Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Puzzled, The
Label: Celinka
Release: 2013
Length: 55:51
Rating: 4.5/5
Members of Katalena, Kombo Zlatka Kaučiča, Trus!, Miusow Quartet, Avtomobili and more are bringing a record to the scene that even the most demanding music gourmets will sink their teeth into, the kind who can barely surprise themselves anymore as they dig through uncharted musical horizons, however many are even left uncharted for them. The Puzzled are a vivid new foldout of the Slovenian music landscape, unique in substance.
Picture the urban bustle of one of Slovenia’s bigger cities, say Ljubljana or Maribor. The euphoria of everyday life, the eternal pattern of getting through one day after another, hermetically sealed off from the world around it, predictable and controlled. The individual’s fate, enslaved to the principles of liberal capitalism, the pact Reagan and Thatcher fatefully struck back in the eighties. This daily mold of »time is money« is dosed out with brief intervals of longing for inner fulfillment, desperately clutching at every last straw that might help you escape into the kind of world you’ve been promised since birth but never find. Then there’s her, your partner, whose love gives you a reason to keep on searching for whatever your heart yearns for. And yet nothing really moves anywhere. You just remain a prisoner of iron times in which a handful thrives at the expense of exploiting the majority. The rich are few, but because they’re rich (in the material sense) they can manipulate the herd, which just keeps quietly and meekly toiling away. Lovely. Brave new world. The individual’s identity is smashed into a thousand tiny pieces, and its owner is unable to put them back together in a way that would let them find their true reason for existing.
Under the glow of that kind of guiding message, hovering over the musical horizon, the album »Bad Times For Bedtime Stories« is fragmented in its expression too. And that’s exactly its greatest appeal. It’s avant-garde experimentalism whose form always works effectively to bring us closer to the reactions of the story’s protagonist as they make their way through the day. A perfect form that can’t stand form. The Puzzled’s music is played by top-notch musicians who can play absolutely anything their imagination dictates, at any given moment.
The album »Bad Times For Bedtime Stories« is distinctly dark. The very first track, called Time Without Her Is Wasted, nails the point of The Puzzled’s musical and artistic character in three acts, and does it brilliantly. Let’s start with the vocal delivery. Picture, fleetingly, Johnny Cash’s take on the Nine Inch Nails original, Hurt. Add a somewhat deeper intonation, close to the Morrison – Cave approach; among Slovenian vocalists, you might also be partly reminded of The Tide frontman Tomaž Štular. That’s roughly how the darker, lower-pitched but lived-in and therefore convincing voice of bassist Tibor Syed Mihelič works.
Pigeonholing this record by genre would be almost insulting to its artistic value. Around four minutes of alternative gloom in, the story starts to unravel. A harmonized chant of a Native American sermon follows, and beneath it the band literally breaks the song apart; from here on it’s a creation of one sequence after another of seemingly irreconcilable lead motifs. Soon comes total musical chaos of avant-garde experimentalism, nothing but a wild jazz variation on a variation. These are eased by interjected spots of harmonized chants. The touch of accordion is an important element that dramatizes the charge of the darkly chaotic mood. The first track is also the most demanding one, the one the listener has to chew their way through.
Wrong Waltz For Ingorant People offers more compactness. The accordion creates most of the backdrop for a vocal approach that would fit right into theater music. The rhythm lines are lively, in tune with the free-spirited logic of jazz.
The next self-contained piece brings a hugely listenable turn of events that still holds on to absolute unpredictability, Black Cat With Bionic Legs. It’s an extremely multilayered track, spiced with tango rhythms and the ignition of accordion melodies; rhythmic twists of progressively broken beats chase each other stormily, and the band carefully doses out the soundscape by the number of notes. Above all, it’s about creating effective moods. A subtle fusion of seemingly irreconcilable motifs that the masters blend masterfully without any major trouble, serving up a one-of-a-kind musical treat that never stops thrilling with its unique energy. Parts of this track would work brilliantly as a soundtrack for a spaghetti western drama.
