Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Siddharta
Label: Dallas Records
Released: 1999
Length: 44:51
Rating: 4.5/5
So why the hell are we reviewing Siddharta’s 1999 debut “Id” now, you might ask, with an ocean of fresh releases out there? Haven’t we written enough about Siddharta already? You can never have enough Siddharta. Especially when “Id” and “Nord” (2001) have been missing from the always “carefully” stocked shelves of Slovenian record shops for quite some time. So hats off to Dallas Records for buying the rights from Multimedia Records and putting both albums by the most successful rock band of all time in Slovenia back out as reissues. At a moderate retail price of 12.99€ a pop!
What a fitting title for a band defining its own ego! Provided you can actually live up to it, of course. And right from the debut! “Id”. Just two letters. Ten years after its first release, it’s slowly growing into a classic of the Slovenian rock scene, one that shook up Slovenian mainstream rock the moment it was born in 1999 and then changed it thoroughly and for good! With their studio debut, Siddharta announced themselves as a debut band showing not only exceptional gifts and talent, but also sky-high ambitions.
Even the cover, which at first glance you might mistake for Commander Data, the android from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, caught in the middle of some “Nespodobno opravilo”, hints that this isn’t the typical Slovenian rock stereotype, the kind that would be happy with shallow thrashing, the bare-bones punk gallows humor, or desperately pleasing the masses with soft, polished little ditties that belong in the mandatory repertoire of powdered grannies stroking their poodles on Sunday evenings, when their “fejst kavalir” Mario shows up on the TV screen.
“Id” is the moment when the band, already on its debut, defined the unmistakable Siddharta sound! That goes not just for the songwriting side, but for the band’s innate power to create moods (atmospheres, vibes) that nobody on home soil had pulled off before Siddharta. Clearly, the band’s wish to play just rock outgrew the original plan. The lineup took a healthy view of how a musical statement in rock should work and widened and enriched it by bringing in keyboards and horns.
From the very start, despite their young age, the band radiated a strong expressive essence, a character all their own, and they knew the value of their work and aimed to protect it as well as they could, at the very least by convincing listeners that they were proud of their own material and that this material carried a price tag that was far from low. So it’s no surprise there’s a foreign producer, Anders Kallmark, a nice bundle of sponsors who backed the release of the album, and, last but not least, that the guys knew from the start how to look the part. That helped cement and establish their special place on the rock scene. They realized early on that visuals are an important part of the rock spectacle. With that look, as well as the music itself, they managed to walk a thin line that won over teenagers, while their harmless-boys character got under the skin of their first fans’ parents too. The intelligent lyrics in Slovenian and Tomi’s charismatic, wonderfully ear-friendly vocals played a big part in this.
If we linger on Tomi for a moment, he pioneered the use of Slovenian and proved it can be a seriously effective language in rock. So with Siddharta it’s no surprise when street slang creeps into the verses, vowels get deliberately swallowed, and lines are cunningly simplified to land a rhyme as efficiently as possible. All of this together makes it easier for Tomi to develop the melody as he sings the verses. Add to that the choice of offbeat yet appealing song titles like Lunanai (a mash-up of the start of one of the lines, “Luna naj…”), and the clever minimalism with words that only works in favor of driving home individual messages (sequences like: “So mi dejali, da sam bom ostal, So mi dejali osamljeni stol,…”). Even the deliberate use of a few perverse phrases in the verses (the kind that belong at a pub counter) brings a new quality to the use of Slovenian in the heart of rock, one that had never been introduced before in such a sophisticated, unobtrusive and honestly likable way. The intentionally wrong stress placement, used to make things easier to sing and help the melody flow, deserves a mention in this paragraph too.
Maybe back in their teenage years the guys wore out the leading albums of the “grunge” movement, but you can’t hear it in the style. Only fragments point to it: the melancholic atmosphere and melos, and at times a rock directness of raw sound that doesn’t chase extremes in its distortion, but when it comes down to it always prefers organic colors. Hence the way the horns fit right into the overall sound. One of the guitars often “escapes” into an ornamental figure that livens up the other guitar’s basic phrase (often using the wah-wah pedal for it). The horns add further harmony to the guitar phrases in the background and help shape the dramatic moment of the album’s melancholic melos. In fact, you simply can’t imagine “Id” without the saxophone (especially on a song like Lunanai)!
The album opens with the striking Indija, the song that probably sticks in the memory most for its sharp, rebellious defiance, and from the get-go it carries all the hallmarks of shocking you into paying attention with full fury (frenzied guitar phrases backed by horns, a tried-and-true bullseye!), and it’s already one of the album’s peaks. Indija wouldn’t be Indija if its melos weren’t wrapped in a veil of the Orient. Tomi M. creates a special moment for the whole album with his biting, guttural delivery! Siddharta hit their mark right at the start! With Indija they shock the listener and win them over in an instant!
