Author: Urban Bolta
Photos: Jerneja Jerak
Location: Orto bar / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 13.03.2014
Attendance: 120
Ticket price: €4
What are the odds that a meteorite wipes Ljubljana off the face of the earth right on the night of Thursday’s Kadilnica of Death? Vanishingly small, really, even smaller than the odds of a hard rock gig happening at Kadilnica without the faces of the Šujo brothers and the Škerjanec brothers somewhere in the crowd. Believe it or not, that’s exactly what happened!
No matter, though. It didn’t stop the Primorska rockers Pelhan, under the supreme command of frontman Aleš Pelhan, from marking the first anniversary of their debut gig, at the very same scene of the crime as a year ago, Ljubljana’s Orto bar. In the meantime they’d played only twice more, in June in Vipava and at the end of summer in Postojna, so this time they fired up their live machinery after a good half year of idling.
These guys are still masters of their trade! Even though the Pelhans only get together every now and then, these are seasoned cats with a wealth of musical experience, so despite the low mileage they’ve racked up as a unit, pulling themselves together on stage into a well-oiled machine was no trouble at all. For the next hour and a half it rocked us in hard rock rhythms of shifting moods, from the punchy opening with the first single V neznano to a handful of ballad moments in the middle of the set.
Aleš Pelhan has an innate knack for expressive charm, flapping his arms around on stage and constantly acting out the lyrics with his gestures, which earns him a very special place among Slovenian frontmen. Looking after Aleš’s freedom on stage is guitarist Gregor, who despite his youth is a true pillar of six-string playing. Gregor served up his colorful palette of skills almost invisibly all night long, and in the middle of the set he did it with Aleš’s backing too, since for a string of songs the frontman himself picked up a guitar. It was right during Mrtvo mesto, one of the peaks of Pelhan’s mighty confessional side, that Peter’s keyboards got lost somewhere in the background. In fact, the search for a dialogue between keyboards and guitar in the overall sound picture failed several times over the course of the show, mostly in the less intense moments. A lingering illness had robbed Aleš of some of his vocal playfulness, which was noticeable mostly in the higher registers, but those flaws were just a drop in the ocean of a thoroughly enjoyable evening. By the middle of the set, the band with Aleš at the helm had melted the barrier between stage and crowd, and with the evergreen lines of the legendary Parni Valjak, the gap between the stage and the front rows kept shrinking, while the atmosphere just kept building!
The melodic charge of all the main building blocks (keyboards, guitar and vocals) kept trading off the central motif. In the intro to the ballad Prekleti raj, Peter on keys and Gregor on guitar even served up a few improvisational treats, while the rest of the crew ducked backstage for a swig or two of Jupi. It’s precisely this freedom for the instrumental crew that proves Pelhan are not just Aleš’s solo project, but a band that has started breathing with full lungs, where every single link is an indispensable piece of the whole mosaic. In the second part of the set, Pelhan slotted the evergreen Europe classic Supersticious in among their own material, with Miha’s textbook eight-beat hi-hat intro. It’s a small touch, but given his sense of rhythm, it’s no accident that the former Requiem drummer is counted among the cream of the best drummers of his generation! The obligatory tribute to Queen wasn’t missing either, with a guitar-powered version of the anthemic I Want It All, before Pelhan wrapped up the regular get-together with the last track off last year’s debut, Blizu je zadnji izdih. One final trip V neznano followed, and as it played, the question rolled into my prefrontal cortex all by itself: given how irregularly they play, when will we get to see this Primorska crew on stage again? I hope it’s soon!
Setlist
1. V neznano
2. Če jutri umrem
3. Live and Let Die
4. Okrog najine osi
5. Gregor
6. I Surrender
7. Mrtvo mesto
8. Sve još miriše na nju
9. V zavest
10. Uvod / Prekleti raj
11. Nov človek
12. Supersticious
13. Moč domišljije
14. Pravi obraz
15. I Want It All
16. Blizu je zadnji izdih
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17. V neznano
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