In the Name Of Go(o)ds is one of the album’s most dramatic tracks. A rhythm like a lazily swaying cowboy ride and a broken vocal stance are only its beginning. Soon the drama gets a boost from a dialogue between keys and guitar, with a hefty dose of almost avant-garde, sharply cut bluesy psychedelia – an environment where the artistic presence of Nick Cave’s dissonant vocal stance would feel perfectly at home. There’s a subliminal feeling while listening that a gospel choir could join the chorus in the background without a hitch. It barely gets any blacker than this.
The tension is eased up next by the instrumental Katharina Blum, which works considerably more subtly and paints the soundscape in softer shades, with the accordion pushed to the front again. The melancholic mood doesn’t let up in this track either.
If somewhere on this planet there existed a healthy radio frequency with music meant for mature (read: musically enlightened) listeners (which is of course a total illusion), World Of Nothing would be the perfect pick to spice up that kind of playlist. The most listenable track on the album, with the most compactness. It sketches the contour of alternative rock with a dash of experimental artistic streak, which is really the guarantee of the unique sonic and expressive density of this excellent studio record. The dark chorus melody is masterfully loosened up in the outro with jazzy guitar solos, which further builds on the unique substance of this record.
You’re waiting for the track Rootless the whole time. You kind of expect it unconsciously, even though you don’t know where on the record it sits. And sure enough. It’s the album’s last track. This is the instrumental with the most fragmented musical content. The most freewheeling rhetoric of insightful musical visionarism à la The Puzzled. A progressive instrumental with the widest reach of unpredictable turns and a fresh heavy dose of musical experiment. Ethnic melodies are clearly added to all of this too, coexisting beautifully in this exceptional climax of avant-garde fusion. The track runs just under ten minutes, yet it’s the one that flies by fastest. It’s the track that makes you automatically hit the button on the CD player with the command »play again.« The whole album, of course.
The Puzzled is an exceptional musical adventure that overcomes seemingly insurmountable genre barriers. The words in this review are far from enough. The boundless free-spiritedness of a full-blooded musical experiment, ethnic melodies, shades of alternative rock, blues, even psychedelic, almost Floyd-ish saltiness, nudges of jazz rock fusion,… All of this creates a strong streak of the band’s homegrown artistic voice, which of course comes across as avant-garde. Don’t go looking for some terribly deep philosophy in all of it. Turn to the parent bands the musicians of the project The Puzzled come from and you’ll get an approximation of what to expect on the album »Bad Times For Bedtime Stories«. Even if I used the all-encompassing label »avant-garde progressive jazz alternative« (brrrr….), I’d be saying next to nothing. It’s simply a record you have to bite into relaxed, willing to go with unexpected turns, hunting for the wildly homegrown side of music culture. You’ll be uncovering the message of »Bad Times For Bedtime Stories« for a long time. You’ll peel it back piece by piece. It’s a complex record, not meant for consumption by the average cerebral cortex, since it demands the highest degree of patience and attention from the listener. This is an album of brilliant communication between the members of The Puzzled, in which the musically insightful impulses of big talents spark off each other and amplify one another. The musicians have known each other for a long time and have played many musical adventures together. That’s an important factor too, building the distinctly homegrown stance of this self-grown record, which, let’s hope, will get an artistic successor in the future.
Lineup
Tibor Mihelič Syed – bass guitar, vocals, guitar, saz, jaw harp
Marko Brdnik – concert and MIDI accordion, keyboards
Marko Lasič – drums, sound effects
Peter Šavli – guitar
Matevž Kolenc – guitar
Blaž Celarec – percussion
Production
Blaž Celarec & Tibor Mihelič Syed
Tracklist
1. Time without Her is wasted
– The Quarrel
– He’s out
– He’s back, vomiting.
2.Wrong Waltz for Ignorant People
3. Black Cat with Bionic Legs
4. In the Name of G(o)ods
5. Katharina Blum
6. World of Nothing
7. Rootless
