Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Orto bar, Ljubljana
Concert date: 16.12.2009
Attendance: 0
Dallas Records keeps feeding us good gigs, and last Thursday, December 17, was no exception, when Zagreb rockers Vatra paid us a visit at Orto. The photographer and I managed to sneak into the soundcheck, where we caught the band right in the middle of Mornarska majica, and even before the official start of the show it was clear we were in for another dynamic night of music.
A little under half an hour before eleven, the set kicked off with the punchy Svjetla i sirene, which swings between dramatic guitar work and softer melodic passages in just under four minutes. That first track, along with a few others from their latest album Sputnik, reminds me a lot of the British band Muse, who are also known for hitting hard and making their case about some of life’s truths convincingly in a fairly modest running time. The keyboards, which got a bit more prominent already in the next song, Glava kojom ne razmišljam, only reinforce the association with the Brits.
The well-known Rambo Amadeus was also playing in Ljubljana that same night, and maybe that fact, combined with the Siberian winter conditions of that Thursday, was behind the poor turnout at Orto bar. The whole thing felt most of all like a private party, though there was no shortage of energy or willingness to make the most of the night. The band probably also cut the last two songs from the original setlist because of the thin crowd, wrapping up their show a bit early. For all the fans who’d like to see Vatra in a perhaps somewhat more grandiose version, I recommend catching their New Year’s Eve concert in Zagreb on Trg Bana Jelačića.
Vatra have been at it for ten years, and at Orto we heard material from all five of their albums. Plenty of people in the crowd reacted a bit more wildly to the older songs, but personally I’m most fond of the latest album, Sputnik, and for some of us the highlight of the show was definitely the song Eskim, which couldn’t have described the impossible ice-age living conditions we were going through that December night any more perfectly: “Tvog Eskima progutat če zima, ako me ostaviš na hladnom pred vratima. Tvog Eskima hladna zima pretvorit če u pingvina.”
Live, the band works as a tight, well-oiled unit, and you could say the final sum is greater than the mere total of its individual members. The concert experience is definitely an upgrade on the studio recordings, and although the way the songs are built doesn’t leave room for any serious improvisation, the band delivers that all-important live added value with its positive, focused approach, along the lines of: “We play the same whether it’s 20 people or 20,000.”
Photos: Tadej Reissner
Setlist
1. Svjetla i sirene 2. Glava kojom ne razmišljam 3. Zadnja 4. Boljeg za sebe 5. Gorim 6. Alkohol 7. Anđeo 8. Mornarska majica 9. Lak za nokte 10. 2 akrobata 11. Eskim 12. Privremeno nedostupan 13. Privatni pakao 14. John Travolta 15. Ruska 16. Vrati se Encore: 17. Odbrojavanje 18. Sunce
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