Self-released
Release date: May 21, 2021
Production: Boštjan Jurjevčič ‘Jurki’
Album length: 48.05 min
Genre: Singer / Songwritter (singer-songwriter music)
Rating: 10/10
Samo Šober is yet another in the line of Slovenian singer-songwriters who breathe and live for music and through music. It’s just that up until this year he’d been doing it pretty much under the radar. Well, at least as far as the wider music public goes, a group that includes the writer of these humble lines. But that was up until this year, because the man has finally decided to put out his first solo studio album.
Let me say right off the bat that this is one of the most well-defined and polished releases to come out in Slovenian music – let’s just say the mainstream side of it – in the last ten years. When you go through the album’s material with a mindful, well-tuned ear, that’s hardly surprising. Samo is obviously a stickler for detail, a perfectionist. As a person, he must often be hard on himself too. Well, I’m not allowed to go any further than that, but I’d like to let the reader know that this really is a brilliantly constructed album, and that the arrangements and the pieces inside the songs were ripening for a long time, going through a long span of creation and quite a few changes along the way. Until Samo was truly happy with them and convinced they were ready to be heard by the wider music public. What came out is a special artistic conglomerate, one more uncut gem in the already incredibly rich arsenal of the lively pulse of singer-songwriter music, as the Slovenian music scene has recorded it over the decades.
For one thing, there’s the vocal delivery, with its slightly smoky timbre and constantly yearning, melancholic sentiment, which Samo’s voice reveals throughout the album. An everlastingly longing, confessional character. The album »Ko greš z vetrom« strings together eleven songs and over 48 minutes of music, which is a lot for a singer-songwriter record, at least as we’re mostly used to them here – guitar, voice and, above all, harmonica.
But »Ko greš z vetrom« is much more than bare strumming while singing verses. It has to be pointed out that Samo is also an excellent (acoustic) guitarist. Listen to the album and you realize the man approaches guitar playing with a distinctive technique, one that isn’t unknown but let’s say fairly rare on the front line of Slovenian singer-songwriting and that’s why plenty of people would like to hear this kind of guitar playing on records like this. It’s primarily fingerpicking, picking out chords that accompany the compositions and the vocal delivery. Samo brought in another remarkably sharp musician who has already left his mark on the Slovenian music and rock scene. That’s Boštjan Jurjevčič ‘Jurki’, who is responsible for the arrangements and the album’s sound production – in short, the man who played the lion’s share in making »Ko greš z vetrom« so endlessly fascinating, dynamic and, taken as a whole, so insightful. To a certain extent it even dabbles in evoking mysticism, which is a great rarity in the Slovenian music space.
The songs on the album developed over a good 30 years, changing format several times along the way, and some of them, in the form of compositional jigsaw puzzles, just waited faithfully, loyally, quietly and stubbornly in the archives for the missing piece to turn up. And eventually it did. Hence what I said a moment ago about Samo’s perfectionism.
There are no fewer than three instrumentals on the album, and rightly so, because it’s right there that Samo Šober’s excellence as a guitarist is laid bare. All three flirt openly with ‘rag-time’, and they don’t shy away from the sting of country blues either, though we have to remember that we’re still rooted in melos born on the geographic expanse of the sunny side of the Alps. Melancholy, fragility, sweetness and a subtle blending of arranging impulses make for a deeply conciliatory and fascinating experience when listening to this album. The available room within the painted musical landscape often fills up with woodwind arrangements, at some points the bass stands out in the production, string arrangements slot into the whole story skillfully and yearningly, and there are ‘slide’ guitar embellishments too. At one point the guitar is used in a way that makes it sound almost like a zither (a playful motif in the instrumental »Kukavičja sonata«).
In short, an album with strong artistic charisma. Eleven strong, concise and clearly expressive tracks. Finished stories. Points where the spirit of Slovenian folk melos, let’s just say folk rock, also sparks up (Slovo). At times, though, the album can be downright dark. The arrangements and the vocal character pull this off with feather-light ease in the song »Od polnoči do zore«, and even though the chorus stumbles into the bosom of the major scale, and there’s also a supple, conciliatory, blues-leaning passage that Samo delivers on guitar, that doesn’t do much to help it shake off the touch of darkness. The melancholic strings in particular do their part, raising the song’s dramatic theatricality. The next one, »Dan žalosti«, is distinctly dark too, with Jurki’s arrangements lending it an almost cinematic, theatrical character (especially in the final crescendo). Both »Hiška iz papirja« tracks (parts one and two) are loaded with a special kind of melancholy, arranged in harmony with their message, even with a military-march procession in the arrangement (the added flugelhorn intensifies it), where boundless sadness reigns.
In short, this album will surprise you with its creative flexibility and its lively layering. Even though at its core it’s a singer-songwriter album, it has remarkable expressive range, and its atmospheric theatricality is especially captivating. The vocal delivery is one thing, but the coloring of it and its intensification, which hits a 100% effect, is another. Samo Šober’s studio debut is an outstanding achievement. With its sincerity it awakens a whole spectrum of intense feelings in the listener. And that was also an indirect goal of this album. To lay its heart bare to anyone who listens. Welcome among us, Samo, and let’s hope we won’t have to wait another 35 years for the next album.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Ko greš z vetrom
2. Prava zmaga
3. Pristapol bourbon street blues
4. Ljubezen živi
5. Hiška iz papirja I.
6. Jutranji blues
7. Slovo
8. Od polnoči do zore
9. Dan žalosti
10. Kukavičja sonata
11. Hiška iz papirja II.
Line-up:
Samo Šober – vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica, backing vocals
Boštjan Jurjevčič ‘Jurki’ – bass guitar, guitar, percussion, programming
Žiga Kožar – drums
Metka Kragolnik – backing vocals
Brigita Rozman – backing vocals
