Venue: Gromka / Metelkova mesto / Ljubljana
Gig date: 20.12.2012
Attendance: 200
Ticket price: 3€
It’s hard to write a report today on a gig that happened a good month ago. Way too much time has passed, but still: better late than never. Call it a keepsake – and a reminder that the music scene needs solidarity more than ever right now. The main players of this Thursday night showed it in spades.
The crisis is deepening in the country (and the world), and (younger) alternative acts are finding it harder and harder to put together even a mini tour of Slovenia on their own. So they’re forced to look for rational but still interesting solutions. One of them is definitely joining forces for gigs with bands that are similar in genre and ideas. The bands discussed here did just that: Barely Modern, Arhibald Arhibaldovich and Dečki iz dvorišta. This past December they set off on a short tour of Slovenia, kicking off in neighboring Zagreb. All three bands draw musically on the rich tradition of alternative and indie rock, and they also belong to the same young generation. Sonically they differ in plenty of ways, yet from the outside they form a kind of coherent whole that doesn’t clash much when presented together. As we saw live, not at all. I haven’t seen bands this relaxed with each other and this well matched in a long time, on either domestic or foreign stages. Worth adding that the main instigators of the tour were the guys from Arhibald Arhibaldovich.
When I interviewed Jana and Žiga from Barely Modern a few days before the joint tour and asked what they expected from it, I got the feeling they were looking at the whole situation a little skeptically. Even though in an earlier answer they’d said that among Slovenian bands they respect the Arhibalds too, there was a certain uncertainty in the air about how well the bands would fit together. It was completely unnecessary. What marked the gig most was precisely this closeness among the co-creators of this mini tour. You could feel the camaraderie, the collegiality and the good energy at every step. The bands really clicked. That was even more obvious at the end of the evening’s last set, when the members of the other two bands joined Barely Modern on stage and together they wrapped up the tour euphorically with a group performance of ”Jedilna čokolada” (Dečki iz dvorišta).
But even then I didn’t spot Arhibald Arhibaldovich’s frontman, Nejc Bitenc, on stage with all the other members. Was that a sign of something? Yes, sadly. Nejc played his last gig with the band that night. Though you couldn’t tell on stage, things had been creaking in the band for quite a while. The initial chemistry between him and the other members had faded, and maybe it’s best for both sides that they’ve parted ways. Nejc is already working on a new project of his own; the rest of the band will first look for his replacement, and within about a year we can look forward to a first album too.
What all three bands had in common at the gig was short sets and bad sound, which (technically) didn’t allow for any great musical-listening highs. Gromka was completely packed most of the time, which you’d expect given the measly 3€ ticket. First on stage were the brothers Šušnjar, who make up the duo Dečki iz dvorišta. They’d only been officially active as a band for about a month at that point, so an extensive repertoire wasn’t to be expected. They gave us five of their songs, marked by genuine brotherly interplay, while sonically they get pulled in all sorts of alternative rock directions, most noticeably post-punk and jangle. The lyrics are multilingual (written in English, Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian), and a special trademark is the powerful baritone of vocalist (and guitarist) Niko Šušnjar, which in some shades recalls the voice of Ian Curtis. Despite having played just a handful of gigs, they were a pleasant (and fun) surprise and opened the evening in the best possible way.
Not even five minutes had passed after the Dečki iz dvorišta set when Arhibald Arhibaldovich were already taking the stage. Given that drummer Peter Šušnjar is the same in both bands, that’s maybe not even so surprising anymore. Quite a bit has been written about the Arhibalds over their four years of existence; they’re definitely considered one of the most ”purebred” Slovenian indie bands. They don’t hide it themselves, either. And for quite a while that was exactly their problem. In their music you could mainly hear other bands’ music, with lots of borrowing of generic indie patterns…all the stuff that so often befalls young bands. This time, though, it was a completely different story. Creation had replaced imitation. Given their potential, that was really just a matter of time. Original elements started showing in their music, and they began shaping their own sound and style. Years of playing on stages all over Slovenia show in their live performance too. Here they’re very confident, eye-catching, commanding and tight. Their set is a real feast for the eyes and the definition of an energetic show. Especially impressive is the contribution of drummer Šušnjar, who gives the band not just a pulse on stage but a spirit too. It’s rare for a drummer to overshadow the other members this much while still coming across as constructive and unifying. Definitely the heart and head of the band. So despite singer Nejc Bitenc’s departure, not much should change. With this kind of development, the band has a bright future ahead.
The members of the last band on stage, Barely Modern, have already tasted at least some of that. Alternative rock champions of 2012. Their album We Cruise Like Tom Does won over both the critics and a big crowd of listeners. After a year-long London episode they came back to Slovenia stronger than ever. Their shows are getting fuller and fuller, frontman Žiga Petkovšek shows more and more charisma, and they’re as tight as few Slovenian bands are. Everything works downright perfectly, authentic and explosive. A ticking time bomb of rock’n’roll and dance vibes. As several times before, they played hard-hitting, without a second’s break (I’m still waiting for the song Mr. Man), dynamic and invigorating. Their ”live” sound is even more aggressive than the studio one, which already comes across as very live and primal. There’s not much left to add to all that, except that we’re already impatiently waiting for a new album.
The evening and the tour ended with the aforementioned union of all three acts on stage. The performance of ”Jedilna čokolada” was above all a lot of fun, endearing and catchy as a pop tune. I kept singing it all night. What will stay with me as a spectator is mainly that (already praised above) togetherness, which was hard to miss among the members of the different bands. Although teaming up different bands for tours is nothing new, I’m afraid that in the future it’ll become the only way for lesser-known bands to present themselves to a wider audience.
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