Label: Klopotec
Release date: October 2019
Production: Orlek & Tomaž Maras
Album length: 41.06 min
Genre: rock’n’roll / punk rock / folk
Rating: 9.0 / 10
After ten years, and right on their round thirtieth anniversary, Orlek are back with freshness and a big creative run-up. To be more precise, with a new album full of freshly written original material called “Živel Rokenrol”. Seriously. Just like the album title hints. Yep. The album feels like the band took a look back at their early days and returned to the cradle of their conception, that is, 1989. The guitar is “pushed” up front, highlighted in a very live and incredibly organic production, and, as I said, the band again reaches for direct, simpler phrases that ignite right away. High-octane voltage is in the house. Maybe it was precisely guitarist Ivo Vidergar’s return to the band that made the new album so branded with rock, so much more cranked up than you’d have dared to hope at first.
So it was high time for the nine-piece crew from Zagorje to get down to creating a new full-length. On the new album Orlek also keep up their unbending rebellious stance, which is especially exalted in the song Kranjski Janez. The song lays bare a socially critical, sharp and biting tongue, with excellent lyrics, which is in the band’s recipe, especially after the poetry of their past releases, almost an expected duty. Once again done with great distinction. Kranjski Janez is an incredibly fitting gig opener, because as a composition it’s incredibly penetrating, with high dynamics and an extremely compatible link between verse and chorus (where the mood culminates in its peak). It has an epic quality and a direct, wrecking-ball rock’n’roll kinetics that knocks straight on the hearts of “only a million living,” before whom their homeland and their stature and everything else their forefathers fought for through the centuries is vanishing, right under the eyes of a handful of greedy climbers and their servile bootlickers. Later on the album it’s joined by a flirtatiously rocking blues march in the song Sodn dan. Speaking of blues, even in cabaret-style blues moves Orlek don’t let up on serving hot-blooded (in this case even erogenous) energy, which you can experience in Zame si pela blues.
The opener Kjer trte rastejo puts things right where you’d expect them. Orlek through and through. In everything. There’s no shortage of devotion to a drop of the red stuff on this album. Fešta underlines the band’s flirtation with their roots and, along with that, with the legacy of the bands that inspired Orlek right at the start of their career. It’s an exceptionally successful cover of the The Pogues classic Fiesta, which in its poetry whisks the listener straight off to an alcoholic orgy and into the bosom of endless Zagorje nights.
So. There are 41 minutes of music, and the tracks sound inspired, fresh, as authentic as can be and, most importantly, utterly “Orlek-ish.” The band sounds young on this album, rowdy, engaged, hungry to prove themselves. Poredoš can be cheekily brazen (Perk&Co.), whirlwind-wild (Adijo klape), and also an exceptionally tender and passionate vocalist (Vzhajajoče sonce, or in the easygoing, breezy Sončen dan). At the same time the band shows great maturity in picking its arrangement solutions. Let’s not forget: whatever the usual labels of punk rock, Celtic folk melodies and tunes, and detours into the doctrine of blues and ska that tend to “stick” to the band, Orlek are first and foremost a rock’n’roll orchestra with a strong and often dominant horn section and the exceptional accordionist Jure Tori, who again adds, alongside Poredoš’s striking vocals, that essential “pinch” everyone’s after, the one that generates the band’s unique one-of-a-kind identity. The band fills the backdrops of its soundscapes with banjo and warm Hammond sounds too, and the songs sound detailed, which means they went through a longer making-of process. Orlek deliver the peak of their creativity with Perk&Co., which has one of the most memorable choruses of the new album. So it’s all here. When the horns, the accordion, the piercing rhythmic kinetics and Vidergar’s devilish guitar phrases all lock together, with the phenomenal Vlado out front, that miners’ alloy of address in the spirit of true-believer rock ‘n’ roll kick is simply, instantly captivating. That would be the first and shortest possible description of the whole album “Živel Rokenrol.” As for the song that perhaps sums up that description best in one place on the new album, it’s Bouncer Štefi, which doesn’t lack lucid mischief and a genius sense of black humor, and which is joined by the already mentioned Perk&Co.
So. Orlek hold their stance of uncompromising loyalty to the fundamental postulates of their visionary self-expression. With the razor-sharp, octane-fueled “Živel Rokenrol,” Orlek return with a mighty, swaggering swing, riding a wave of newly found creative freshness and every element of their trademark miners’ rock’n’roll preaching, while showing a whole lot of artistic maturity and wisdom.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Kjer trte rastejo
2. Kranjski Janez
3. Fešta
4. Vzhajajoče sonce
5. Bouncer Štefi
6. Zame si pela ta blues
7. Sončen dan
8. Adijo klape
9. Sodn dan
10. Perk&Co.
11. Ko se vino več ne toči
Lineup:
Vlado Poredoš – vocals, harmonica
Jure Tori – accordion, organ, piano, choir
Mitja Tori – bass guitar, choir
Ivo Vidergar – electric guitar, choir
Matej Fele – electric and acoustic guitar
Bojan Bergant – banjo, electric guitar, choir
Kristjan Adamlje – saxophone, backing vocals, choir
Lovro Ležič – trumpet, backing vocals, choir
Ečo Matko – trombone
Peter Jeretina – drums, backing vocals, choir
Guest musicians:
Jan Adamek – trumpet
Miha Koritnik – drums
Primož Podobnik – drums