The potential for credible commercial success is unmistakable on “Id” already, in the songs Pot v X and Lunanai. The latter is a sparkling mix with a touch of ska (in the verse) and a simple but infectious rock chorus melody, later released as an EP, and today it’s an iron-clad part of the band’s live repertoire. Pot v X doesn’t lag far behind either. It’s a song whose verse, with its natural sound, eases the “roaring” intro of Indija, and whose lyrics somehow explain the essence of a musician’s vulnerability and the need for self-preservation inside the destructive machinery of the music industry. The chorus is backed by a juicy interplay of both guitars, which make up most of the background soundscape (the acoustic guitar is in there too). The saxophones follow the chorus’s guitar phrase and lift the song’s dynamics. And of course it’s Tomi M.’s gorgeous voice, with his lively articulation, that creates the song’s especially infectious moment. With its very title, Pot v X symbolically raises the artists’ own question: they don’t know where “Id” is taking them.
L.E. is a witty switch-up. A lazy, languid “winding” in which a clean guitar and a saxophone trade the lead as they play with the melody, with a light jazz-blues veil and the offbeat melody of the verses. The chorus is an airy, folded collage of keyboards and horns that magnifies the effect of the vocal delivery in the mid-range. This is the point where the album calms down.
Then comes the goofily “dumb” Farmer, a funked-up parody of the yuppie, the Slovenian average Joe who tries with all his might to use material wealth to lord it over other “average Joes”. On the album it’s the moment of Slovenianness being implanted to the fullest, one that makes even Leteči potepuhi prick up their ears.
The songs Le Mavrica and Črnobelo are straight-ahead rockers with a full dose of melody in the choruses, and in both the band keeps room to emphasize the sensual side of the lead vocal. With short, simple strokes the band effectively delivers a colorful shift of moods in the jump from verse to chorus. The dramatic atmosphere in the middle section of Črnobelo, before the final chorus, comes close to the angry snarl of the opener Indija. The ending of Le Mavrica is one of the most intense on “Id”. Nespodobno opravilo can be counted in this category of songs too.
The title track works almost the deepest in terms of expression. From the messages in the lyrics you can make out its peace-loving nature. Here the band lines up the longest song, whose running time flies by thanks to an excellent melody that the guys stretch out instrumentally in the central section, the richest in melody and substance. With lyrics that stir the imagination, the song Siddharta is one of the album’s strongest moments, standing out with its superb arrangement, much like the angry Indija and the born hitmaker Lunanai.
The song “…” tells you with its title (setting aside the message of its lyrics) that the band is “feeling out” how their music holds up in English. Here you might see who Tomi’s “teacher” was, in the way the lines are shaped, in the choice of points where, particularly through the use of vowels, Tomi carries most of the melody into the singing lines, and in the compactly manly timbre of the voice, so much so that it could be Eddie Vedder (I’m fishing in murky waters here!). It’s a calm moment on the album, one that proves English has a hard time matching the power of the Slovenian lyrics this time. Despite the wonderful design of a deep song, “…” is the less interesting moment on “Id”.
At this point the album would somehow go watery in the home stretch, but luckily the witty rocker Stipe is here. Short, punchy and sharp. Conceived as a potential hit that was never meant to be, it brilliantly saves the album’s ending, which practically begs you to hit “play” again.
Siddharta signaled exceptional gifts and talent with their debut. The power and importance of the “spell” of melody at the core of their own expression was clear to the guys right away. At the same time they’re the first Slovenian band that proved, straight with their debut “Id”, that the Slovenian language can be shaped into something wonderfully friendly and effectively optimized within the tradition of rock music. Melodically polished verse and chorus tunes, the rational wickedness of Slovenian, and the power of the charisma in Tomi’s trademark singing are the main factors that cleared the path to success, so that Siddharta’s songs won over crowds in Slovenia “with ease”. With “Id”, Siddharta drew back new curtains for Slovenian rock and in many ways it’s a pioneering album, a precursor, one that changed the face of Slovenian rock music for good the moment it came out.
Siddharta showed up on the scene at a time when Slovenia was missing a rock band that could win over the masses while credibly standing behind its own musical vision to justify commercial success (which, to be honest, was only just on its way). Generations had changed. Sokoli, Lačni Franz and Vlado Kreslin had aged. Other bands of Siddharta’s generation threw more dust in people’s eyes than they delivered serious messages. So we can say that Siddharta skimmed off the cream with their arrival. In a healthy, unobtrusive way. With an album of original, provocative, fresh views rich in message, which by its very birth offered Slovenia a new success story.
Lineup
Tomi M. – vocals, guitar, backing vocals
Primož B. – guitar, backing vocals)
Tomaž O.R. – keyboards
Cene R. – tenor & soprano saxophone, backing vocals
Primož M. – bass guitar
Boštjan M. – drums, backing vocals
Production
Dejan Radičevič & Anders Kallmark
Track list
1. Indija
2. Pot v X
3. L.E.
4. Le mavrica
5. Farmer
6. Črnobelo
7. Lunanai
8. Siddharta
9. Nespodobno opravilo
10. …
11. Stipe
