Label: Pivec
Release date: March 30, 2018
Production: Chris Eckman
Album length: 48:32 min
Genre: Folk / Alternative Rock
Rating: 10/10
Katalena are a fixture of the Slovenian folk rock scene. It’s no news anymore that the band, with its body of work and constant activity, towers like a mountain massif over the Slovenian approach to baking traditional folk music together with all sorts of other genres. Since they offered a unique voice right from the starting point, they count as real originals. The previous album “Enci Benci Katalenci” was loaded with fun-loving debauchery, cheek, mischief and even downright naughtiness. Full of cheer. It was, of course, carved out of a 100% yield of the “Katalenological” recipe. A musical challenge, then, which Katalena passed with flying colors. Its successor, the freshly released “Človek ni zver”, keeps the quality constant. For it, Katalena picked a new artistic challenge and new creative starting points, which bring something completely different, yet still 100% the harvest of “Katalenology”. This time around, Katalena turned to Slovenian folk music loaded with war themes. The arrangements and the songwriting style were shaped around that.
The war theme here is not the kind that describes heroic dragon-head chopping (or the hypocritical testing of neutron fusion under the pretext that it’s necessary because someone on the other side of the world just won’t capitulate). Quite the opposite. It touches the “heart-searing” confessions of those who were pushed into the whirlpool of war against their will and, of course, drew the short straw. A very timely theme for today, when lunatics of accumulated capital play with our lives, capital that must be destroyed at all costs. The album “Človek ni zver” offers incredible intimacy, even a mystical, faraway gaze. It grabs hardest in exactly those moments of its confession when it’s played and sung with the greatest possible tenderness and fragility. Katalena “loosened up the arrangements” on it. The new album therefore speaks far more directly than its predecessor and, as you listen, lodges itself in your cerebral cortex almost instantly. It’s a considerably more melodically catchy album.
The band’s expressive artistry comes to the fore, putting more generous keyboard coloring of the compositions front and center, with the guitar attaching itself in contrast (Travnički, Mrzle so njive), at times even taking precedence over the other building blocks of the sound in its phrasing. This time Narat even manages to rock out and thunder a few times, the way thunder rolls in wartime. Nice to see the guy hasn’t completely forgotten that the sound of distortion exists too (the title track, Oj ta soldaški boben). Gombač, on the other hand, isn’t as all-present on the winds this time as you’d expect. Sure, he colors the compositions’ lead motifs with various wind instruments, but it’s more than anything about strengthening the atmosphere on top of well-crafted motifs, which in turn reinforce the compact format of the compositions. There aren’t many solo escapades from Gombač, but this time we witness his revision of the emphasized use of all sorts of additional oddball instrumental props, with which Katalena fill the sonic landscape in their arrangements very skillfully.
At the same time, bassist Syed’s contribution is felt more strongly this time, adding to the arrangements his sense of experimental adventurism, as found, for instance, in his side project The Puzzled (the gloomy song Čutim krvi utrip, with a mild alternative-rock tingle). As for the keyboards, this time they’re often placed at the focal point of the compositions and quite often form the very skeleton of them. A whole composition can rest on the keyboards this time, or they serve as an important building block for conjuring a tense drama theater (Čutim krvi utrip). That kind of keyboard dominance can be found in the extremely haughty (rearranged folk song) Oblaki so rdeči, and in the closing Kje so tiste stezice, where the vocal melody is hung on the “undercarriage” of a completely different motivic melos and rhythmic key on the piano, which creates a deliberate feeling of dissonance and brilliantly teases the listener in select moments where, with a single measured note, Polona catches the vocal melody, only to deliberately return to the general atonal deviation between the vocal line and the motif. Spejvaj, nama Katica is, in its arrangement, the song on the new album that connects most directly to the path Katalena had walked in their earlier body of work (the albums before “Enci Benci Katalenci”).
Vesna expresses herself vocally in several different approaches. In the opening Fantje se zbirajo (along with Mrzle so njive, the album’s other 100% original song), Narat’s opening banjo is “pierced” by her alto-sharp, chanson-like, faraway approach, which is practically her trademark. But she doesn’t necessarily stick with it. In fact, she only uses it full-bloodedly again toward the end of the album, with Oj ta soldaški boben. Both songs are held up by a marching drum rhythm, which is in harmony with the message of their verses. On the remaining tracks Vesna reaches for a fragile tenderness, a supple, feeling vocal approach whose subtlety and softness once again brilliantly bring the messages of the verses to life, so that they awaken feelings in the most hidden corners of the listener’s soul. Vesna’s vocal is richly alluring in the album’s mystically distant moments, such as Ko bo fantič na vojsko šel, where she stuns with her feeling tenderness. There it stands in stark contrast in a vocal duet, complemented by Syed’s deep, manly voice (not quite as deep as Lee Marvin’s, but still). The slightly adapted verses of the original folk version are brilliantly dressed in the arrangement. It’s one of the album’s most mature points, reaching an artistic-expressive optimum in the refined merging of all the building blocks of the band’s unique musical dossier. From the subtle vocal performance to the development of an atmospheric crescendo of layering sonic pastels and the inclusion of additional harmonic chants. In this song you can even detect the integration of some slyly placed effected sounds that can bring to mind the not-so-distant days of electronic pioneering (the “NDW” era – Neue Deutsche Welle). It’s certainly one of the compositional peaks of “Človek ni zver”. The other one, in fact, is the title track. It holds a special place on the album. No wonder it’s integral, since it embodies in the most direct way (in terms of art evolution) the band’s very sonic, artistic stance in 2018. If you want an instant answer about what the content of Katalena’s new album brings, all gathered in one place, spin the album’s title track first. The arrangement approach is similar to Ko bo fantič na vojsko šel, but with an extended opening motif on the keyboards, which is hardly surprising. Several songs carry lyrics written by Ivo Brnčič, incidentally the brother of Polona Janežič’s grandmother. So on this album Katalena also set to music some of Brnčič’s poetry of “wartime atrocities”. If you’re going to get chilled to the bone anywhere, thanks to the slyly exploited element of gradually deepening drama theater that evokes a piercing reality, it’ll be at the spot on the album occupied by the title track.
“Človek ni zver” is an album that will shake you, wake you up and hit you extremely hard. Katalena needed an artistic about-face after the previous album, and with that move they’ve once again delivered a one-of-a-kind record that is, head to toe, 100% Katalena. A new studio achievement of great expressive merit, which also embodies the artistic maturing of the band’s individual members. “Človek ni zver”, in its core theater of deeply perceptive confessions, grabs the listener right away and holds them in suspense until the very end. That’s how real its content feels. Dark, intense, passionate, yearning. An album that will literally freeze the blood in your veins.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 10 / 10
Tracklist:
1. Fantje se zbirajo
2. Travnički
3. Ko bo fantič na vojsko šel
4. Oblaki so rdeči
5. Mrzle so njive
6. Čutim krvi utrip
7. Spejvaj nama, Katica
8. Človek ni zver
9. Ne vem, kako ti je ime
10. Oj ta soldaški boben
11. Kje so tiste stezice
Lineup:
Vesna Zornik – lead vocals, backing vocals
Polona Janežič – piano, keyboards, psaltery, backing vocals
Boštjan Gombač – clarinet, saxophones, flugelhorn, theremin, ukulele, tin whistles, fujara, trombone, backing vocals
Tibor Mihelič Syed – bass guitar, gimbri, ukulele, Roland HPD 20, guitar, backing vocals
Boštjan Narat – guitar, banjo, backing vocals
Robert Rebolj – drums, percussion
