Artist: Stara šula
Label: Self-released
Release: 2012
Duration: 54:55
Rating: 4/5
Stara šula are primordial rock ‘n’ roll jugglers, shot through with a strong dose of blues sentiment! As the name itself tells you, the album »Dirty 13« is a bundle of thirteen (plus a hidden acoustic instrumental track) raw, brazenly stripped-down, primal rock n’ roll marches, cut in basically one studio take (minus a few tiny secondary corrections and sonic patch-ups) and they sound utterly convincing in every possible way. From the high-quality arrangements, which hit an incredible tightness and voltage-charged dynamic flow, to the very character radiating from the songs caught on this sound carrier – they’re played with immense power and passion! A passion that, in both the playing and the vocals, doesn’t skimp on a splash of sexplosion laced with erotic potency, barbed grumpiness, even the feeling that you’re in a dive bar packed with an abundance of alcoholic derivatives, the kind of dive where your sense of balance stopped obeying its alcohol-overloaded owners a long time ago.
It’s hard to find this much authenticity and honest joy, pleasure, and above all passion for music as Stara šula radiate! Everything on this album feels sincere and real, which we rarely get from Slovenian bands dealing in angry rhetoric that mixes blues rock soaked in punk dirt, backed by the untamed bustle of rock n’ roll rolling..
It Aint’ Easy and All Or Nothing dive right into the AC/DC charisma of a devilishly gnarly riff and more. The very start of the album confirms that Stara šula are far better-schooled musicians than AC/DC were on their debut. But let’s leave that unimportant fact in the background, since without AC/DC there would be no Stara šula.
Not all the songs on the album are in English. Neoproščeno is an unforgivably interesting collision of blues and southern, which at any moment can shake the track into some Lynyrd Skynyrd march with a proper dash of gently measured stoner rock, and in the instrumental section the song blooms again into a devilish AC/DC-style stride of rock’n’roll galloping. In Jaz se smejim the band doesn’t hide its vivid appeals to perversion, and that character fits the structure of the song perfectly, with its full-blooded rock ‘n’ roll hairdo. Then there’s the boogie-flavored Going Down with its »clean« sound – the distortion is switched off, and the band builds up an extraordinary groove, which the exceptional vocal performance boosts once again, delivering one of the most interesting moments of the album.. Remember Bicikl (Leteči potepuhi) or Stones Of Death (Lene kosti)? Of course Going Down is cut in its own way, that is, in the style of the Stara šula legacy, and it’s seasoned with the vivid use and integration of harmonica!
If any song sums up the character of Stara šula in one piece, it’s definitely the title track. As such, it most effectively combines a coquettish, solidly built rhythm, fanned by the true character of blues rhetoric, the way AC/DC (again) once brewed it in their rock ‘n’ roll hairdo, with a slightly slowed-down tempo but an erect rock attitude that knows no letting up and goes all the way in its authentic idiom. The crown of it all is once again Andrej’s excellent »Superhik-style« singing, which proves once more how to approach the vocal interpretation of unshakably brazen rock ‘n’ roll arrogance, marked on one side by a splash of punk, on the other of blues. Passionate and full of balls!
The vocals are excellent. Cast for this kind of music. They have that angry, disrespectfully grumpy yet utterly arrogant character, with a full dose of guttural seasoning, ideal for the job of a stoker on a steam locomotive, from which, for a change, alcohol fumes are billowing. His build-up is incredible (the outro of the song Dirty 13), reaching a true vocal crescendo where the pronounced gutturalness comes across as if a chainsaw had gotten stuck in Andrej’s throat. Let me hint that in its guttural roughness the voice occasionally brushes against the famous character of His Majesty, the unique rock icon, the one and only – the Iron Chancellor Lemmy Kilmister. On the other hand, there’s a bit of Peter Lovšin in there too. But those are just spices from left and right, with no need or desire for imitation. Not at all. The vocals of Stgara šula are a story of their own, and the vocals are one of the main attractions of their rock ‘n’ roll idiom.
The AC/DC character holds across the whole nearly 55 minutes of the album. And still Stara šula manage to squeeze out a delightful mix of rock ‘n’ roll, blues, and punk, which in the end delivers an album of retro-school rock n’ roll achievements (from times long past) that, thanks to its deeply lived-in approach, is freshly cut, and in that regard it’s not hard to conclude that Stara šula are successfully carving out their space under the free sun of rock n’ roll in the Šentflorjan valley, defining their own recognizable musical nature (and culture).
»Dirty 13« is a properly cowboy-belted album, full of machismo, the smell of bodily secretions dictated in male physiology by the release of testosterone, and the smell of alcohol fumes. Unbelievable for Slovenes! I’d sooner say that such raw and ruthless arrogance could be summed up by the feelings that the character of AC/DC’s music usually radiates, south of the Kolpa, but this time I’d be honestly mistaken!
The authentic desperados of Stara šula deliver a debut that belongs on the facades of the temples of biker culture and nightclubs! And one more thing! This is music that’s meant to be played live. It has no shortage of liveliness and sincerity even on the record, but it reaches its full sweep only once it breaks off the chain, because that’s when it shows its true face of full-blooded, barbed punkery! I deeply recommend that all hardened rockers give this album a try.
Lineup
Krt – vocals, guitar, harmonica
Tomi – lead and “slide” guitar
Febo – bass guitar
Romi – drums
Production
Stara šula
Tracklist
1. It Ain’t Easy
2. All Or Nothing
3. Neoproščeno
4. Smokin’ Aces
5. Going Down
6. Jaz se smejim
7. Dirty 13
8. One For The Money
9. Crash Out
10. Crossfire
11. Zadnji ples mrtvih
12. Slovenska pesem
13, Ubijam se sam
