Devet življenj

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik

Artist: Vanič, Miha
Label: Razplet
Release: 2011
Duration: 45:26
Rating: 4/5

Sometimes an album lands in your hands later than usual. But it’s never too late to write a thought or two about it, especially when it’s a quality piece of work. Miha Vanič is a well-known Slovenian vocalist who cut his teeth working with Amala, Brizani Project, Bassment and Dejan Pečenko Trio. With them he’s played quite a few of Slovenia’s more prominent concert stages with a real tradition behind them, like Cankarjev dom and the Lent festival. There’s no shortage of experience, know-how or talent here, even though the guy never played the central role in those past bands. With his solo studio debut »Devet življenj«, though, he’s finally taken that step too and moved to the center of everything happening on the album.

Over the years Miha has built up a pile of solid connections with the most prominent Slovenian musicians, plus a few from abroad, and he invited them to play on his first studio album. The lion’s share of the work was done by the renowned musician (above all a superb bassist) and producer Traja Imer Brizani. He wrote all the arrangements and placed a whole constellation of guest players in exactly the right spots in the songs! That colorful constellation is the guarantee that Miha got exactly what he’d quietly been hoping for. The basic ideas are developed into the best possible form of arrangement. The result deserves nothing but praise. What we have here is an album that’s varied and shifting in both ideas and arrangements, fun to listen to from start to finish, above all thanks to the outstanding playing and inventive musical solutions from the crew of guest musicians, and of course thanks to Miha’s heartfelt, tangibly convincing vocal delivery, which we can safely say has real charisma and a distinctive, well-developed vocal character.

Although the album is at its core mid-tempo and begs for radio rotation, you could even say pop at heart, it constantly swerves in sharp contrasts toward elements of jazz, soul, funk and even world music, and it also has a not-insignificant bunch of moments where the guitar decisively »roars«, so Miha certainly didn’t forget the all-important rock ‘n’ roll seasoning.  So »Devet življenj« will be of interest to all lovers of sophisticated arranging, of the crafty weaving of small but juicy finesses into a lively jigsaw puzzle that, for all its stylistic branching out, stays very easy to listen to. In that sense it’s a very mature studio debut, one that knows no naive solutions that would lead to the trivial predictability of well-worn clichés.

The production is top-notch! It’s warm, organic, dynamic. Miha Vanič’s pleasant vocal is wrapped throughout in a carefully crafted, fully conceived soundscape. Percussion embellishments are added to the basic rhythmic backbone, enriching the groove, and into that mix cuts the outstanding playing of bassist Traja Imer Brizani, adding that jazzy-funky groove effect as the essential support for most of the songs. Traja is a master of his craft and creates some exceptional contrasts within individual songs (Med mesečino in snom). Backing the front line is an excellent weave of woodwinds and brass (saxophones, trumpets, flutes), guitars and keyboards, and Miha’s vocal is generously and tastefully surrounded by female backing vocals, which on a track like Ocena even veer off into »gospel« territory. All the songs have a »solo seasoning« in the middle that loosens up the compact form of the tracks. The »mid-eight« sections are seasoned especially nicely, and the superb musicians deliver their (mostly jazz-tinged) solo spots always right down the middle line, showing off each soloist’s expressive strengths while staying subordinate to the lead melody or motif.

Although the album’s material works best in Slovenian (the songs sung in Slovenian are the strongest), Miha also tried a few songs in Croatian and English. There’s the calm, almost ballad-like Pola svijeta, which presents Miha’s duet with the very interesting Croatian vocalist Zdenka Kovačiček.  A bit more playfulness comes from Miha’s collaboration with Australian singer Jackie Marshall on The Few Steps, where world-music elements are also in the mix.  Find Me The Way (another mellow one, again a duet with Jackie) is the least interesting spot on the album, and the excessive repetition of the chorus as the song heads toward the »fade-out« is a bit annoying. Meja is definitely one of the best songs on the album! The intro fleetingly recalls the grandeur of Queen’s Show Must Go On, then the song calms down completely and ethno elements with a tamburica sneak into the verse. The song has an excellent transition into the chorus crescendo. A dramatic masterpiece of the album, standing on minor chords!

The album has an energetic start and finish. That means it kicks off with the rock-backed opener Še eno noč mi daj and closes at a similar energy level with the mischievous Tvoje sledi, which gets a special moment from a vocal improvisation by Zdenka Košiček in its closing section. The guitar phrase is clearly spotlighted in a song like Še eno noč mi daj, but it doesn’t take the lead in the arrangement over the other instruments. Given Miha’s musical background and his past work in larger ensembles (with orchestras and so on…), as well as his musical camaraderie with the guru Imer Traja Brizani, the album’s songs are also arranged as if they’d been written for an orchestra. The ear can’t miss the many spices and details of this vivid musical jigsaw of short, concise, filigree movements of arranging micro-mechanics.

Given such a tremendously beautiful and musically rich studio debut, one that honestly reflects Miha Vanič’s many-layered musical sensibility, Miha could, if he sticks with this sphere, grow into one of those singer-songwriters who’d shape the top of the local »mainstream« (like Gibonni in Croatia, for instance). But our “mainstream” is currently saturated with »ballast« that in any other healthy environment could never define the musical “mainstream” of a country (read: »Well, this is what we’ve got!«), and given that people no longer have time to separate the wheat from the chaff, this album will probably stay on the margins of the Slovenian music scene too and slowly sink into oblivion. Let’s hope it doesn’t. »Devet življenj« is a very high-quality product that, in terms of a healthy artistic stance, gives Miha Vanič all the springboards he needs to vault toward a healthy pop (and rock) »mainstream«, though in Slovenia today we can say it first has to relearn how to even find one. The question is what Miha’s motive is, but judging by the content of the debut, it’s instantly clear that we’re dealing first and foremost with a mature document of honest artistic individuality, and that there’s (thankfully) no room in such a story for a thirst for kitsch or for striking a central pose in the glow of “advertising” spotlights.

…and no! That’s not Zoran Thaler on the cover.

Lineup

Miha Vanič – vocals
Imer Traja Brizani – electric bass guitar, “fretless” bass guitar, keyboards
Igor Bezget – electric, acoustic guitar
Šemsudin Đopa – acoustic guitar
Uroš Rakovec – electric guitar, acoustic guitar
Armando Brizani – keyboards
Dejan Pečenko – “Hammond” organ
Robert Ivačič – harmonica
Žiga Kožar – drums, percussion
Žiga Šercer – percussion
Mikavž Ašič – soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone
Andreas Morinello – alto saxophone
Miha Hawlina – alto saxophone
Matjaž Mikulteič – trombone 
Bajsa Arifovska – tamburica, kaval, clarinet
Franci Zakrajšek – special effects
Zdenka Kovačiček, backing vocals, vocal improvisation, vocals on track no. 3
Jackie Marshall – vocals on tracks no. 4 and 7
Ana Kučan – backing vocals
Andrej Babič – backing vocals
Sewer Nuhi – backing vocals

Production

Imer Traja Brizani

Tracklist