Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Avtomobili
Label: RTV Slovenija
Released: 2006
Runtime: 51:25
Rating: 4.5/5
After Enakonočje (2000), the legendary Slovenian art pop rock charmers Novogoriški Avtomobili took a full six years to deliver a new studio album. No point wasting many words on Avtomobili. This is a crew of the most refined arrangers not just in Slovenia but, broadly speaking, well beyond it. Avtomobili have always won people over with their shrewdly unique, teasing blend of velvety, infectious pop rock, which sprouted in the first half of the eighties out of the then-current new wave sound (itself rooted in punk) – back when Avtomobili were mostly focused on the former Yugoslav market.
By the time »Mesto železniških postaj« came out, the band had left behind a pile of evergreen hits and anchored itself on the Slovenian map with a clearly glowing radiance that no generation of Slovenian rock fans can overlook anymore – and that goes for all future generations too. With »Mesta železniških postaj« they’ve taken a new step forward in nurturing their unique and hugely charismatic art rock character.
The first novelty: for the first time in Avtomobili’s long career, frontman Marko Vuksanović isn’t playing bass. Soon after the release of »Enakonočje« (2000), the excellent bassist from the Slovenian Littoral David Šuligoj joined the band, who also owns the Sonus studio in Nova Gorica. While listening to »Mesto železniških postaj« you don’t need to be Einstein to quickly notice how the bass line across the whole album has become distinctly warmer, exuberant, even exploratively playful and often juicily »funky« (V teh mrzlih jutrih, or even dance-oriented in rhythm, like in the opener Prihaja moj dan…). Šuligoj is simply a great master with a refined, innate sense for filling the available space within the leading motifs of the songs as he picks his melodic bass lines, and Avtomobili made full use of that on »Mesta železniških postaj«. A seasoned sound master and musician, David was instantly recognized by the band as a talent for co-shaping arrangements, the lion’s share of which was once again handled by the band’s eternal keyboardist Mirko Vuksanović. David Šuligoj also got the green light to co-shape the album’s sonic identity in the studio.
Avtomobili albums have always been famous for their subtle sonic image; the band has always aimed for an even distribution of the individual building blocks of the sound picture. Avtomobili are simply sonic perfectionists, perfectionists in the search for the ideal symbiosis of leading motifs and use of arranging space. »Mesta železniških postaj« thus boasts an even denser and more natural – organic-sounding – sonic picture, in which the building blocks are sunk in even more compatibly, living together in optimal harmony. The album caught the right moment of convincingly functioning working chemistry in the studio. As such, it again boasts some excellent arrangements that easily rival some of the band’s biggest hits.
»Mesto železniških postaj« surpasses its studio predecessors in a mature, wise upgrade of Avtomobili’s otherwise unique musical idiom, especially given that the band has kept a current approach to sound design in the studio alongside its recognizable trademarks. Years of living together as a team have built firm chemical bonds, and the Alan Jakin – Mirko Vuksanović pairing works at its most intense since 1988. On top of that, you can feel that the lineup, more mature than ever, has started – in its long-standing, sensitively pragmatic sophistication of arrangements – to use veils of sonic landscapes, adding a few programmed sound loops too, which effectively bring the album’s desired moods closer. The opening Prihaja moj dan hints at this already, with the density of the accompanying arrangement structure in which Vuksanović’s vocal is wrapped.
Interestingly, the first track, Prihaja moj dan, doesn’t yet »salt« the album to the max; it’s the two tracks right after it, April and Gorica, that lift it to its first creative peak. Three opening songs and a quick triple contrast of arranging and stringing together vivid moods – a typical jigsaw of yearning melancholy and mysticism that never slips into pathetic wailing. Quite the opposite. The album shakes you with the truthfulness that comes from Marko’s metaphorical depth and intellect, while his poetry also brings plenty of radiant outlook. On top of that, the man is a master of combining melodiousness in his use of Slovenian, which is no easy thing. »Landing on a consonant« while building the required melodic singability is a much tougher job in Slovenian than in English. We’re not soft like the Croats or Italians, nor hard like the Germans. Marko has always handled this masterfully, and on »Mesta železniških postaj« he again brings sparkling metaphorical subtlety, crowned by his distinctively charming, velvety-caressing voice, recognizable from a mile away.
The band has always built its songs on a skeleton of two verses, (optionally) two pre-choruses, two choruses, a middle instrumental part and an (optional) pre-chorus with a closing chorus. The whole point of the eighties pop dimension, in other words. The songs of course differ from one another in expression. They keep up motivic variety and the band’s typical musical charisma. The differences lie in how heavily they’re arranged, with genre insertions from a colorful leaflet of rock, pop, jazz, funk, soul, blues. A trait of the band is that it shrewdly understands what building atmosphere toward a final crescendo means, culminating in catchy chorus melodies. So on the one hand there are songs on the album that unfold at first extremely subtly, unobtrusively, lithely, delicately, with an innocent layering of accompaniment veils that hug Marko’s supple vocal delivery. That goes for both April and Gorica, but the most intense contrast in this regard is conjured by Obsedela sva sama, where the heavy, dramatic chorus gains rock intensity and an unexpected blues connotation, fitted out with a trumpet arrangement. The real opposite of this song comes with the next one mentioned, V teh mrzlih jutrih, where a programmed sound loop purrs in the verse, which then flows, to contrasting effect, into a positively tuned, rock-bouncy, melodically infectious chorus. After the pop-weighted, slightly naive and least interesting track on the album, called V jadrih, which is playfully salted with Mirko’s improvisational inserts – floating in the background of the accompaniment – the band’s artistry glows in full radiance right after it, when Nocoj hits. Nocoj is an arrangement-optimized song of typical art rock charisma, one that only Avtomobili are capable of brewing up. The doses of uniqueness, pop accessibility and provocatively masterful baring of the basic motifs by laying down unpretentious improvisational inserts (an exceptional middle instrumental part) come together in ideal harmony.
With Nekaj let the band returns, in vibe, to April and Gorica. Another extremely strong creation, perfectly placed in the arrangements. Evidently the melancholy that wakes you, shakes you, freezes the blood in your veins is the key to Marko’s poetry working at full effect, adorned yet again by this song’s finely melodious arrangements. Ballad and semi-ballad creations are thus the foundation of Avtomobili’s expressive power. You feel a burning heart that, in its unfulfillment, has to keep burning. But it remains unrotted. Not in pain, not in love. There’s no retreat here. Only the chopping block of exceptional groundedness and truthfulness, wrapped in the gorgeous plasma of subtlety that is Vuksanović’s poetry. Nekaj let is thus a song that will surely break your heart, but there’s no point resisting, because that’s the only way to enjoy it fully! Magic! »Luckily«, a twist of vibe follows right after it: Proti Luni! Proti Luni is a Nocoj-type song that we can undoubtedly declare an instant future evergreen and the part of the album most compatible with radio frequencies! The playful Pod tvojo obleko keeps up the mischievous sentiment of Proti Luni, with a gradient of rock-blues fervor rising within it, underlaid with a playful funkoid rhythm line. Another excellent mix of pop rock and blues follows in the coquettish waltz In pride čas (the song is one of Alan Jakin’s finest moments on the album, but we’ll come back to Alan later), followed by the album’s closing oddity, Oblaki.
Oblaki counts as the band’s moment of greatest confrontation with musical experiment on the album. Another song that shakes you to the bone. It opens »soul-funky«, dictated in the first part by Alan’s wah-wah effect, sophisticated tiptoeing on the pedal, softly dictated rhythm,…. Think of the Fatih No More song called Evidence. Surprised? Good! This song carries the most intense chorus of melancholic yearning, with an ideal melodic line »a la Avtomobili«, which, following Marko’s poetry, leaves listeners with a lump in the throat. An extremely intense closer that leaves you full of mindfulness and thoroughly shaken. Exactly what every good art rock album should deliver. In the intensity of the band’s artistry, the song that comes closest to Oblaki on the album is Nekaj let, which in that regard could just as well have sat at the tail end of the tracklist.
The review isn’t over yet. We absolutely have to stop at Alan Jakin. »Mesta železniških postaj« is the peak of Alan’s artistic maturing, marked by a distinct multilayered expression of splendid flirting with many genres, as well as the power of a sophisticated yet unique guitar approach, which with feather-light ease bridges the seemingly insurmountable chasm between genres. Avtomobili will never be the same after this album. »Mesta železniških postaj« is, namely, Jakin’s epitaph. Soon after the album was recorded, Alan suffered a tragic accident.
Alan came up with some exceptional guitar moments on the album! His guitar first stands out in the intro of April, with a piercingly softly placed rocker opening riff, backed by a wah-wah line, and in the outro of the same song the guitarist shines in the boldness of placing just a few pointedly moaning notes, which brings him close to the guitar work of giants of the most sophisticated approach like David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), Andy Latimer (Camel) or Steve Hackett (Genesis). In this respect Alan Jakin is undoubtedly a great guitar ace and a guru of his trade. In Gorica he again shines in filling the available space with various »Gilmouresques«, and the most interesting part is the interaction of Alan’s guitar with Mirko’s keyboards in the leading melody of the chorus, which follows in sharp contrast to the melody of Marko’s verses. And then we get to one of Alan Jakin’s finest moments on the album! The already mentioned In pride čas, where the musician displays in a single song his multilayered formation and every trait of expressive refinement, absolute control over the sound, over every note he picks and »bends« as he pleases. The outro solo is the peak of all this. That solo is actually the mood peak of the song itself. Even more softness and mood intensity is squeezed out by Jakin in the closing Oblaki, where his landscape of »Gilmouresques« in the pre-chorus again works superbly with the veil of Mirko Vuksanović’s keyboards, while in the verse his soul pop funk softness purrs.
“Mesta železniških postaj” is Alan Jakin’s »finest hour«! He’s one of the finest, most expressively charismatic, most insightful in ideas and most sophisticated in approach guitarists Slovenia has ever produced in the history of rock. With his arrival on the album »Krenimo«, the band was able in the second half of the eighties to make a marked evolutionary leap to a higher expressive level, and Alan Jakin’s multilayered skill allowed the band, up to and including »Mesta železniških postaj«, to keep maturing artistically and upgrading its development.
The album »Mesta železniških postaj« ranks among the finest creations of the band in its long career, as well as among the finest moments in the history of Slovenian rock. Maturity, experience, tight-knit chemistry, a more-than-successful integration of Šuligoj on bass, the one-of-a-kind pairing of Mirko Vuksanović and Alan Jakin, and of course Marko Vuksanović’s unmistakable vocal stamp all reach full artistic bloom on »Mesta železniških postaj«. With this album, Avtomobili prove that their fine-tuned machinery is nowhere near rusting.
Lineup
Marko Vuksanović – vocals
Alan Jakin – guitar
Mirko Vuksanović – keyboards
David Šuligoj – bass guitar
Marko Lasić – drums
Production
Mirko Vuksanović & David Šuligoj
Track list
1. Prihaja moj dan
2. April
3. Gorica
4. Obsedela sva sama
5. V teh mrzlih jutrih
6. V jadrih
7. Nocoj
8. Nekaj let
9. Proti luni
10. Pod tvojo obleko
11. In pride čas
12. Oblaki
