Artist: Smolar, Adi
Label: Modrina
Release: 2008
Running time: 36.34
Rating: 3/5
Brez dlake na jeziku is the newest weapon in the scrawny little hands of Adi Smolar, with which one of our best-known singer-songwriters and vocalists keeps up his hopeless fight against the epidemic of lunacy that has been mowing people down on the sunny side of the Alps since time immemorial. This Sisyphean labor, which drags on year after year as Smolar’s reason for being, is also the salvation of this musically never-too-attractive “entertainer”. Luckily for him, we Slovenes are traditionally pretty reliable carriers of every kind and shape of madness, so a shortage of ideas is never a problem for Smolar. With Brez dlake na jeziku, Adi Smolar undoubtedly holds on to his crown as the sharpest needler in Slovenia.
With Smolar there are no surprises, at least not musically. In fact, true to its telling title, Brez dlake na jeziku loudly announces the traditional dreariness of the gentleman’s greatest melodic triumphs. But that’s far from the main point of Adi’s existence. Adi’s trump card is a razor-sharp tongue, greased with every kind of ointment, and the weight of his unvarnished words cracks open the shells of the most forbidden topics. This is where the painful debates start about subjects that have always been taboo, from the more global shipwrecks of our beautiful fatherland’s, until recently, high-flying economic policy to questions of an intimate nature, mostly concerning the moral duties of the individual, and it’s all served up fast, black on white, with no ambiguity whatsoever. The proverbial hypocrisy of the spiritually impoverished little souls of the sub-Alpine region, the double standards of moral norms as a product of the community, the theft of public property at every turn, none of this surprises Smolar, let alone knocks him off balance, though it’s true that Adi doesn’t really say anything shockingly new, he just has the balls to say it out loud.
Adi Smolar stubbornly stays true to his image as a successful good-for-nothing who doesn’t skimp on dishing out unpleasant facts. The old man keeps gnawing away at the free-standing foundations of Slovenian hypocrisy, and he deserves congratulations for that. There’s no need to stress that Brez dlake na jeziku, too, is a droll, sarcasm-soaked take on the troubles and frightening situations weighing on the everyday life of the average Joe bolted to the bar. And there are more of those with every passing day. Instead of propping their elbows in puddles of cheap “best neighbor” booze, I’d rather recommend to those folks a admittedly slightly more substantial investment in Smolar’s fresh musical-lyrical one-man show, which, if it doesn’t heal the wound, will surely clear the head.
Lineup
Adi Smolar: acoustic guitar
Dejan Došlo: guitar, backing vocals
Daniel Homšak: bass
Borut Činč: keyboards
Iztok Repovž: drums and percussion
Damir Jazbec: harmonica
Production
Borut Činč and Adi Smolar
Track list
1. Najraje sem doma
2. Resnico bom prenesu
3. Le še iz navade
4. Zlata ribica
5. D’narja ni
6. Brodolom
7. Brez dlake na jeziku
8. Bolj ko treniraš, bolj ti gre
9. Zgubu, zgubu
10. Po dežju posije sonce
