Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Katalena
Label: Založba Pivec
Release: 2018
Length: 48:32
Rating: 5/5
Katalena are our folk rock mainstay. It’s no news anymore that the band’s very presence, with its body of work and its activity, takes up a hefty mountain massif in the Slovenian take on mixing the traditional music of folk heritage with all sorts of genres. Since they came out of the gate with a one-of-a-kind voice, they count as true originals. The previous album »Enci Benci Katalenci« was stocked with plenty of fun debauchery, cheekiness, mischief and even naughtiness. Full of cheer. Of course it was carved from a 100% yield of the “katalenological” recipe. A musical challenge, then, which Katalena passed with flying colors. Its successor, the freshly released »Človek ni zver«, keeps the quality constant. For it, Katalena picked a new artistic challenge and new creative starting points, which bring a completely different but still 100% “katalenology” payoff. This time Katalena turned to Slovenian folk music stuffed with war themes. The arrangements and the compositional style were all made to serve it.
The war theme here isn’t the kind that describes the heroic hacking off of dragon heads (or the hypocritical testing of neutron fusion, under the pretext that it’s necessary because somebody on the other side of the world just won’t capitulate). Quite the opposite. It touches the “heart-searing” confessions of those who were thrown into the vortex of war against their will and, of course, drew the short straw. A very timely topic these days, when madmen of accumulated capital, which must be destroyed at all costs, play games with our lives. The album »Človek ni zver« offers incredible intimacy, even a mystical, gazing-inward quality. It grabs hardest in precisely those moments of its confession when it’s played and sung with the greatest possible tenderness and fragility. Katalena have “loosened up the arrangements” here. The new album therefore speaks to you far more directly than its predecessor and lodges itself in the cerebral cortex almost instantly as you listen. It’s a considerably more melodically catchy album.
The expressive faces of the band’s artistry come to the fore, putting a richer coloring of the compositions with keyboards up front, with the guitar attaching itself in contrast (Travnički, Mrzle so njive), and in its phrasing it even takes the lead over the other building blocks of the sound a few times. This time Narat even manages to thunder in rock fashion a few times, the way it thunders in wartime. Nice that the man hasn’t entirely forgotten that the sound of distortion exists too (the title track, Oj ta soldaški boben). Gombač, on the other hand, isn’t as wind-instrument omnipresent this time as you’d expect. Sure, he colors the compositions’ lead motifs with various wind instruments, but it’s more than anything about strengthening the atmosphere on the basis of the worked-out motifs, which in turn reinforce the compact format of the compositions themselves. There aren’t many solo escapades from Gombač, but this time we witness his revision of the emphasized use of all sorts of additional curious instrumental props, with which Katalena very deftly fill out the sonic landscape in the arrangements.
At the same time, the contribution of bassist Syed is felt more strongly this time, adding to the arrangements his sense for experimental adventurousness, of the kind we find, for instance, in his side project The Puzzled (the gloomy song Čutim krvi utrip, with its mild alternative-rock bite). As for the keyboards, this time they’re often placed at the focal point of the compositions and quite often form the very skeleton of them. A whole composition can stand on the keyboards this time, or they serve as an important building block for conjuring up tense theatrical drama (Čutim krvi utrip). Such keyboard dominance can be found in the extremely commanding (heavily rearranged folk song) Oblaki so rdeči, and in the closing Kje so tiste stezice, where the vocal melody is set on the “undercarriage” of a completely different melodic motif and rhythmic key on the piano, which creates a deliberate feeling of dissonance and brilliantly teases the listener in chosen moments where, with a single measured note, Polona catches the vocal melody, only to deliberately slip back into the general atonal deviation between the vocal line and the motif. Spejvaj, nama Katica is, in its arrangement, the song on the new album that connects most directly to the path Katalena had walked in their earlier work (the albums before »Enci Benci Katalenci«)
