow, is proof that the guys are convincing in the way they deliver stocky, concise energy, and that they’re simply seasoned old cats who know how to serve things up. Vatrene ulice are a convincing band, also on the preaching side of the verses. It’s not hard to make out in them the thorny path singer Goran has walked. So the guys aren’t planting flowers; they serve up the brutal everyday truth of an individual fighting for their own existence. We live in an age of total devaluation, tearing at each other like wild, starved dogs. Also especially convincing are the verses hinting at singer Goran’s survived battles of the sexes (Idi sad, Ne okreći mi leđa, Sve u meni nestaje), which hit with the full force of expressive range that rock energy demands.
Vatrene ulice are a genuine shot in the arm for the scene, and they’ll catch the interest of everyone who followed the golden years of Yu rock and who keep tabs on how bands are developing across the former common state today too. The guys carry the past within them, with their eyes fixed on the present. They’re juicy, different, and in their expression they prove they’re hungry to prove themselves and get some recognition. To simply give the audience what they couldn’t give them in the last decade. With their approach, Vatrene ulice sound current enough for radio airplay too. They’ve already released two singles, Kreni and Huligan gradskih ulica. They’re bristling, angry, yet hugely listenable and very convincing in the subtler moments. A band you can picture on the stages of clubs, festivals, motorcycle rallies,… in short, let me stop “knitting”. Looking for rock? Looking for yugo nostalgia, looking for the energy served up by a healthy rock principle, grafted on the Croatian way? Then get “9 po Richteru” without hesitation. It’s a different kind of story, and a pleasantly surprising one!
Line-up
Goran Filipančić (Fila) – vocals
Marin Jovanovac – guitar, backing vocals
Daniel Vukoja (Dane) – bass guitar
Marijo Barić (Richba) – drums
Production
Švigi
Tracklist
1. Huligan gradskih ulica (2:50)
2. Kreni (3:06)
3. Sve u meni nestaje (4:29)
4. Ne okreći mi leđa (4:13)
5. Anarhija i ljubav (5:21)
6. Moj dobri prijatelj (3:02)
7. Visoko (4:29)
8. Idi sad (4:09)
9. Usnuli grad se budi (4:14)
10. Samo bog zna (4:11)
11. Dok padaju glave (3:13)
12. Moja generacija (3:02)
