Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Narat, Boštjan
Label: Založba Pivec
Release: 2012
Running time: 44:36
Rating: 4.5/5
Boštjan Narat is definitely a oddball among Slovenia’s singer-songwriters. This is the guy who once played in Sflitrom and, more or less out of a love of messing around, unexpectedly co-created Katalena, after everyone involved realized they wanted to take the challenge of turning Slovenian folk tradition into a hip art variety for a new age more seriously. Two years ago came his solo studio debut »Strah je odveč« (RockLIne review HERE).
»Strah je odveč« has a powerful, confessional character, and with it Narat laid a cornerstone whose tangible substance offers plenty of starting points for growth and artistic maturing. So bringing the entire supporting cast of musicians onto the new album »Konec sveta vedno pride nenapovedano« was a logical move. Not entirely expected, but very much welcome.
»Konec sveta vedno pride nenapovedano« keeps all the insight of Boštjan Narat’s great confessional talent (mostly of the personal kind), plus a sensitive knack for crafting a great combination of accessible catchiness and soulful wordplay that hits hard and makes you laugh at the same time, because it always stays true to the truth. Narat is a master at delivering poetry. A master of interpreting it. His debut showed that in its sparkling character and intellect, and the new album only deepens that realization and widens his expressive power. Narat still cunningly cranks up the sensitive character of his poems and in doing so almost subtly bends the mood within the songs, which ride the waves convincingly to a peak and back into a new wave. Take the »rhythmically stumbling« burlesque in Dvajset let. From piercing delivery of verses that borders on shouting, to tender caressing. Very much in a »cold-warm« fashion.
Boštjan Narat keeps building on this whiff of doom for the little guy, thrown into a sea of crosses piled on his shoulders during the drudgery we call life. A reflection of a dishonest society, toward the honest one. But it’s all draped in a kind of solemn gleam of subtle metaphor from a brilliant mind, which keeps the confession from ever being banal, shallow, or trivially solvable for the consumer.
Far be it from me to mean any of this negatively. Not at all. Just completely real. Grounded. That’s exactly why this artist’s poetry crawls under your skin all the more in a song like Režem ovinke. The song is a true atmospheric »thriller«, built on pure layering of stacked-up collages of soundscape. Especially when, after the dramatic development of the poetic confession, the song spills over into an even more intense closing »crescendo theater« of the album’s real little »thriller,«, which at this point is held in its mood by a viola melody, wrapped in a slowly rolling blanket of drum pounding, especially the noise of the cymbals.
The little guy gets hit especially hard when he finds out that honesty can become a real nuisance. That’s the song Egon. A brilliant play on words that, on a sparkling, subtle level, opens everyone’s eyes to how people live in our society today. The contrasts in how the verses follow one another are exceptional. Take »Steklena vrata, jeklenih obljub« – Narat knows you can’t sell soap bubbles »Pri enih so usta da lažejo, pri drugih so oči, da jočejo« – sadly the first kind are always decidedly fewer, but they hold »the scales and the sword«, while the others are either brainwashed, or have been overlooked, and there are decidedly too few of them, or they’ve simply gone completely numb and are just waiting for the end of the human era, for its boundless depravity that has been forced on us.…. Egon nailed it, that’s indisputable on this album! He probably didn’t lay the best babe from the men’s magazines or drive behind the wheel of Ferrari’s nastiest machine of unsuspectedly bestial aggression, but he kept his individuality. Which means that in the end he won. And yet he stayed overlooked. A masterful confession.
Is »Tisti ki zna, in ona, ki ve« the confession of a closeted lover while the two of them roll »dice for his heart«? Še ena genialna besedna igra, as they say, another brilliant bit of wordplay. That there’s no end in sight to the insight in Narat’s poetry is confirmed by the closing trickster Romeo Julija, generously stuffed with sarcasm generated by a fleshy surplus of testosterone in the blood! Bitter melancholy floods the album in the song Stari mož. Narat carries this contour of mild melancholy throughout, although that’s not the most fitting term to properly capture his confessions. Let’s say he can be tenderly bitter, and that bitterness occasionally weighs piercingly on the nature of his poetry, as in the song Stari mož.
There are moments that won’t let you breathe. A full measure of sarcasm is served up in Če padeš po tleh. It’s really Egon recoded into a new poetic confessional form, with the same basic message. Simple. In caricature, this song is a test of an individual’s endurance to withstand the corrupted character traits of people in the new era, in a race against time that’s lost in advance, for the benefit of a delusion served up as »material prosperity«. So don’t fall on the floor! In this song the electric guitar in the background also builds a truly psychedelic backdrop, deepening the sarcastic character of the track.
