Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Radio Jam
Label: Self-released
Released: 2017
Running time: 39:48
Rating: 3.5/5
Radio Jam are a hard rock and rock’n’roll band from Celje, four stallions hungry for a good party. They formed two years ago, but these guys are no greenhorns, since they’ve already racked up some mileage in earlier musical projects. The Styrian neck of the woods has always been a hatchery for really solid, quality rock. Šank Rock and Chateau, for example, come from there too. Radio Jam, as musicians of the new rock generation, are deftly following in the footsteps of Slovenian rock’n’roll’s legacy.
The debut »Shwitoris« has ten tracks steeped in inspiration from the big names of rock and roll, from the seventies on into the eighties, yet Radio Jam still sound typically Slovenian, and the decisive factor there is the Slovenian lyrics. Their vocal phrasing comes easy, and as a result the songs, every last one of them, hold up with an endless flow and are easy to listen to.
Radio Jam aren’t exactly reinventing the wheel, and to that comment they’d probably answer: »Everything’s been invented already!« And they wouldn’t be alone in that. They certainly belong to a commercially »archaic« genre, but one that will never lose its relevance. What we really have here is revivalism, a kind of retro-nostalgia, yet these are songs written in the original rock tradition, played with heart, with balls, with no kitsch and no glitter, wrapped in an ever-present organic sonic warmth. Of course, a bit of a blues streak gets woven in now and then too (Ka ti bom delau). The songs sound tight, not just in the arrangements but in the performance too, since it feels like they were played in the studio the way you’d play a live show. That fire and focus, that joy and love of music you feel in the quartet’s playing on this album, is a good counterweight to the generic and the stock templates and forms we’ve heard and tried out too many times, in the usual recycling by countless younger acts, the ones from the post-pioneer days of rock’n’roll.
The guys are tossed about by surplus adrenaline and testosterone, and that shows in the energy and vibe of the songs, and especially in the teasing lyrics, where a naughty, unruly black filly keeps trampling through the quartet’s imagination. A typical product of wet male dreams. But all that playing energy and poetry also comes with just the right dose of sarcasm and black humor. So the guys keep turning things into a joke, even if that same joke wraps up a good helping of bitter truth.
The rascal spirit is definitely here, and the album cover hints at it already, since it recalls the cover of one of the best albums in The Who’s entire discography (»Who’s Next«). Let’s hope that when they design the cover for the follow-up to this studio debut, the guys can muster a bit more imagination of their own. As said. A fun, quality rock’n’roll record from a potent quartet eager to prove itself, a herald of the new era of Slovenian hard rock, though it’s not hard to see that, unwittingly and without meaning to, it also keeps up a kind of status quo of rigidity in our corner of the world. The stage doors are open! So let’s wish the band as many gigs as possible.
Radio Jam – Fatalka (official audio):
Lineup
Grega Teršek – vocals
Ivo Peperko – guitar
Grega “Chedo” Šket – bass guitar, backing vocals
Matic Anderlič – drums, backing vocals
Production
Radio Jam & Matej Pečaver
Tracklist
1. Črne oči
2. Ne morem spati
3.Naša pot
4. Ka ti bom delau
5. Fatalka
6. i-Ljubezen
7. Moja
8. Dej povej
9. Midva
10. Schwitoris
