Artist: Pastichon
Label: Macefizelj
Released: 2012
Duration: 37:00
Rating: 2.5/5
Here come the cotton swabs, ready to go poking around in the nooks and crannies of your ears! The quartet Pastichon is a relatively young band, whose members have been in the music business for a good five years. »Kratko ampak sladko« is their first studio album under their own name. The classic rock lineup of bass, drums, guitar and vocals serves up a conglomerate of nine tracks drenched in a generous dose of pop-flavored sound. The vocals are female. Add it all up and it’s clear the truth lies somewhere between pop and rock. This is undoubtedly a quartet of quality musicians, and the record doesn’t hide it, but songwriting-wise the band fails to distill the clear, defining traits that would let you recognize Pastichon as a group building a distinctive identity with a musical voice all its own. At least not yet. That doesn’t mean »Kratko ampak sladko« falls short on quality. It holds water, but the problem is its caution, its predictable, cookie-cutter mold and its generic feel.
The production is precise, clear and warmly colorful enough. The building blocks contrast nicely with each other, with the female vocals sitting clearly front and center. Maša is a very good singer with a feel for soul improvisation, which the blues rock bit in the opener Heavy blues already hints at, and that talent sparkles even more in the funk-schooled Svet, while the rest of the record is, one way or another, studded with the singer’s improvised flourishes. There’s just one problem. In the higher to highest registers the voice gets thinner, at times shrill, and comes across as annoying and grating. Sadly, Maša is no Glenn Hughes and no Tina Turner, so her vocal delivery can’t really »shake up« the listener. In this arrangement setting it doesn’t quite click, and that’s also where you see the fact that Pastichon are still searching for their sound and shaping it.
Even though the band doesn’t show any proof that its members were raised on the sounds of the good old school of hard rock and blues rock, the polished production ultimately boils down to a friendly pop sentiment, trying to please the band’s wish to potentially settle in somewhere among Slovenia’s middle-of-the-road pop rock acts. When the guitar roars in a rock fashion, when the rhythm jumps into flirty funk grooves (Trouble), caution and the urge to please with a showcase of pop sound hold back the rock gradient, and the sweetness of the female vocals deepens it – the vocals would fare better in a more sterile setting, with much less or no rock seasoning, in today’s soul and R&B.
The track Psiho, in the middle of the album, hints with a longer instrumental passage that the band definitely grew up on many rehearsals and hours upon hours of free jam improvisation. So this quartet is not from yesterday, and there’s experience behind it. Precisely moments like the one in Psiho suggest that, artistically, the band could offer more musical interest in the future. The question is how much courage the members’ musical minds have and how strong their hunger is to challenge their creative spirit.
»In sanjam in čutim« might be the cue the band could lean on when carving out its recognizable art charisma in the future. In this track the guitar breathes retro hard rock again, the song is effectively backed by a dynamic, melodic bass line, and rhythmically it even dares to throw in a few tempo shifts. And it flows nicely. The soul singing simply adds that pinch of pop character. The very same observation, which you won’t be able to avoid while listening to the album, will split listeners into those who’d rather see Pastichon give up the sweetness and create a retro heavy rock crunch with a strong, authoritative vocal, and, as a counterweight to that first option, those on the other side of the same story who’ll demand even more soul pop purism..
With their debut, Pastichon have proven that they’re definitely quality musicians and solid arrangers, but they still have to find the starting point of a development line that will effectively deliver the musical expression of an artistry of their own, which would guarantee greater appeal, especially to more demanding listeners. In that respect, they’d do better to strip the sound down and keep developing toward rock rather than pop, since to this day a whole heap of similar, quickly forgettable Slovenian bands have tried their luck in the new era with less success and, above all, very short-lived careers.
Lineup
Maša Simčič – vocals
Anton Kljun – guitar
Jernej Podlogar – bass
Primož Hadalin – drums
Production
Pastichon & Simon Jovanovič
Track list
1. Heavy blues (3:13)
2. Poletje (3:35)
3. Svet (3:23)
4. Trouble (3:20)
5. Psiho (5:42)
6. In sanjam in čutim (3:30)
7. Hej srček (3:37)
8. Kratko ampak sladko (4:54)
9. Ami (5:42)
