Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Jelen, Matjaž
Label: Nika Records
Release: 2013
Length: 41:42
Rating: 4/5
With Šank Rock over, it’s a new day and a new era. Cveto Polak put out the excellent solo studio album “Bass Line” (2011) – RockLine review HERE, and now his good friend and the original Šank Rock voice Matjaž Jelen is coming with an album of his own. It started out as Jelen Band: Matjaž Jelen, Eki Alilovski, Cveto Polak, Roman Ratej. A poker of aces! You could call this lineup a hard rock supergroup without batting an eye. By Slovenian rock standards, of course. And these players build the backdrop for Matjaž’s vocals. No joking around here. The album is played superbly, from top to bottom. Every one of these musicians delivers the peak performance you’d expect, and given the reputations these seasoned veterans have already earned, we know we’re dealing with exceptional players. By the end of the creative process, instead of a Jelen Band debut we ended up with Matjaž’s solo studio record.
The album is a deeply personal statement from Matjaž Jelen for the new era. One of the most recognizable voices in Slovenian hard rock, he remains one of the pillars of the Slovenian rock scene. And? At heart he’s still a big optimist. He’s always positive, and you can feel in the lyrics that he loves every moment of life, which he scoops up with a really big ladle. The twelve songs are packed with positive energy, and from start to finish this album quite literally lifts the listener up on the wings of full-blooded optimism. It’s a call to party!
If Cveto Polak let off steam on his solo studio effort and gave the Slovenian scene a top-notch experimental rock album, then Matjaž Jelen’s »Nov dan« is the logical heir to the musical legacy of Šank Rock. The twelve songs make no secret of some obvious parallels with the classic arrangement solutions from the well-known Šank Rock recipe (Na vrh sveta, Če tebe ni tam, the latter written together with riff master Zvone Hranjec), but there are also moments that get close to international hard rock acts, like the album’s most wound-up track, the »Winger-esque« Ne, me ne zanima. In the verse, Glej le naprej shares a similar guitar phrase with the one at the core of the evergreen Mike And The Mechanics hit The Living Years. Don’t worry, the chorus then steers the whole thing back to the familiar »Jelen-Šank-ish« sound.
The title track was written by Jan Plestenjak! The song stands tall and ranks among the album’s very best, because in terms of arrangement and sound it strikes just the right balance between dramatic tension (the mood shift between verse and chorus hits with full force!), melodic catchiness and the required rock attitude! I reckon Jan will have to join the rockers! Along with Ne, me ne zanima, Nov dan is a song with a chorus that develops a slightly dark, dramatic atmosphere!
Quite a few songs on the album chase fashionable musical trends. No worries. Even these tracks keep that familiar hard-sounding rock edge, effectively mixing the starting point – Matjaž Jelen’s »Šank Rock philosophy« – with current sonic trends, especially from alternative pop (such as Brez tebe padam, or the closing Today / Danes je tisti dan, where even pre-recorded programmed samples sneak into the »mid eight« section). The two coexist nicely, which means the »experiment« worked!
»Nov dan« really has two halves. The first is more heavily laced with rock. It gets »cut in two« by a vocal duet between Matjaž and Manuella Brečko on the half-ballad Barve. After it come Črna steklenica, Brez tebe padam, the excellent whispering ballad Počasi.. je lepo and Lebdim, which are richer in their use of acoustic arrangements, so the album’s opening rock charge is »balanced out« in the second half with more moments of sophisticated arrangement color.
Matjaž remains a superb interpreter. As a vocalist he’s maturing. Like wine! His voice is dominant and authoritative in every register, and the man slaloms masterfully between moments that demand uncompromising, powerful singing, rich with a well-developed melody, and the subtler, calmer passages where he adds a tender, caressing, velvety vocal »tremble« (Počasi…je lepo). You could say that with the years Matjaž only gains as a vocalist, both in the quality of his emotional delivery and in how effectively he brings the messages to life. Even though the closing Today / Danes je tisti dan mixes Slovenian and English lines, Matjaž doesn’t need that mixing. The reason he remains one of the pillars of Slovenian hard rock is that on the album »Novi dan« too he keeps developing and deepening the successful transition of the Slovenian language into the hard rock tradition, something Matjaž has nurtured and built on since the Šank Rock days. That knack for keeping a clear melodic component inside the songs while sticking strictly to Slovenian, Matjaž has once again poured, splendidly and with great taste, into his solo studio record.
»Nov dan« is a colorful mix of many stories with a fully formed identity and character. The songs are varied, and the album unfolds in an exemplary dynamic wave of many moods. It’s a proper hard rock album, carved out according to the traditional Slovenian recipe for how rock music should be understood. It also matters that Matjaž Jelen, surrounded by an excellent team of lyricists and composers, managed with »Nov dan« to breathe a very effective dose of trendy alt and pop aesthetics into the arrangements, keeping pace with the pulse of today’s commercial music rhetoric. »Nov dan« is an authentic, deeply personal calling card from Matjaž Jelen, who, backed by excellent studio companions, delivers an exceptionally fine product of full-blooded rock power to the Slovenian music market. It’s an album of cleverly cut, short and punchy arrangement moves, developed in just the right relaxed atmosphere. It’s a perfect blend of Matjaž’s musical legacy and his creative grasp of the new times. And he did it completely unburdened. With the album »Nov dan« he has really stepped into a new day. Let’s hope Matjaž keeps going in this creative vein on his musical journey, and that “Nov dan” gets a younger studio sibling or two down the road.
Lineup
Matjaž Jelen – vocals, guitar
Eki Alilovski – guitar
Cveto Polak – bass guitar
Roman Ratej – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS
Ernie Mendillo – bass guitar on track no. 9
Manuella Brečko – vocals on track no. 7
Production
Matjaž Jelen & Jure Toni
Track list
1. Na vrh sveta
2. Vse se v pravo smer vrti
3. Če tebe ni tam
4. Ne, me ne zanima
5. Nov dan
6. Glej le naprej
7. Barve
8. Črna steklenica
9. Brez tebe padam
10. Počasi.. je lepo
11. Lebdim
12. Today / Danes je tisti dan
