Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Hamo & Tribute 2 Love
Label: Self-released
Released: 2015
Length: 47:05
Rating: 4/5
A bit late, but better late than never. This is an album that has to get its write-up. So here goes! Last year, just before the end of 2015 to be exact, the second studio album from Hamo & Tribute 2 Love came into the world. The band is led by the famous, familiar-to-everyone, shrieking-throaty-thundering voice of the radio airwaves, Matevž Šalehar »Hamo«.
Looking at the new album »Pol S«, you’d pragmatically assume it means »half a heart«, especially when you look at the cover, where the heart is made up of two number twos facing each other. »Pol S« picks up the story from its predecessor. It opens with a bang on Urbana, a bluesy-rock number that’s loaded with attitude yet extremely cheeky. It’s about that scatterbrained morning feeling, when the rush forces you into a mad dash against the clock, and the band instantly builds a raw, elemental, almost rudimentary backdrop of organic sonic authenticity, with Hamo’s famously hoarse, scuffed-up vocals ruling over it all. That punchy opener morphs into the bluesy tango of Rabm tebe, which quickly knocks on the listener’s emotions, because its tight compactness comes with an incredibly musical invasiveness. And since Hamo And Tribute 2 Love are an incredibly experienced crew of seasoned musicians, they don’t cling to uniform song structures. Right in this track, for example, they take off in a wild mid-eight passage onto a different emotional level, where they build an overdriven, snarling crankiness resting on a quickened rhythm that drives the song to its final emotional peak.
The setting is clear. Two jagged hard rock guitars keep up an organic groove locked on an irresistibly appealing bluesy jangle, backed by chunky Hammond and a solid rhythm section: pulsating, musically lively bass and Buco’s thunderous yet delicately measured hits. The contrasts between the building blocks of the sound are superbly distributed! No wonder the band, in its perfectionism, sensed this in advance and put the album out on limited-run vinyl, which fans snapped up like hotcakes. Analog sound always remains the »king« of any healthy production! »Polk S« has an extremely lively and dynamically exposed sonic structure. The soundscape is filled out just right. The band develops the aforementioned groovy contrast between the building blocks of the sound, while also skillfully using the miking, which adds cozy sonic pastels to the accompaniment itself. There are also various »stereo chorus« effects and reverbs. The band thought of everything, yet recorded it almost in first takes. They wanted to keep it primal and keep the sound raw. »Pol S« has no time for studio »beautification«.
In terms of ideas, »Pol S« comes across as noticeably more focused than its predecessor “Dve” (2013). There are fewer stylistic detours, so »Pol S« feels very compact. It also doesn’t radiate the need for radio approval with the same zeal as its predecessor with its “gems” like Rožice, and yet Hamo And Tribute 2 Love clearly managed to break through effectively enough already with their debut and secure an audience base that, as a result, was especially eager for »Pol S« to drop. That’s surprising, since the genre the band cultivates in its own idiom is today completely out of step with the Slovenian musical »mainstream«. And yet. Hamo’s vocals simply carry the charisma and charm of a constant »erotogenic whisper« that speaks from the background, and with its generally likable nature of perpetual hoarse grumbling and complaining, it overcomes absolutely all (apparent) obstacles.
So, to repeat myself. Hamo’s vocal charisma is seductive, which is why the songs on »Pol S« appeal in such a way that his pithy, confessional, tenderly passionate vocals are constantly placed on the front line. At the center of the whole story. And even though Hamo and the crew keep sniping in the songs and grumbling in the lyrics, that is exactly the essence of the point of blues rock, which also carries a note of constant lucid cheekiness that the band once again cashes in on skillfully on the new album. That’s how Nazaj works very effectively too: a rhythmically and sonically »heavy« bluesy trickster driven into almost tribal rhythmic motion. The same goes for the seductive bluesy waltz with a »Hey Jude-style« outro that closes the album, called Greva še mal dlje.
With its substance, »Pol S« cements the position of Hamo & Tribute 2 Love in the Slovenian musical »mainstream«. Hamo and his crew have come up with an effective formula for turning the point of blues and rock’n’roll into an appealing musical groove, one that even in these new times of »strange reality« Slovenian radio airwaves can stomach, and that keeps growing the band’s fan base. So we can pin a mild pop-ingenuity label on it too. Alongside this recognition of the band’s good »survival« planning (Hamo And Tribute 2 Love have secured a special place in the Slovenian musical »mainstream«), it’s also an album of firm artistic focus, delivering a body of ten superbly formatted blues rock songs (made to the homegrown, that is Slovenian, recipe), played with raw, unrestrained passion and with the strikingly convincing glow of the mature artistic evolution of seasoned musicians. The band is already announcing its third studio album, due out in February 2017, presumably!
Hamo And Tribute 2 Love – Greva še mal dlje:
Lineup
Matevž Šalehar “Hamo” – vocals, guitar
Uroš Primožič “Spretan” – guitar, backing vocals
Uroš Škerl Kramberger “Hipi” – bass guitar, backing vocals
Martin Janežič “Buco” – percussion, drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Denis Horvat Duki – keyboards, percussion, backing vocals
Vlado Kreslin – vocals on track no. 4
Production
Hamo & Denis Horvat
Tracklist
1. Urbana
2. Rabm Tebe
3. Nazaj
4. Tiho
5. Sva bla čist haj
6. Pol
7. Gospa Magister
8. Fešn
9. Na Na Na
10. Greva še mal dlje
