Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Juvančič, Katarina & Lapanja, Dejan
Label: Self-released
Release: 2012
Running time: 39:10
Rating: 4.5/5
Katarina Juvančič and Dejan Lapanja are a Slovenian singer-songwriter duo, partners in the studio and outside it, partners for better or worse. The album »Selivke« is the first joint product of the pairing. So let’s take a longer introductory detour through the musical road both have travelled and the reputations they’ve earned. Katarina Juvančič is known as an unyielding fighter for, and protector of, the gains of Slovenian ethno music, as well as of all the newly sprouting »shoots« who keep its heritage alive in Slovenia through their own creative work. She has also made a name for herself in Slovenia as a singer-songwriter and poet. Dejan Lapanja, besides being a guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and producer, put out his solo studio debut in 2008, called »Ni časa za preroke«, and has »clocked in« with his home band Ulixes, then Olivija and Projekt mesto. He has also sat behind the drums in the improvisational collective Bast, in the Tolmin ethno-prog outfit Salamandra Salamandra (Slovenian: navadni močerad) and in Goran Utan Band, and played in 19. November, the band of his fellow poet and musician Klemen Teran. On top of that he has worked with Andrej Šifrer, Zoran Predin, Fool Cool Jazz Orchestra, Vlado Kreslin, Vlatko Stefanovski, Vasko Atanasovski, Gal Gjurin and Laibach. So this is a refined musician whose services and talent are very much prized among the Slovenian music crowd.
That this singer-songwriter duo isn’t new to the game is confirmed by their contribution to the track selection for Radio Val 202’s yearly compilation CD, released under the banner »imamo dobro glasbo«. The song Uej Uej (Magdalenca), a rearranged traditional folk song from Tolmin, was included on the 2010 edition of the Radio Val 202 compilation. To this day the duo has played a heap of shows at home and abroad (the Lent festival, Sarajevo, Ruše, the Festival akustične glasbe in Žalec, the Pisana Loka festival), and picked up an award at Kantfest (Ruše), the only singer-songwriter festival in Slovenia.
The album »Selivke« is anything but an innocent creation. It carries an enormously rich message (a personal one, too) from the poet Katarina Juvančič, who together with Dejan has caught just the right moment of creative chemistry, one that delivers the best possible realization of ideas in a musical art of singular authorial voice. First and foremost the music is rooted in the melos of traditional Slovenian ethno music, but it’s craftily shot through with all sorts of genre influences, thanks to the arrangements that bring in extra instruments from the many musicians involved, and above all to the album’s masterful variety of ideas, with solutions from the genius of Dejan Lapanja, who’s driven forward by the streak of musical exploration in his own self.
That this album is something special on the music scene is announced even before you feel all the subtlety of the tangible substance in its expressive content, just by the design of the packaging, which radiates great love, authenticity, great care and sincerity toward everything Katarina and Dejan take on. The fantastic illustrations that enrich the packaging call up nostalgia for days long gone. They call up the warmth and safety of a shelter, when the smell and sound of crackling, smoldering logs wake in you as you look out the window of your grandma’s farmhouse parlor, while outside an icy wind howls and snow pours down. The illustrations recall the picture books that usually accompany editions of Slovenian folk tales, fables… The album »Selivke« embodies 10 songs, confessions of women thrown into different life experiences, both of today and of the past, going back more than 100 years.
Each song is accompanied in the booklet by a note revealing the background of its poetry, so I’ll only partly focus on that here, and let your imagination speak up fully. What matters most is that in the interpretation the poetry comes across as extremely real, relived, and takes hold of you at once with its truthfulness. Katarina Juvančič is another type of singer and musician who delivers her poetry through its musical setting in a deeply sensual, intimate, lived-in way. She knows how to crawl right under your skin with her delicacy and pinpoint, teasing sophistication. The melos she picks for her verses is traditionally melancholic.
