Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / KUD France Prešeren / Slovenia
Concert date: 15.11.2012
Attendance: 200
Ticket price: €10.00
At the beginning of this October, the fired-up Slovenian rock quartet Tide gave birth to their new (and fourth) studio album, aptly titled »No. 4«. The excellent record reflects the band’s creative growth and artistic maturing, and it’s a real »wild card« that gives them, in all credibility, the potential to break through abroad and land on heavy rotation in mainstream rock.
Tide picked KUD France Prešeren as the venue for the party, which was spiced up by guest appearances from several familiar names of Slovenia’s music and entertainment scene! The names: Lado Bizovičar, Urška Majdič (Billysi), Neisha, Marko Soršak – Soki (Elvis Jackson) and Zoran Čalić (Big Foot Mama). Until ten in the evening nothing much happened at the venue. The place just kept steadily filling up with people. Barely a minute past ten, the band won over some 150 heads in an instant by kicking off the show with older material that the fans already know inside out. The crowd, heavily weighted toward the ladies, proved that Tide have kept all the trendy heat dictated by the current pulse of alternative rock »in the West« and across the »Atlantic pond«, and with it their potential commercial appeal.
On stage, Tide showed they’ve reached extraordinary tightness as a unit. They play fantastically, with real feeling, they read each other perfectly and click in their onstage communication, which rarely lets them down during a show. The same goes for the interpretation of the songs themselves, which rarely serve up a note that’s »shot wide of the mark«. Even though Tide are a solid, tightly knit quartet, it’s the charisma of frontman Kevin Koradin that is the main magnet keeping the crowd close to the band the whole time! The guy is a superb vocal chameleon who steers the songs through his delivery, and it’s exactly Kevin’s lived-in feeling that generates most of the atmosphere from track to track. The band masterfully exploits a successful mix of the unbending arrogance of the alternative rock tradition, dosed with just the right seasoning of catchy melodic instinct, in their art culture, and most of all that came shining through on the KUD stage too! »Release my gun!« is one of those phrases that have belonged since time immemorial to the arsenal of the »dirty vocabulary« of the rock ‘n’ roll character, the kind girls’ souls dream about in their most private corners. And Tide know it and know how to put it across effectively!
Among the guests, Neisha shone especially bright in the duet on Love Is Gone, where she made full use of her talent for polished, sensual, deeply felt vocal improvisation, and plenty of people could easily picture the young lady as a fierce, feisty rock chick. Who knows, maybe we’ll see that Neisha miracle one day. The fired-up, noisy and uncompromising Riot Act (a new song) also sounded great just before the finale, when Zoran Čalić (Big Foot Mama) joined the band on stage.
In an hour and three quarters, Tide played practically the whole »No. 4« album in a blazing show, spiced the set with a retrospective pick of tracks from older albums, and proved once again that they’re one of the leading alt-rock bands in Slovenia, one that with its wealth of experience, clearly crafted vision, hard-charging stage presence and ambition is knocking loudly on the door of a breakthrough abroad! Let’s hope they really pull it off.
Setlist
1. Awakening
2. Hold On
3. Misunderstood
4. The Urge
5. Release My Gun
6. Make Me Feel
7. Adieu
8, No Place Left To Go
9. Like It Slow
10. Brain Damage
11, Love Is Gone
12. Low
13. Mud
14. Don’t Looke Back
15. Not A Whore / Bullet
16. Waiting For The Rain
17. Hero
18. Believe
—encore—
19. Riot Act
20. Revolution
21. Kick Out The Jams
Photo Gallery
