Artist: Grad
Label: Dallas Records
Release: 2005
Rating: 3/5
Grad are a band from Rijeka (Croatia) with a 20-year career behind them. “Glad” is their fifth album, which sounds awfully modest when you say it out loud. The new record took shape over a solid five years since its predecessor “Nebo” (2001). For the new album the band brought in a new bassist, Saša Đanić, who previously played in Les Brambles and Stuff, and they got further reinforcement when old keyboardist Danijel Benčik rejoined, a man who played in one of Grad’s earliest lineups back in the late eighties and whose roots go back to the original lineup of Laufer.
The band’s big boom is long gone. But when it happened in 1991 with the debut “Ljudi”, it was enough to give them a loyal fan base that has stuck by them ever since and still backs them today. So here we have the new album from yet another Rijeka outfit working an alt rock image with pop rock leanings.
“Glad” is a commercially minded album. Weighing up all its pluses and minuses was seriously tough this time. It’s a sweetly simple record. It carries a stripped-down sound: basic strumming, howling, winding vocals that carry the bulk of the melodies, simple walking lines on just a few notes of a single string, the required dose of boiling rock sound down to a handful of chords, but with a modern production that tries to keep up with the trends of the big popular foreign bands, while still offering a clean, clear sound that stays satisfyingly natural. The production neatly captures the dark pulse of the band’s spirit and dresses up the directness of rock principles in a commercial accessibility that feels easy and seductive to the casual listener. Right from the opener it’s clear what Grad are aiming at, since the track Kreni literally knocks on the door of radio airplay. That “Glad” is reaching for the broader masses was already signaled by the single Eni, released ahead of the album, which is basically Kreni with the riffs stripped off.
In four years there was more than enough time for the band to polish the songs down to the last detail, so they all offer well-built ideas and a high degree of variety between them, which works as a cohesive whole across the album, with a nice measure of dynamic ebb and flow.
This is an album the younger generation of listeners will take to, while the more demanding will be put off above all by the extremely dumb, pathetic lyrics and the deliberately measured-out commercial minimalism, which is closer to MTV’s current beating of alt rock pomp into submission but lacks that rock “oomph”, reflecting a naivety and evolutionary backwardness that a band with 20 years of service shouldn’t allow itself. The high point of the album is the track Dim, where the guys, through a funky punk detour, show the exceptional musical quality they carry within, though in most cases they keep it deliberately under wraps. That kind of rock directness and bite is sorely missing on “Glad”. Some punk gallop comes back to the album with Sretno dijete. That Grad are seriously skilled musicians is also confirmed by the album’s closer, the excellent, gloomy, dark Do sumraka /2005/ with its all-embracing dramatic atmosphere, where we run into an outstanding contrast, a carefully dosed combination of the riff explosion of the chorus and the simple electronic pattern of the pre-chorus, into which the vocals, full of disappointment yet longing, couldn’t be woven in any better. And that’s about it. Rodeo is a truly syrupy tune that everyone would survive without, except maybe little girls dreamily making their way through their adolescent years.
All well and good. Commercializing the sound and the ideas can be okay too. But the price is sacrificing the maturity this album definitely lacks. So the band sold off some of its intellect and held back its hidden aces, which only occasionally show a rebellious authenticity, when it approached this new release. Everything was subordinated to the album’s commercially sweet sound. It’s absolutely not a disappointment of any kind, or well, maybe it is, since “Glad” is actually a bit too pretty for an alt rock album. The feeling while listening to “Glad” is neither icy nor hot, but middling, in other words lukewarm.
Line-up
Dean Škaljac – vocals
Orijen Modrušan – guitar
Igor Stevanović – guitar, backing vocals
Danijel Bečik – keyboards
Saša Đanić – bass, backing vocals
Slobodan Grujičić – drums, backing vocals
Production
Grad & Mario Juničić
Track list
1. Kreni
2. Glad
3. Savršen dan
4. Putna
5. Samo da te imam
6. Eni
7. Dim
8. Rodeo
9. Sretno dijete
10. Tek sad sanjam
11. Do sumraka /2005./
Album length:
