Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Ana Pupedan
Label: ZARŠ Records
Released: 2010
Runtime: 38:14
Rating: 4.5/5
»One in the afternoon, fourth time!« Sometimes you have to go straight to the band for the album! And you rack up a hefty backlog in the webzine’s daily updates. Ah, those excuses again! Anyway: Ana Pupedan. No more, no less. The Pivka rogues have been honing their tongues over a career spanning more than two decades with the undiminished agility of crafty linguistic doctors. And they keep defying the odds!
»Na domači brjači«, the band’s fourth studio outing, is a leaner and more compact record than the previous feats of artistry from this high-profile quartet of ultimate originality, powered by the ingenious creative wheel of four great musical talents with perfect chemistry between them!
Clearly the long gaps in which the band’s new albums gestate are necessary. It just doesn’t work any other way when we’re talking about the beneficial effects of living under the scorching Pivka sun. Ideas ripen to perfection like grapes on the vine, and the results are accordingly clear and richly arranged. For all the organic authenticity of the lively production, with chain reactions of the players’ adrenaline rush going off like detonations, the album once again flaunts its unabashed, hairy-chested rowdiness, with the band’s unique touch of lucid character and vivid sarcasm. That’s exactly what we keep coming back to Ana Pupedan for. That’s the roguish, one-of-a-kind feel for the plasma of black humor that has always coursed through this band’s veins.
Although we could pin the basic, banal label of an original offshoot of alternative rock on Ana Pupedan, that tag is far too loose, even downright belittling for the band. And Ana Pupedan have been radiating that since time immemorial. With a bigger dose of hard-rock firepower delivered this time, though, the punk connotation of the album is more prominently on display. Still, the guys certainly didn’t forget to wrap it all up juicily in a salty casing of a nice layering of tasteful genre detours »to the left« and »to the right«. In the alternative soul of the band’s »spicy punking«, brewed only under the Pivka sun and nowhere else on the planet (Cigodrom, Taka si, Prvomajska sveča,… ahem, sorry, sreča), you’ll find cheeky levers for escaping into all sorts of genre detours, like »psychedelic punk« SKA (Zločin in kazen), even country (the central improvised jam in the tracks Svoboda and Maligani), jazz territory (the intro to Čista misel, the central instrumental part in Taka si), blues, funk. And we can’t skip the genuine dabbling in »Balkanesque« sounds in one of the best songs on the album, Smrt blagega diktatorja (Avsec invents a new, revolutionary South Slavic solidarity by blending Serbianisms and Slovenianisms). In the gloomy, almost fatally black Nafte ni, the guys once again nail the whole madness of neoliberal capitalist philosophy that pushed us into the abyss. Quietly and thoroughly!
Everything in this fusion of exceptional bridgings binds together into a full-blooded, hard-hitting whole. A true musical feast, you could say, and the top laurels on the album get stolen by Svoboda! This very track proves the musicians’ top-notch know-how, especially the outstanding hands-on skills of guitarist Boštjan Požar, who is definitely an unjustly overlooked name among Slovenian guitarists. Požar belongs in the top league of Slovenian guitarists! Svoboda is the track that, tersely and vividly, instantly lays bare the layered genre radiance of Ana Pupedan’s musical legacy. The best example of that on the new album.
»Lovsko kamnito srce« (the hunter’s stone heart) in Zločin in kazen (no, not the Dostoevsky novel!) is a sermon about realizing the sin of shooting an animal protected under the Decree on the Protection of Endangered Animal Species (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No. 46/2004, 109/2004, 84/2005, 115/2007, 96/2008, 36/2009, 102/2011). This time the victim is a brown bear (Ursus arctos). The shaggy fella likes to wander down to the Pivka end of the country, where, suspecting nothing bad, he occasionally wrecks a cherry tree loaded with crunchy fruit or tips over a dumpster, just to make life easier for the municipal sanitation crew! Sadly, people don’t take well to his human-loving nature. The best thing would be to fire up the »retired« cannons and tanks of the military museum in Pivka! Anyway, here’s what happens. A member of the "green brotherhood" shoots the poor beast »on the black« (illegally) and gets nabbed by the law. The poor man is then haunted by the eternal misery of a guilty conscience, and the heartache just won’t let up. Of course, this story is delivered in a blaze of lucid sarcasm too. It’s one of the most »smashing« tracks on the album. I’d honestly love to hear about a case where some executioner who poached a bear on Slovenian soil was actually, truly caught by the cops.
You could say that Zločin in kazen, followed by Na domači brjači and Smrt blagega diktatorja, make up the central confessional peak of the band’s new album. The title track peels back, plain as day, the small-mindedness of the Slovenian nation, while Smrt blagega diktatorja, which I sang the praises of in one of the paragraphs above and which is wrapped in the »Balkanism« of its leading motifs, sees Ana Pupedan, in »the brilliant softness of metaphor«, poking fun at times gone by, when we all buried the former country of »different equality« together, never suspecting that one day we’d be damn sorry.
Ana Pupedan remain our reality, our hour of reckoning, knocking at one in the afternoon on our guilty conscience. On our world of bitter truths, which we, like anemic bystanders, keep silently shutting our eyes to. So we’d rather mutely bury the truth inside ourselves, to keep up general likability by the standards of conformism! That’s the real nervous disease of today’s »civilization« on this planet! That’s where Ana Pupedan’s greatest strength lies: through the genius of metaphor, they deliver a work of art full of hairy-chested honesty and sincerity. You could say Ana Pupedan are so insightful in what they do that they even conjure up parallels, in energy and message, with the character and work of probably the most intelligent blacksmiths of black humor Slovenia has ever seen, to this very day. The one and only Buldožer. »Na domači brjači« proves that Ana Pupedan keep evolving. Musically and poetically. Their calling card knows no limits. They approach things authentically. That gives them a creative corridor of musical uniqueness, which they’ll no doubt flexibly steer into a new, fascinating musical tale on future releases. Let’s just hope they take us for that ride sooner than after a gap of a solid eight years.
Lineup
Simon Avsec – vocals, backing vocals
Boštjan Požar – guitar, backing vocals, clarinet, diatonic accordion, kalimba, tambourine
Peter Žnidaršič – bass guitar, backing vocals
Marko Doles – drums, backing vocals
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Robert Vatovec – keyboards
Production
Ana Puepdan & Bojan Babič – Babo
Tracklist
1. Cigodrom
2. Ti moraš
3. Čista misel
4. Nase in vase
5. Zločin in kazen
6. Na domači brjači
7. Smrt blagega diktatorja
8. Taka si
9. Nafte ni
10. Maligani
11. Svoboda
12. Prvomajska sreča
