Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / CUK Kino Šiška / Slovenia
Concert date: 17.01.2013
Attendance: 230
Prekmurje has always been a creative hotbed of gifted musicians who, for a long time, were damn well overlooked. These days, after the young standard-bearers of the now-defunct rebel steel alliance Prekmurje Noise Conspiracy left their unmissable mark on the musical soul of our nation (alongside Kreslin, of course), names like Beko, Manul, Psycho-Path, and to my taste Sphericube too, have become a well-known guarantee of gigs where music with balls and substance blasted out of cranked-up amps. The alternative to central anemia and the mindless repetition of patterns we’ve already heard has, thanks to its homegrown originality, innovation and uncompromising daring, become the first choice of many lovers of music spelled with a capital M. Let’s leave genres aside, because pigeonholing, sorting and stylistically dissecting whatever sound waves carry into our ears is exactly what steals from, robs and empties the soul of music, and kills the creative drive and the sparks in the hearts of young creators. There are too many clones on the scene anyway, and the garages and the alternative underground of Slovenian hideouts are no more immune to fashion trends, commandments and prohibitions. Still, bright exceptions exist. Even though Werefox come out of important building blocks of the past, or recent past, of Slovenian music (by the way: besides the bands mentioned above, throw in the screaming pop confetti of Lollobrigida and you get the basic building blocks of the genetic code of this Ljubljana-based Prekmurje collective of seasoned musical tomcats and one very special sexy musical cat …), the lineup decided to turn a new page in the book of their creativity. The foursome is made up of the gifted guitar wizard of Beko, Manul and Psycho-Path Sašo Benko, drummer David Halb, bassist Manuel Hahn, and the charismatic heart, voice and songwriting wellspring of the band: the instantly recognizable and unmistakably one-of-a-kind singer Melanija Larisa Fabčič, better known as Melee. With Werefox they’ve turned their backs on indie-rock loudness, a noisy devotion to unmelodic patterns, and artistic mystery. The band’s soul has frothed up this time over more melodious note combinations, and the sonic intervals lean more toward pop, which for some old fans is no doubt a crime without precedent. But this time I have to say that even in pop (and I mean that not as a stylistic pigeonhole but as a field where music is colored brighter, cheerier and more optimistic) there can be something irresistibly beautiful, which made it a given that the Rockline crew would be standing in front of the Kino Šiška stage too.
A winter idyll or sulky snowfall could have been solid excuses for skipping the show, but after the first listen to the record, the unbelievable debut I Am Memory, which the band launched onto the market via Bandcamp, it was clear that no weather disaster could stop little old me on my way into Ljubljana’s winter chill. This time the gig went down a bit lower than usual – in the small hall of Ljubljana’s Kino Šiška. At the entrance to the space of more clubby enjoyment came the first announcement. Werefox were supposed to do the show with Girls Against Boys frontman Scott McCloud, but he decided to skip the Ljubljana christening because of illness in the family. No duets, then, I tell myself, but the main reason for coming to the belly of Ljubljana’s temple of culture was more homegrown anyway. At the stall with records from the artists of the label God Bless This Mess, where the debut of the evening’s main stars was on offer too, the hostesses also served Prekmurje schnapps, so the wait was a lot less stressful and draining than usual.
Soon the band’s comrades-in-arms take the stage, and with the opening track The Redneck Genious Story the wild ride down the slides of passion can begin! Beko, on the left side of the stage, starts melting souls with his just-right heavy, distorted Fender Tornado guitar. The right side is taken by the short-haired bassist Manuel, glasses on and armed with a red Fender bass, and next to him stands the lady of the evening, poised in ambush, the hungry frontwoman Melee. From behind the bodies of their fellow fighters, the band’s excellent rhythmic heart, drummer David, throws himself into a dynamic game of skins and cymbals. Redneck stakes out the field Werefox are going to roam, because after the suspense of a lovely intro the song leaves plenty of room for punchy waves of gorgeous melodic garage. Werefox shift into top gear after just a few bars, and the considerably louder outfit of a truly brilliant start lets you know Werefox play all or nothing. Despite only one guitar on stage, nothing’s missing from the sound, because the band’s sonic picture is punchy and solid as a monolith. Next up is the far more alternative-playful Shitload Of Love. The band’s steel grip doesn’t let up, and the song, which in its own sexy way recalls the great Foo Fighters, has plenty of teeth of its own. »Dark princess riding low – no one messes with her flow / Who’s to say what shall go? Not to her! No!!!« roars Melee, and then comes one of the prettier and more singable choruses of the first half of the record, where we get to choose the body part the dark princess would chop off just for us! Sexy and dark! Werefox deform their gorgeous contours just right in a pop-tinted world, so they don’t come off saccharine, sugar-coated and wretched, but get even the proverbially static audience of a capital that’s seen it all moving. If the band’s quality were measured by eye, you could judge from the crowd’s movement that I Am Memory is a bullseye, but Werefox don’t rest on the laurels of just a few achievements. A surprising shuffle of the track order follows, and third out of the speakers rumbles the rather dark oriental vignette of the ominous Beyond Mercy. The repetitive string of verses recalls the days of Psycho-Path exorcisms much more than the moments of our camera-flirting divas. Werefox are a story of their own, with ears that get damn nicely greased by the fat sounds of quality, punchy, full-blooded alternative set against all the sugar in this world, and we can also listen to the lessons of killer beauty.
