Artist: Mežek, Aleksander
Label: Eye Witness Records
Release: 2007
The 20th studio outing from a living legend of Slovenian singer-songwriter music! Hats off, my sincere respect. This time Sašo comes with a light, laid-back pop rock album, built of course on those indispensable acoustic-guitar foundations, with no blind or illogical detours. Everything flows through your ears with feather-light ease. It’s total devotion to natural sounds, minus the piano! So: guitars with a naturally accompanying tone, enriched, lifted and bound to themselves by Mežek’s one-of-a-kind voice, which is irresistibly appealing, always thrilling, and by world standards it’s the very thing that opened the door to the world and to a rich musical career, the kind very few Slovenian artists can boast of.
This time the man invited just one partner in crime into the studio, who played pretty much all the instruments. That’s Englishman Dave Goodes, a guy who, among other things, earns his bread as the touring guitarist of German synth/electro pop trio Alphaville (remember their mega hits from the eighties: Sounds Like A Melody, Big In Japan, Forever Young?). Mežek isn’t the sole author of the lyrics he lays on his tongue here, either. This time he set to music the words of a collaborator he’s worked with before, a Slovenian “wunderkind”, the kind of lad any Slovenian mum would be thrilled to have a share in: the sensitive photographer, poet and, at the same time, fearless ski jumper Jan Tomazin. The Mežek–Tomazin tandem clearly works a treat, and it makes sense to milk it in every way for as long as the chemistry holds.
With the new album Mežek comes back home. Through the lyrics he looks back on the road he’s walked, on total acceptance and peace with everything that surrounds him, surrounded him, will surround him, on enjoying his own skin, here and now. He has landed back home again. The events in the movie of life roll on. One after another, each with its own sense and purpose. Where one ends, the next begins. Closed-off wholes, yet linked together like the links of a chain winding through life. Only the memories are left. The lyrics stress the meaning of acceptance and forgiveness. The feelings are strung together in a consistently positive, playful way, with a pinch of youthful naivety preserved, yet it’s incredible how strongly a sense of solemn farewell stands out in the overall sum of moods.
Sašo is once again strongest in expressive arrangements, captured across 10 tracks with varied core motifs and the predictable template of a pre-chorus/chorus dialogue. Mežek is a seasoned old tomcat and knows exactly how to serve the whole thing up. The fear of three-chord major-key songs trapped in a hackneyed, chewed-over-a-million-times formula is unnecessary: the man once again deftly and skillfully slaloms between bright, high-spirited moments and points of hidden longing, proving that Mežek passed his maturity exam long ago, with a seriousness of musical expression that wins the listener over in an instant and turns them into an ally. The album opens with the track Polet I. If I may be a bit cheeky, and unbelievably, I can’t get out of my rocker skin! When I spun the album for the first time, I got the feeling I was listening to the intro of Boston’s evergreen More Than A Feeling. Polet I. is a nicely punchy opener, the drums create the wings of the dynamics, and the contrast between Mežek’s standard, angelically clean vocal and the solid pulse of the naturally sounding backing is outstanding. That chemistry carries over into Polet II., with an extremely successful blend of consistency in the atmospheric build from pre-chorus to chorus, gently but nicely “sharpened” by bluesy solo bursts from Goodes on guitar. Mežek stays undiminished in his fascination with the growing season of the flora in the next track (Prepih), where he again eagerly describes meadows in bloom. But seriously, no joke. Prepih effectively pulls the rug out from under the listener to ruffle their ears, with an “English” (!) core guitar motif that actually plays the role of the chorus between Mežek’s verses and so brings a touch of drama. Cunningly clever! The pulse is a masterful bluesy tingle that brings a brilliant twist in the album’s dynamics. In the next track, the country-beat Kamnita ograja, Goodes doesn’t skimp on pinpoint layers of “soundscapes” in the background of the sound picture. The especially appealing and expressively convincing (standout) moments of the record are the yearning Tečem skozi čas, where Mežek’s vocal glows particularly intensely, and Na dlani mesta (driven only by bare acoustic guitar accompaniment). The closing boogie-backed Konc feels a bit abortive and superfluous, but it’s half forgiven, since it doesn’t hide its jokey intentions. Luckily, this joke is under three minutes long.
Since Mežek is with us, all the songs are of course crowned with a vocal of exceptional character, that unique trademark that mustn’t be missing here and the very reason we listen to and value Mežek at all. With this natural gift, the man can always happily “wriggle out” even in tricky moments. And yet the years do show on Mežek. The voice no longer has the freshness it once had, and over time it has settled a bit lower. This stings the ear most in the lowest registers, where the vocal gets especially thin. The melody isn’t optimally exploited there, so holes appear in the fullness of the spectral sound picture, and the vocal lines become patchily overshadowed or covered by an unwelcome monotone sound, which also saps some of the album’s dynamics. Maybe next time tuning up at least a half-step wouldn’t hurt.
Still, hats off. The arrangement ideas are highly seductive and the songs colorful, which is vital for breaking up a single-layered production and a simple sound picture built on the interplay of drums, bass guitar, guitar and vocals, winding through 40 minutes of album. A highly listenable and intelligent album, without a pinch of the potential glucose avalanches that would give you heartburn, of which there are plenty in the Slovenian climate, among the modern Slovenian “wannabe” musical “artists”. With “Tečem skozi čas” Aleksander Mežek keeps the charm of his unique musical expression alive. This is an album of briefly measured gestures, masterfully woven into a whole, which delivers completely relaxed listening, recommended for the CD player in any mood, and which proves that we can still learn a lot from Aleksander Mežek. Respect.
Lineup
Aleksander Mežek – vocals
Dave Goodes – electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, drums
Production
Aleksander Mežek & Dave Goodes
Track list
1. Polet I.
2. Polet II.
3. Prepih
4. Utrip
5. Kamnita ograja
6. Tečem skozi čas
7. Žarek
8. Najina pesem
9. Na dlani mesta
10. Konc
Album length: 41.28
