Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Srečna Mladina
Label: Self-released
Released: 2013
Duration: 40:15
Rating: 4.5/5
When people ask me what my three favorite Slovenian bands are, after a brief think I fire off the Brežice alt-rockers Demolition Group, the Ljubljana crew from Novo Mesto Moveknowledgement, and as number three, no question, a band that won me over with their studio records, and even more with their stage chemistry, a gorgeous feel for composition, and an outstanding undercurrent of system critique woven through it all, stories about me, you, all of you – Srečna Mladina. From Renstang krompirja and the record Eko alter through Đabalkan rase, we’ve arrived at a record that radiates a sincere love for theater and for life at once. Navajeni na šok is a record you wouldn’t expect from Srečna Mladina if you didn’t know them, or had only skimmed the surface before. Those of us who’ve dug deeper into the evolutionary tendrils of the band’s refined music, stimuli and thematic foundations, though, greet it with open arms. Since 2000, when a generation of talented musicians born in the last years of socialism stepped behind the scenes of the play Krst pri šestici and gave sonic backing to Dejmo stisn’t Teatru, an unlucky thirteen years have passed, and in that time, through reworkings, refinements and (member) changes, the band has grown an ever fuller, juicier and sonically potent voice that rises high above the average Slovenian predictability. Predictability is a brake, a drag on progress, and repeating steps already taken and recreating records already made is anything but sensible, so the record Navajeni na šok, which, by the way, is the key part of the show of the same name, a rock cabaret, a symbiosis with Šodr Teater, is something good and positive, and in my opinion essential for the evolution and mental survival of Srečna Mladina.
So first, let’s scatter a few facts around. The collaboration between ŠODR Teater and Srečna Mladina sprouted while performing the play To so gadi, at the invitation of director Tijana Zinajić, with Srečna Mladina providing the live musical backdrop, with their musical know-how and feel for suspense, dynamics and above all the fluidity of music. The same point of contact breeds good reactions and good ideas, despite the generation gap between the youngsters and the slightly less young: both sides stood with one foot in the system of apparent happiness, harmony and prosperity – in socialism – and with the other, at the age of near-adulthood, robbed of youth and of any positive sense of the present and future, stepped deep into the era of rotten capitalism and a promising fascistoid new world order. We live in times of constant shock, saturated with darkness and hopelessness, but you have to fight. To survive. To prosper. It’s about survival. And that’s the foundation for the story that the show sings about, the music of the record Navajeni na šok, which is at once a critique of the times we live in and, in its own critical way, holds up a mirror to us the lost generation of kids born after year X. An original show, backed by exclusively original music, took full shape under the baton of director Dejan Spasić, with the spirit of lived moments from the past, and the spirit of the seventies also permeating the musical substance itself. The first notes, born from the actors’ improvisations, came out of intense rehearsals; later, in Ljubljana, Srečna Mladina shaped the basic ideas and improvisations into songs, recorded demos and devoted themselves to the show itself, then toward the end carried on with recording the record in their home studio Codelli. This time without guitarist, vocalist and founding member Vladimir Mihajlović, but backed by a whole choir of talented actors from ŠODR Teater. Lejla Salihović, Iva Svilenković, Petra Grünfeld, Jasna Simončič, Matevž Brecelj, Rok Pirnat, Matija Kastelic and Jurij Torkar stamped onto the record what had been deliberately left out and neglected on the last few Srečna Mladina albums – the textual, verbal, vocal element, and a spoken »fuck you« to the system and the world around us.
Where were we in 1991, when, on the corpse of the former Yugoslavia, after an 11-day war, the miracle of an independent Slovenia hatched? I was, like the members of Srečna Mladina, a primary school kid, used to family warmth and security, sitting in the shelter while military jets screamed overhead. Moms and dads bought us Čokolino and drove us to Trieste for jeans. And to Premantura. On vacation, carefree holidays, remember? Twenty years later the world is drastically changed. We’ve all aged, supposedly matured, grown up, voluntarily enslaved ourselves and bowed to the systemic recipes of programmed adulthood, conventionality … Alongside two decades of dreams draining away, Srečna Mladina is also celebrating a full 20 years, and this is its cake, which it shares with the masses. We celebrate with nostalgia and a dose of good music, marked by the aesthetic sensibility of talented musicians who shake the world with pop chords and punk energy at once. The simultaneous fusion of the trio behind Srečna Mladina’s rhythmic-melodic structure, bassist Gašper Gantar, drummer Andrej Zavašnik and the great guitar oracle, visionary and unconventional carrier of the melodic currents of newfangled happiness, the exceptional Peter Dekleva, with the textual concept of the ŠODR crew is natural, unforced and genuine from start to finish. From the instrumental Dviga zavese, on which maestro Dekleva pours the sensual song of six strings into your ears with a refined sense of how to dose the notes, all the way to the choral finale after Spust zavese, where the ŠODR Teater choir presents its characterful collage of different viewpoints.
