Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Lačni Franz
Label: Sedvex
Release: 2016
Rating: 4/5
It’s been 22 years since Lačni Franz released their last studio album. Today you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in Slovenia who doesn’t know the band, the one whose work forever defined the Slovenian musical mainstream of the eighties and left a gigantic musical mass behind in Slovenian pop. Since we all lived in one country back then, Lačni Franz, with their musical uniqueness, were a big enough draw for music lovers from the former sister republics of that late shared state too.
When Zoran Predin decided to get Lačni Franz going again, he surely had in mind the popularity the band had always enjoyed across the whole territory of the former country, not just Slovenia. That made the deliberation over whether to continue under a different name or keep the old one a lot easier. The name is definitely a big entry visa to the stages of the former shared music market. Zoran gathered a crew of young but already seasoned musicians around him, and they don’t lack ambition. Of the old guard who created the timeless evergreens and classics of Slovenian rock with Predin, there’s no one left in the new Lačni Franz.
New times. Zoran isn’t aging or rusting in them, and that’s a good thing. He’s still full of creative drive, good ideas and, of course, a hunger to perform. Whether the old companions simply stopped feeling like playing doesn’t even matter anymore. The man has put together a new band that remains the legitimate heir to the legacy of the eighties. And so things wouldn’t end up banal, the new Lačni Franz made new music for the new times too.
The philosophy hasn’t changed. The song construction, the melody itself, the singability, the build-up of moods toward memorable yet always dramatic choruses, backed by arbitrarily tangled stories of Slovenian everyday life, where Predin once again trades very effectively in the colorful world of his lush imagination, the ground on which the unforgettable poetry of Lačni Franz stands. That poetry carries over onto the new album just as effectively, smoothly adapted and breathing with the new times.
The poetry is still lucid and stuffed with black humor, but as always, Zoran stays down-to-earth with it, a constantly grounded herald of the time and place we live in. In these new times the new Lačni Franz have finally lost that connection to new wave that clung to their musical legacy of the eighties. The band cultivates a stripped-down rock sound, it sounds direct, the guitar punches concretely to the surface in the mix, the keyboards are back, but without the new wave synth sheen, with a lot more warmth and natural tone. The cabaret moment that Lačni Franz always so wryly slipped into their arrangements is a little sly and subdued, yet even so, the new songs, with the potential option of acoustic (live) variations, make a nice foundation for a step into »cabaret rock«. The album feels alive and organic, which is no surprise, since it was recorded live, modeled on the band’s concert performance in the studio, so it didn’t go through many later cosmetic touch-ups, or they were minimal.
For the new times and the new album, the band also refreshed four classics from the eighties, rearranged them a touch and so brought them closer to the overall musical look of the album »Ladja norcev«. The titles of these classics got a slight refresh too (Spet na svoji strani, Naš novi bog, Jebiveter junior, Legendarni praslovan). Not only do their lyrics remain relevant all the way through, the band simply felt, while playing through the eighties catalog, that they fit phenomenally into the refreshed musical philosophy embodied by the album »Ladja norcev«.
So Lačni Franz has been born again. To knock on our conscience once more, to wake us up, rouse us, shake us and seduce us with Predin’s wry but down-to-earth poetry. Seduce us into their new picture book of rock’n’roll. Whether you take this album as a separate entity or not doesn’t even matter. Predin’s philosophy and artistic essence keep a credible link to the past and translate it into the present carried by the album »Ladja norcev«. The band is supposedly releasing »Ladja norcev« in Serbo-Croatian too in the second half of this year. Clearly aimed at conquering the southern market, which, as mentioned, has always been the band’s second home. Fun. A black rock album, with no beauty fixes or cosmetics. Natural in every way, full of truthfulness and a well-crafted musical character, or aesthetic. And that’s exactly the something that has always felt so familiar and close to us, and what has always adorned everything tied to the musical work of Zoran Predin.
Lačni Franz – Ladja norcev (official video):
Lineup
Zoran Predin – vocals
Tine Čas – guitar
Boštjan Artiček – keyboards
Anej Kočevar – bass guitar
Luka Čadež – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Damir Lisica – backing vocals
Production
Anej Kočevar & Lačni Franz
Tracklist
1. Ladja norcev
2. Cmokfehtar
3. Na svoji strani
4. Naj zadnji ugasne luč
5. Naš novi bog
6. Filma je konec
7. Jebiveter junior
8. Iste sanje sanjava
9. Legendarni praslovan
10. Aleluja
