Venue: Kamnik, MC Kotlovnica
Concert date: 06.10.2007
Attendance: 40
Ticket price: free admission
Itching to get in on the latest wins of Slovenia’s reborn rock scene, we headed out on a shamelessly rainy Saturday afternoon to Kamnik, or more precisely to its Kotlovnica, where, as part of the so-called Soul Out tour, we’d find not only The Tide, the big hope of sub-Alpine hard rock, but also a friendly uncle by the name of Neil Leyton. He’s already well settled into his home away from home on the sunny side of the Alps, since this was his fourth visit to Slovenia, and we’re confident it won’t be his last. Neil took on the Slovenian crowd’s traditionally reserved reactions with gusto, armed with his own take on rock & roll, and of course he won!
The Tide
The Tide, rockers from Kranj, are currently busy promoting their debut Love & Trust, and they’re one of those bands who hit the jackpot by breaking out of the gray everyday average of how Slovenia perceives rock culture. An enviable achievement, and with constant gigging the guys understandably keep building on it. A colorful batch of original material, a fresh-out-of-the-oven album topped off with three music videos – none of that, of course, guarantees a carefree night’s sleep. With The Tide, you simply can’t shake the feeling that, under the guise of sharp, uncompromising music, it’s mostly a recycling of stuff we’ve already seen. Even though the guys came across as a distinctly tight unit, you could spot shamelessly irritating signs of predictability everywhere, quietly giving away the aforementioned, and for an ambitious band like The Tide, a totally unnecessary display of their small-town roots. Especially with Tomaž’s dreamy, headless-chicken hopping in the style of Jim Morrison, those roots quickly show their true face. His polished image looks anything but the controversial frontman he’s passing himself off as. On top of that, his delivery is a far cry from any kind of intimately intellectual preaching, worthy of more convincing and sharply ruffled rock communication. And even though The Tide, with their at-first-glance strikingly unconventional look, try hard to fence themselves off from the ubiquitous, currently popular Slovenian-flavored rubbish, stylistic adaptations like these keep dropping them right back into its arms. Apart from Stay Out Of My Place and maybe Your River Wild, there were accordingly few exciting moments here. Sadly, as long as the guys stick to equally unoriginal setups, despite a visibly polished performance they can calmly drop any plans of storming the international scene right at the start. Boys, better luck next time!
Neil Leyton
The total opposite of that clueless, phony stage hopping is a kid named Neil Leyton, a Lisbon-born Canadian mountain-range-of-a-guy (a Canadian by roots, that is), who, with a strongly pronounced sense of dynamics, kindly smoothed over the earlier squabbles between the insincere and the annoyingly boastful. Despite his distinctly new-agey look, Neil is a very simple person, and his honest performance couldn’t have come at a better moment. With a fun duo of a Scottish/Swedish “Mansonesque goat-bearded” pairing, Mr. Leyton led a good half-hundred numbed warriors for about two hours into a world of anti-globalist musical agitating (revolutionary-Leninist would be too strong a term here), full of rapturous cross-genre and at the same time astonishingly convincing coexistence, which Uncle Neil topped off with a pinch of the ever-welcome sincerity of good old rock & roll. The rough-hewn attitude of the latter seems, at first glance, completely incompatible with the pubescent, emo-inspired look of the young man, but it’s obvious that the lad has learned the lessons of hard-won past battles and now, with the zeal of a typical adolescent, shamelessly draws from rock’s rich treasure chest. In Neil’s compelling “tales” Blacklight, Bring On The End and especially Fires, we find elements of rock as well as the unpredictable sass of punk, and there’s no shortage of distinctly ambient touches in the Bowie mold either, which, in terms of impressiveness, mostly because they’re too predictable, still stand miles away from his genius. Neil can’t be blamed for such “shortcomings,” above all because of the wholeheartedly delivered set, with which, facing a lukewarm, let’s call it shy, response from the crowd, like David against Goliath, he grew ever more lonely in his open fight against the corruption of the modern world. The guy is devoted to enlightening the uninitiated listeners with all his heart, and that has to count for something in the end, right?
Set list Neil Leyton:
1. White House
2. System
3. Slowdance
4. Fires
5. When A Ghost
6. Blacklight
7. Ingrid
8. Alluvium
9. Bring On The End
10. Hyper
12. Melancholy
13. Twilight
14. Automatically
15. All Or Nothing
Words: Daniel Pavlica
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photo Gallery