Kdo smo, as the album’s first track, makes it clear that those of us born in the last years of socialism can’t quite accept the catechistic dictates of the new age, because we tasted something different, thanks to sentiments tied to the time of growing up, childhood, sweeter than what we have today. Matevž Brecelj blends nicely with the sonic texture of the juicy, seemingly naive, compact pop of the Srečna trio. What changed? Us? The world around us? Our concept of perception? Just the flags and coats of arms on the poles? Probably just the misleading bullshitters behind the political tables. A new system is on the way. Supposedly we’ll abolish fucking money and politics, and then it’ll all be better. And then we can start everything anew, from scratch. Shock is inevitable, but we’re already used to it. We’re hardened. The song Šok, šok, šok is a sort of interlude of true Srečna Mladina nature. Dekleva’s melodic slide of fingers along the guitar neck, Gantar’s compact embrace of Zavašnik’s light drums – everything goes hand in hand with the bright concept of shocking and nagging with pop. The noise is passé, the shine is what lures. Like witches, we all reach for something less burdensome and swallow our dose of even the criticism we’d otherwise deliberately overlook. Heads up: this time the thing is so potent and light, yet so easily banned by censors for its explicitness, and I could easily imagine every tune on the record sounding off radios on pretty much every station (except Veseljak and Zeleni val, of course …). Same goes for the sweet revolt of the song Sm or the sexy singing of the outstanding Jani. Santana-esque (satan-esque) sounds of erotic guitar, drums, percussion, bass and the sweet pornographic treatise of Petra Grünfeld, which tells the story of Jani, a 35-year-old obsessed with and addicted to escapist masturbation to pornographic illusions from the internet. Sex with imagined, fired-up femmes fatales, a different one every day – to total ecstasy, after which you can only wipe up, and Jani, once back in reality, where he’s alone, unemployed at home, his wife working and slogging for survival, two kids in kindergarten and school, weighed down by reality, shoulders his backpack full of the lead-heavy worries of everyday life again … Sound familiar? Anyone recognize themselves in this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBWnNPsIqaE
With no hair on its tongue, Srečna Mladina hurls itself into the sped-up hit-single pop of extreme positivism that is Pilula (Disco Punk Fiesta). We’re all looking for a pill that would make the world more bearable and easier to digest. The ŠODR crew sings its song in tune. This time the female half of the choir, answered by the male half of the theater with a drunken chant you’d expect from the Drinkers, with Ljudska. Soloist Matija Kastelic with tipsy lads whom the sweet young ladies obviously aren’t giving it up for. We’re a nation whose national anthem again revolves around grapevines and Dionysian juice, and taverns have always been our second home. Fuck! And then a moment of sobering up. The story of a 27-year-old woman who suddenly realizes that despite her relatively young years she hasn’t made anything concrete of her life, the way Janis Joplin or Kurt Cobain did. Funky rock eclecticism rubs into the foundation of the song Zombi, a song about those who died young but changed the world with their music. The eternal 27 club, with a point. We won’t talk about how much booze was drunk or drugs taken today! Let’s rather say a thing or two about how, like programmed zombies, we follow the dark dictate of survival. Drugs and booze are a relief, a calming factor. We won’t talk about that today, right? You have to focus on something. Maybe on Pelargonije, without which chaos would reign and the whole world would collapse. A lovely little song, an ironic moment, an interjection of the record, of the show, of our lives. Sve je teže is one of the album’s more memorable moments. Well, there’s no shortage of those. Lejla Salihović, with her sweet mezzo-soprano voice, sings about how every day is harder, and Dekleva’s inspired sound samples fit nicely over the bass-and-drums suspense. The magic of the build-up oozes from every pore, a meditative, psychedelic, dark gothic fairy tale about hopelessness in a world of plague unravels into collective contemplation. Like listening to the Doors with a female vocal, except there’s also an element of Led Zeppelin here and a big dose of Srečna Mladina’s homegrown nature. A great closer before Spust zavese, which brings a bit of calm with its instrumental acoustic factor. Nothing is definitively answered. Did we even get any answers, receive any messages? That’s a matter for independent action and moves. The closing ŠODR, with its collage of thoughts, flashes, kaleidoscopic snippets of a shredded reality, featuring political whores, voting sheep, an army of the unemployed, the usurping factor of the system and natural resistance, morbidity, escapism, godlessness and God-fearingness, and the cogs of enslavement to taxes and the rules of the game, is something like that for which everyone has to find their own recipe for survival and rebellion. A splendid closing collage of voices and melodic distorted vignettes, into which sneaks the spirit of Black Sabbath and their tune War Pigs (the younger crowd, naturally, connects that tune with Faith No More).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJtfwEad3K4
Rebellion is possible – even more: it’s necessary. Waking up is mandatory, being used to shock and hopelessness is poisonous, toxic. That’s the message I took away from the context of the album Navajeni na šok. Srečna Mladina has kept its high standard, its criteria of excellence, given cause for debate and thrown us a bone to gnaw on. Some will like the theatrical bent, the preachiness, the obscenity and the directness of the band’s less metaphorical expression less, but that’s exactly what makes the album Navajeni na šok a piece you have to feel and appreciate when putting together the mosaic of Srečna Mladina, in all its painful exposure of the world, of turning points, of growing up, of looking back into the past retrospectively and of the promise of a better future in the clash with the present, with demons and trials. It’s all key to becoming better people, capable of both survival and a full life. Capable of happiness, dreams and hope. This time I can only say sincerely that without this, there is no existence, and every so often we have to look into the mirror too, which this time Srečna Mladina and ŠODR Teater hold up together. Changing the world is necessary, and the revolution has to start with each of us, in ourselves first. The backdrop can also be a theatrical outpouring of poetry, which this blunt-tongued album offers. After all, all the world’s a stage, and we are the actors on it.
Lineup
SREČNA MLADINA:
Andrej Zavašnik – Zava- drums
Gašper Gantar- bass
Peter Dekleva- guitars, vocals, keyboards, programming, glockenspiel, metallophone, timple, ukulele
ŠODR TEATER:
Matevž Brecelj – Breco, Petra Grünfeld, Matija Kastelic, Rok Pirnat, Lejla Salihović. Jasna Simončič, Iva Svilenković, Jurij Torkar
Production
Srečna Mladina
Tracklist
01. Dvig zavese
02. Kdo smo
03. Šok, šok, šok
04. Sm
05. Jani
06. Pilula (Disco punk fiesta)
07. Ljudska
08. Zombi
09. Pelargonije
10. Sve je teže
11. Spust zavese
12. Šodr
