Label: Self-released
Release year: 2018
Production: Leon Matek
Album length: 52.52 min
Genre: Singer / Songwriter (Folk, Blues, Swing, Alternative Rock)
Leon Matek is the kind of artist we simply don’t have enough of around here. A multilayered artistic phenomenon. Whatever the guy sets his mind to, he polishes it to perfection, whether it’s making films, painting, and so on. And he has certainly shown just how big his heart is through selfless help for people in need. So here we have the new album from this Slovenian (folk) singer-songwriter, whose solo records come slowly, but that’s exactly why they’re so much stronger in character: robust, meaty and fully realized. Put differently, they “hit” the listener and in turn shake them up (emotionally wake them up) with far greater intensity.
»Srce imaš tako veliko« is Leon’s third studio album overall. A solid seven years have passed between it and its predecessor »Most« and the album is surely a reflection, a collection or summary of the most intense events that marked Leon’s everyday life in that time. He’s more socially engaged than ever, which you can hear going hand in hand with his artistic maturing, while in his love confessions he’s become much subtler, yet he keeps a tangible, charismatic sensuality (Ne odhajaj!). Over it all burns an unsung longing for a world that, while not unreal, we taste practically our whole lives only in scenarios, since realizing it could mean the collapse of the system we’re enslaved to. Life in a just world (Srce imaš tako veliko). A world where you’re free and breathe with full lungs. Everything we’re only allowed to picture illusorily under the words “justice” and “freedom”, because they don’t exist, or exist only as far as the money stretches, which merely confirms they are “democratically forbidden”.
The album can address you relentlessly and as “straight” as it gets (the bluesy opener Kdaj je umrla iskra v tvojih očeh), or far more subtly, even yearningly (Najraje bi ta dan preklet prespal). We run into that contrast, that mood swing, right at the start, in its first two tracks. Musically the album serves up a colorful stew in which elements of folk (violin, accordion) and cabaret chanson, often backed by some flirting with the blues, get along peacefully, while rhythmically it likes to dive into a lucid and also biting swing of socially engaged acerbity (Hočem veliko več), or into the particularly “frothing” Ljudožerci. Among the album’s songs, a special place goes to Čakal sem te v čakalnici duš, which in its darkness gives off an “icy theatricality” that can evoke feelings typical of “Cave-isms”. Insane, what expanses of atmospheric depth and breadth this song reaches. With the lyrics, the delivery and the production itself. The album’s absolute departure. A brilliant moment of endless farewell between two people who didn’t manage to say everything, it conjures the feeling that the story is unfolding in a parallel world, an immaterial one and, as the title dictates, actually “in the waiting room of souls”. There are moments carrying compositional seeds that, in another musical environment, could work effectively as alternative rock too.
Leon Matek is a lyricist who addresses you pretty head-on. No needless frills or kitsch, no wrapping sentences in metaphors whose confessional “mystery” never seems to end. In that sense, his verses strike just the right balance of lush inventiveness and proverbial directness. The ground doesn’t slip from under Leon’s feet for even a moment. As a lyricist he stands firm and grounded. There’s precious little room left for dreamers. But the door is always wide open to plenty of bitter truth, wrapped up in humor too. Whether he’s reliving his first successful steps into the world of upright two-legged walking (Pazi, pazi, padu boš!), or leaning on the complete moral dehumanization and the emotional and spiritual crippling of modern society (I Live In Facebook).
»Srce imaš tako veliko« is an album that grabs you and holds you close from the first moment to the last. It’s a manifesto of Leon Matek’s remarkable maturing and one of the strongest singer-songwriter albums to come out of Slovenia in the last few years. All of it delivered with authenticity and truthfulness, in the unique confessional voice of an artist who is a master of “theater”, fully inhabiting a given role and so breathing soul, a tangible sense of confession, into the lyrics. An album of exceptional breadth, artistic tangibility and sensuality. With it, Leon Matek stands self-grown, original and uniquely characterful in his confessions. In a special spot at the top (the meaty segment) of the Slovenian music scene, the one defined by our contemporary Slovenian singer-songwriters.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 9.5 / 10
Track list:
1. Kdaj je umrla iskra v tvojih očeh?
2. Najraje bi ta dan preklet prespal
3. Hočem veliko več
4. Ko te pogledam v oči
5. Ne odhajaj!
6. Čakal sem te pred čakalnico duš
7. Ljudožerci
8. Srce imaš tako veliko
9. A ti je tega treba?
10. I live in Facebook
11. Zakaj bi protestiral?
12. Pazi, pazi, padu boš!
13. Ti si ples vesolja
Lineup and guest musicians:
Leon Matek – vocals, guitar, organ, backing vocals
Marjan Gradišar – bass guitar, backing vocals
Sergej Ranđelović – drums
Petra Onderufova – violin
Jaka Kastelic – accordion
Bogdan Kreščišin – oboe
Uroš Razpotnik – clarinet
Kristijan Jesih – trumpet
Miha Nemanič – vocals on tracks 6 and 13
Choir:
Maja Peteh
Tanja Svetic
Žana Novakovič
Anja Bregar
Tomaž Levstek
Miha Nemanič