Vesna expresses herself vocally in several different approaches. In the opener Fantje se zbirajo (alongside Mrzle so njive, the album’s other 100% original song) Narat’s opening banjo “pierces through” with her alto-sharp, chanson-gazing approach, which is practically her trademark. But she doesn’t necessarily stick with it. In fact, she uses it full-bloodedly again only toward the end of the album, when we run into Oj ta soldaški boben. Both songs are held up by the marching rhythm of the drums, which is in harmony with the message of the verses in them. In the remaining songs Vesna resorts to a fragile tenderness, a flexibly feeling vocal approach whose subtlety and softness once again brilliantly bring the messages of the verses to life, so that they awaken feelings in the most hidden corners of the listener’s soul. Vesna’s vocal is hugely inviting in the album’s mystically inward-gazing moments, such as Ko bo fantič na vojsko šel, where she moves you with her feeling tenderness. There it stands in extreme contrast within a vocal duet, complemented by Syed’s deep, manly voice (well, not as deep as Lee Marvin’s, but you can’t have everything). The somewhat adapted verses of the original folk version are brilliantly dressed up in the arrangement. It’s one of the album’s most mature points, reaching an artistic-expressive optimum in terms of the refined fusion of all the building blocks of the band’s unique musical dossier. From the subtle vocal performance to the development of an atmospheric crescendo of layered sonic pastels and the inclusion of additional harmonic chants. In this song you can even detect the integration of some cunningly placed effected sounds, which may evoke associations with the not-so-distant days of electronic pioneering (the »NDW« – Neue Deutsche Welle era). It’s certainly one of the compositional peaks of »Človek ni zver«. The other one, that is, is the album’s title track. It holds a special place on the album. No wonder it’s integral, since it embodies in the most direct way (in terms of art evolution) the band’s very sonic-artistic stance in 2018. If you want an immediate answer to what the content of Katalena’s new album brings, gathered in one place, spin the title track first. The arranging approach is similar to Ko bo fantič na vojsko šel, but with an extended intro motif on the keyboards, which isn’t surprising. Some of the songs carry lyrics written by Ivo Brnčič, who happens to be the brother of Polona Janežič’s grandmother. So on this album Katalena also set to music some of Brnčič’s poetry of “war atrocities”. If you get chilled to the bone anywhere, thanks to the cunningly exploited element of gradually deepening theatrical drama that conjures up piercing reality, it will surely be at the spot on the album occupied by the title track.
»Človek ni zver« is an album that will shake you, wake you and move you to the extreme. Katalena needed an artistic turn after the previous album, and with that move they delivered another one-of-a-kind piece, which in every respect, “head and beard” and all, is 100% Katalena. A new studio achievement of great expressive merit, embodying at the same time the artistic maturing of the band’s individual members. In its very core, »Človek ni zver« is a theater of deeply perceptive confessions that grabs the listener at once and holds them in suspense right to the end. That’s how real its content feels. Dark, intense, passionate, yearning. An album that will actually freeze the blood in the listener’s veins.
“Človek ni zver” on SoundCloud: Katalena
Lineup
Vesna Zornik – lead vocals, backing vocals
Polona Janežič – piano, keyboards, psaltery, backing vocals
Boštjan Gombač – clarinet, saxophones, flugelhorn, theremin, ukulele, tin whistles, fujara, trombone, backing vocals
Tibor Mihelič Syed – bass guitar, gimbri, ukulele, Roland HPD 20, guitar, backing vocals
Boštjan Narat – guitar, banjo, backing vocals
Robert Rebolj – drums, percussion
Production
Chris Eckman
Tracklist
1. Fantje se zbirajo
2. Travnički
3. Ko bo fantič na vojsko šel
4. Oblaki so rdeči
5. Mrzle so njive
6. Čutim krvi utrip
7. Spejvaj nama, Katica
8. Človek ni zver
9. Ne vem, kako ti je ime
10. Oj ta soldaški boben
11. Kje so tiste stezice