Killer Lesson sounds like it was written by Mark Lenegan, but instead of a baritone, the mic gets a higher-flying vocal this time, the tender, fragile soprano of the exceptional Melee. The meditative combination of minimalist guitars, drums and bass melts into the Zen beauty of Japanese minimalism, and after melting in drops of happiness, it’s time to bathe in the cascades of roaring streams of passion. The distorted tempo of the sonic river carries wild lust higher and higher, while the foursome on stage, eyes half-closed, sail their course to who knows where, confident and flawless. Like Argonauts they land on the shores of the spot where the stage should have been shared with the absent McCloud, but The Boy In Me, The Girl In You sounds great even without the Tom Waits-style storytelling of the eminent guest’s raspy vocal. After a few short words to the crowd and a modest thank-you for the truly outstanding work, the solid run of quality musical exegesis rolls on. Faces bathe in sweat, and thick beads of physical effort evaporate from the cheeks of the stage shamans as well as from the bodies of the few souls who let their soles be peeled off the cold floor of the hall and fly, eyes half-closed, into the stratosphere of perfect bliss. And that can be cranked up even further with the poisonously good doses of melody in Doghouse! There’s no room for clichés and bullshitting in the band’s lyricism, and despite the worn-down, ragged collage of gorgeous recycling of ideas we’ve already heard, the dance doesn’t stop for a second. The guys and the girl rinse their throats every now and then with a sip of schnapps, and with fresh kerosene on their vocal cords and souls the flames climb even higher. Give Me A Life, in the style of Pearl Jam or R.E.M., brings us to the moment where we all fall together into an incantation that we deserve a life worth living, feeling and playing with, and one of the more sentimental moments of the evening arrives with a leap into the higher spheres of the supralunar world. Fun On The Moon is, hand on heart, a wonderful tribute to the melodics of George Harrison, and with the association of Here Comes The Sun, lips part this time in a murmur of verses: »This is the last time you’ll have fun on the moon / This is the last time you’ll make moonflowers bloom. / The moon felt in the gutter / Go, get your daughter – she’s lost!« and with meditative injections of guitar distortion, bass and drums, sex, space and time become completely irrelevant postulates of a perfect experience. I’m normally a fan of the band’s punchier contours, but this time I hit my peak of delight even before my ears bled from the sonic cannonades of March Of The Finest and the closing Did I Kill The Devil In You. Werefox are experts at swimming through materials of different densities, and with a 200-meter medley sprint, the answer to the question of whether they managed to kill the devil in us can only be yes! Even though they’d drained the pools of this first shared reading of their original tracks, two more rather incredible and truly superb extensions follow. The chemistry of crushing sounds, of exceptional guitar passages from under the fingers of the truly exceptional Beko, of gorgeous rhythmic passages from a duo that’s much more than just rhythm, David and Manuel, and of the unconcealed brilliance of the sexy, music-devoted singer Melee, lives on in the covers too, which in Werefox’s outfit sound no less confident and original. Werefox were supposed to play The Come Down on stage with McCloud, the lead throat of Girls Against Boys, but even the Slovenized version of the song sounded hellishly good, so we can only hope that someday this witness will be immortalized on some B-side project. The cherry on top of an incredible evening of multiple orgasms (eargasms, if I may play with words a little more) was a psychedelic trip to the sixties with 13th Floor Elevators, and You’re Gonna Miss Me said out loud what, after the last notes faded, we could sense in our own hearts.
It’s hard for me to be objective and impartial, because I fell for Werefox with every last fiber of my heart, and a single contact and a single listen was all it took. This is no half-baked product or band that could only work in the short run. Werefox have a damn lot of oomph in their bosoms, and with their sworn commitment to quality they are without doubt one more ace with which the world will soon be colored with shades of Slovenian brilliance too. But let’s leave geography aside. Good music knows no borders, labels, pedigrees or age tags, and Werefox meet every criterion that lets us say with certainty: »Werefox are the next big thing, and I Am Memory is an album for the shelf of anyone for whom good music is sacred!!!« Anything more would be superfluous, and anything less would be an unfair underestimation of the facts! There’s little room for qualitative detours for Werefox too, so we can hardly wait, counting down the days, hours and minutes to the next studio and stage sequel, because in both the lads and the lady shine damn brilliantly!
Setlist
1. The Redneck Genius Story
2. A Shit Load Of Love
3. Beyond Mercy
4. Killer Lesson
5. The Boy In Me, The Girl In You
6. Doghouse
7. Give Me A Life
8. Fun On The Moon
9. March Of The Finest
10. Urgency
11. Did I Kill The Devil In You?
—encore—
12. The Come Down
13. You’re Gonna Miss Me
Photo gallery
