Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: All Strings Detached
Label: ZARŠ Records
Release: 2014
Runtime: 51:'06
Rating: 3.5/5
June downpours are a common reality. And this June, Založba Radia Študent is serving up a release with a fittingly telling title! All Strings Detached is a female duo made up of Vesna Godler and Jana Beltran. The two came up with absolutely every idea for the album »Heavy Rain«, which is their studio debut. Lyrics, arrangements, music. Everything. They also play and sing everything on that very album completely by themselves. This intro might remind you of the Incurabili story, but the starting premise of minimalism is really the only sensible common ground between the two duos. The difference in energy vibes and moods between the pairs is as stark as the difference between the sexes. The musical backgrounds both musicians come from boast enviable mileage, which points to a multilayered understanding of the musical world they otherwise draw their creative inspiration from. All Strings Detached is its own story entirely, where what’s embodied first and foremost is strictly the chemistry of the creative moment between the two musicians and nobody else.
All Strings Detached feel most at home singing in English. The lead vocal is dressed in a backdrop of strummed guitar built on modest tonal solutions, really mostly a handful of simple chords, which can even recall an open rehearsal or someone just tuning up. There’s a lot of strumming on open strings, which gives the phrases the occasional dissonant overtone and deepens the chosen mood of each track at just the right moments. That’s exactly the trick behind what makes the experience with All Strings Detahced so special. It’ll pull you into an intoxicating world of sensual femininity, where a yearning desire to surrender flows, but not at any price. Only at the price of the right stimulus, which has to come from the outside. If we men go at things head-on, women are a bit more wavering and less self-assured when weighing up decisions.
The hypnotic effect in a trippy atmosphere, built by a dreamily laid-back yet darkly brooding unfolding of events, is definitely there. The two women add welcome contrasts of flute and piano to the arrangements, and the vocals often intertwine (Winter Scene, Balcony). Most of the heavy lifting is done by the two musicians’ strikingly distinctive voices, which at times edge toward cabaret singing. You won’t find any weirdness on the album that smells of the avant-garde. No vocal excesses that would make your ears bleed. The record keeps a satisfying level of musicality throughout, alongside its otherwise alternative-rock lurk. Flirting with the energy of the biggest names in singer-songwriter music, from Nick Cave to Leonard Cohen, is not absent.
So no heavy philosophy when it comes to arranging the songs, but the moods paint a different story, genuinely and wholeheartedly created by deeply lived-in vocals! Those two are the focal points of the album »Heavy Rain«. The atmosphere is distinctly dark, black, yet it doesn’t skimp on intimately felt emotion and the passions of female willfulness. The songs are staged at a completely calm tempo. The girls are in no rush whatsoever, approaching every move they make with commitment and engagement.
Because the songs are laid down at a calm, dreamy tempo, it feels as if the album were wrapped up in one single track lasting over 51 minutes. That’s perhaps the record’s only serious flaw, since someone might find it monotonous. The listener really has to concentrate wholeheartedly, first and foremost, on the message of the poetry; only then does the record’s content occupy them enough and consequently satisfy, since the duo approaches the listener first of all through the content of the poetry, while the musical accompaniment works from the background (a fitting, atmospheric contrast to the lyrical value of the release). So »Heavy Rain« is a demanding record that needs several spins and for you to open up your soul and body completely. In the erotic story You Go Deep, where the female soul becomes especially vulnerable, the frenzied, orgasmic vocal outbursts in the middle of the song are a very welcome move, since the intensely lived-in vocal improvisation, delivered with great distinction, effectively ignites the dynamics and unpredictable course of events on this otherwise deeply melancholic, yet heartfelt and sincere, personally intimate confessional album.
»Heavy Rain« is a definite oddball in the Slovenian alternative rock underground. It’s a bold debut that offers a clear glimpse into the expressive quirks of the All Strings Detached duo’s musical dossier, which are worth keeping an eye on in the future too, since you can expect a duo with a sense of musicality and a ravenous delicacy of interpretation to keep nurturing and refining the musical cues laid out on the debut, and to evolve and broaden the reach of its expressive identity.
Lineup
Jana Beltran – vocals, guitar, flute
Vesna Godler – vocals, bass guitar
Production
Vlado Lešnjak & All Strings Detached
Tracklist
1. I Once Had A Man
2. To Do
3. Winter Scene
4. Studio
5, Nick Cave
6. Balcony
7. Trade Marker
8. If You
9. You Go Deep
10. Slow Mind