»Zdi se«, with its gorgeous arrangements for keyboards and violin hugging Narat’s caressing vocal, belongs to the type of chanson that the illustrious Frank Sinatra himself would no doubt have listened to gladly. Narat says he wrote the song after spending some time going to a café and regularly catching the eyes of a girl at another table, at the opposite end of the place. In situations like that, of course, the male imagination runs at full steam. Undoubtedly one of the album’s highlights. And I hope the girl actually showed up at Narat’s gig in the end.
The title track rolls along the ruts of the debut’s opener, only you’re immediately thrown into a completely new experience. Narat is armed with his supporting cast of musicians. You could say, in a distant sort of way, that the title track is the album’s new Yet Another Tango, but that sentiment is taken over a bit later by the pretty Jutra, with its Latin character in the piano accompaniment and rhythms. Here Narat is once again joined in a duet by the softly whispering, concisely soulful vocal of Mina Špiler (Melodrom, Laibach), who once more doesn’t miss in her expressive will and strength.
The moment where the contrast of fragile subtlety is awakened especially strongly in its firm, realistically grounded two-legged stance (which you have to peel out first) comes with the song »Tistim ki ne vedo«. The verses reveal the duality of a young, innocent creature that is learning and the fear of the old, the already taught. The contrast between spotlessness, virginity, honesty on one side and watching those who’ve already been trained »to fear the light«, yet quietly long for the learning of those who can still dream. Above all, in this one, one of the album’s best songs (in poetry and in accompaniment arrangements), there’s an outstanding embrace of a synthesizer with the contour of an old-school Mellotron and a single-voice ornament watching over the background of an accompaniment built like this. Well, no way around it, Nord keyboards can work real miracles.
The name Blaž in Slovenia likes to hide a drumming job. This time with Narat it’s not the experiment lover and »mister everywhere« Blaž Grm, nor Blaž Soklič, if anyone still remembers the old-school Slovenian thrash metallers Game Over, who in 2008 released one of the most interestingly experimental, challenging albums, called »Eclectric« (that fascinating instrumental piece kept only a few parallels with metal – RockLine review HERE).With Narat it’s simply the other Blaž. That’s Blaž Celarec, a jazz-trained musician, and he doesn’t hide it for a single step of the album »Konec sveta vedno pride nenapovedano« when it comes to drum interpretation. His rhythmic seasoning gives the songs a special dynamic character, really »fanning« the development of the songs themselves, with a loosening-up that’s the fruit of Celarec’s exploratory playing. In the given situation the drumming kicks off a higher level of decibels, which for instance deepens the chilling dramatic moment in the heavy rolling hits of the song Režem ovinke. One of the album’s moments aimed this way is the drawing of Celarec’s drumming in combination with Narat’s manly performance in Kako končati to pesem?, where a veil of certain »doom« clings to it in an almost military march. In Tisti ki ne vedo the jazz school sparkles generously, as Celarec finds a huge amount of room to stretch out and fill the background figures with a dynamically varied expression, which breathes a special character into the dreamy moment of this song’s flat, exceptionally subtle confession. Staying with the same song, the rhythm used in the verse of »Tistim, ki ne vedo« imitates the whistle of a steam locomotive, in a completely unobtrusive, subtle manner that draws parallels with the rhythm of the famous Pat Metheny Group hit called Last Train Home. The combination with Celarec proved to be the ideal solution for this album.
That’s it. Throwing your eggs on the tray. There’s no other way than to walk naked and barefoot when you go the singer-songwriter route. No accompaniment arrangement, however brilliantly cut, counts for anything if the confession of the poetry is shallow. The reverse always works, but if the verses aren’t full – tangible, let alone their interpretation, no makeup of even the most sparkling accompaniment helps. Boštjan Narat masterfully defies this. What’s more. With »Konec sveta vedno pride nenapovedano«, he has climbed to an even higher level of his own personal brand of preaching, cementing his place as one of the most prominent figures on the modern Slovenian singer-songwriter scene.
Line-up
Boštjan Narat – vocals, guitar
SESSION MUSICIANS:
Matevž Kolenc – arrangements, electric guitar, bass guitar, bells
Polona Janežič – keyboards
Jelena Ždrale – viola, violin
Blaž Celarec – drums, percussion, clarinet
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Mina Špiler – vocals (track no. 3)
Production
Blaž Celarec & Matevž Kolenc
Track list
1. konec sveta vedno pride nenapovedano
2. Dvajset let
3. Jutra
4. Tistim, ki ne vedo
5. Režem ovinke
6. Egon
7. Tisti, ki zba, in ona, ki ve
8. Star mož
9. Če padeš po tleh
10. Zdi se
11. Kako končati to pesem?
12. Romeo Julija