To experience a woman in her true nakedness is something no male head or brain can unravel. There’s no scientist who can. So listening to this album you’ll come into contact with womanhood in its intimate unveiling, deeply, as deep as it gets. Doors will open for you, many of them. Many answers to questions. But you have to listen with a completely open mind, because it can easily happen that you realize you’ve never before tasted and/or touched so much womanhood in all its authentic reality in your life. It barely goes any deeper. It would be nice if a woman’s mind and heart spoke about the feelings that wash over you while listening to this album, but the role of reviewer has once again fallen on my shoulders, the male ones. Men? I’m appealing once more. If you want useful pointers, here and now, about what women are and what they really need, then this album is a real little educational bible for you, even a sexologist’s handbook. It can usefully turn you into an unforgettable romantic troubadour, so you can rouse even the most unforgiving female heart and coax out of it the most genuine female principle of receiving, which, in today’s thoroughly mixed-up roles, also pulls women away from their essence. So they can return to their femininity and stop measuring up in pants where they don’t belong, while it awakens the masculinity in you.
Ten songs with a basic form that follows the heritage of the ethno melos of Slovenian lands, studded with rich touches of violin that draws theatrically Gypsy in the »death march« of the opener Češnjev cvet, a confession of purity in Epitaf za lahkoživko, the metalized riffing of Uej Uej (Magdalenca), which bears witness to »the fiery spirit of women atop the Inquisition’s pyres« and has undergone a real transformation in its arrangement compared with the version found on Val 202’s »Imamo dobro glasbo« compilation, and the French horn woven into Spominčica. As vivid and varied as can be. Yet of all the album’s tracks, the one that perhaps ignites most is Mene nema, laid down as a lesson for the ruling clique (it’s the story of an erased single mother). It’s not short on psychedelia, so it even evokes some of the raging moments of the banal but frontally uncompromising Damir Avdić, only here the vocal is female. The blues connotation worked into Balada o Rozki in vrtnem palčku, backed up with furious rock riffing and bared Hammond escapades, masterfully brings to life the message of verses that tell of an epilogue to a rape. The song Lilija, vrtnica, glicinija opens with an introductory Hammond motif like some ancient confession from the legendary rock witches Procol Harum, but otherwise the song is a real lament and a sort of waltz of longing from an unrotted heart, born at the loss of the person closest to you.
These are ten songs of vivid diversity. Ten self-contained stories that stand credible and fully seasoned through every act of confession, as befits the right moment of a firmly effective symbiosis of poetry and music.
With this record, Katarina Juvančič and Dejan Lapanja add another magnificent and, by the standards of singular authorial voice, brilliant piece of work to the Slovenian singer-songwriter scene. You can call it an artistic peak on the spot, at least by the measure of today’s reach of Slovenia’s traditionally strong singer-songwriter movement. »Selivke« is a special album, an album of special confession, unique and unrepeatable. Packed with the emotions of truthfulness. An album of unique energy, unique theater and atmosphere. It keeps up the tradition and the power of confession of the ever-rich heritage of Slovenian singer-songwriting. Let it seduce you, because you’ll step out of this new musical adventure spiritually and emotionally richer and more mature. Renewed as a person. This is an album that, with the extraordinary flexibility of its rich message, will keep touching you for a long time.
Lineup
Katarina Juvančič – vocals, backing vocals, “shruti box” (tracks 5, 7), concertina (track 6), kalimba (track 5)
Dejan Lapanja – guitar, special sound effects
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Bogdana Herman – vocals (track 9)
Tonč Feinig – Hammond organ (tracks 2,8,9) , Wurlitzer (tracks 2,3)
Jože Bogolin – marimba (tracks 3,10), vibraphone (track 9)
Sabina Magajne – French horn (tracks 3,8,10)
Tilen Artač – cello (tracks 3,7,9)
Klemen Krajc – double bass (tracks 1,2,8.9), bass guitar (track 8)
Women’s choir “Kombinat” – vocals (track 1)
Tomaž Rožanec – accordion (track 1)
Vesna Zornik – vocals (track 9)
Irena Tomažin – vocals (tracks 8,9)
Gašper Peršl – drums (tracks 1,8,9)
Production
Katarina Juvančič & Dejan Lapanja
Tracklist
1. Češnjev cvet (3:28)
2. Volčje oči (3:53)
3. Uspavanka za Fride (4:19
4. Epitaf za lahkoživko (2:58)
5. Uej Uej (Magdalenca) (3:23)
6. Mene nema (3:45)
7. Pismo v Kanado (3;59)
8. Balada o Rozki in vrtnem palčku (6:20)
9. Lilija, vrtnica, glicinija (3:25)
10. Spominčica (4:35)
