Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Up 'N' Downs
Label: Akord Records
Release: 2016
Rating: 4/5
Up’N’Downs are a rock quintet from Mozirje who dropped their studio debut »Vse kar sem pozabil« in the middle of this February. The road to that first album was anything but easy. Still, through every trial the wheel of fate threw in their path, the band got tempered, grew, evolved, and came out of each battle stronger and wiser.
The fruit of all that is an album of twelve superbly polished tracks that start out revolving around a hard rock premise, but the arrangements are wildly bold and dynamic, so even a casual ear can quickly pick up on the blending of pop, blues, funky groove and even alternative rock (the opening Barve). At last year’s Gitarijada, Up’N’Downs were voted best band by the audience. Out of 230 bands. Given that the famous festival in Zaječar, Serbia has now run for forty-nine years straight, it was the first time ever that a Slovenian band took the top spot. Hats off. That win definitely gave the band extra momentum and wings to fight its way through to the studio debut.
The driving force of the band are the Zavolovšek brothers, the main musical visionaries, composers and lyricists. They have an outstanding gift and feel for first-rate musicality, which they masterfully frame in the original picture of hard-hitting, primal rock’n’roll.
Up’N’Downs are incredibly effective at one of the most important parts of writing instantly catchy rock. They build their songs on the development of razor-sharp guitar phrases. These reach real sonic hunger and charge, and on top of them the band manages to set up a infectious musical backdrop that, thanks to the strict use of Slovenian lyrics, rings out original and one of a kind. It’s recognizable in a heartbeat. So Up’N’Downs managed to develop their own style of authorial originality right from the start, and that’s really the key if you want to spark listeners’ interest and leave a mark. »Vse kar sem pozabil« is a radio-friendly album that doesn’t even try to be one, since it’s by no means hunting for hits. It speaks to the listener in a totally genuine, spontaneous, unobtrusive way. And even though the members were born in the first half of the nineties, Up’N’Downs sound typically Slovenian hard rock. In that sense, the opening Barve can be called a hidden hit of the kind Siddharta overlooked during their career, and it delivers an incredibly punchy start to the album, while later on, for instance, the track Trubadur in Angel rings out classic hard rock and, in its melodies, flirts with the look of Slovenian rock bands of the eighties, such as Šank rock (a feeling reinforced especially by the excellent ballad Vse kar sem pozabil). In a nicer place and time for rock, the song Barve could have become an evergreen mid-wave hit on Slovenian radio stations. It has it all. Groove, a hungry riff, a massive vocal line that builds a high level of melodiousness in the chorus crescendo.
The crew works incredibly tight. Rhythmically, musically. The songs work that way too. Sonically and in performance. Erik Zavolovšek’s vocals are punchy, polished, gorgeous, pure, authoritative and highly musical, masterfully adapting to the message of the verses and coaxing out passionate emotion. Then there’s the incredible guitarist David Zavolovšek, who has it all figured out. From the superbly crafted guitar solos, where you can feel inspiration from both Slash and Michael Schenker, to the refined guitar »gear« and the strong character of the guitar phrases woven into the track arrangements, to all sorts of wildly inventive and sparkling guitar ornaments laid over the lead motifs.
Let’s hope the band sticks to this path. It carries an outstanding character and musical potential. Ten tracks would definitely have been enough on this album, and a track or two (especially the ballad) is surely surplus, something the band could have saved for the next record. But the album as it is simply a cry of the time in which it developed. It’s a genuine imprint of the several-year history the band has walked through, and it has to be that way for the story to be complete. So expect the follow-up to the debut to serve up even more refined sonic and stylistic coherence, since Up’N’Downs certainly won’t need as long a stretch for it as the making of this wildly bold studio debut got. The band is armed with new experience worth its weight in gold, so it’s fair to expect they’ll enter the recording process for the new album with an even better developed musical vision. The next album will be stylistically even more refined. So Up’N’Downs have put out a studio debut that counts as one of the nicest rock surprises on Slovenian soil, and we can at the same time declare it one of the best rock albums released on the Slovenian music scene this year.
Up ‘N’ Downs – Barve (official video):
Lineup
Erik Zavolovšek – vocals
David Zavolovšek – guitar, backing vocals
Lucija Hrastnik – keyboards, backing vocals
Andraž Stropnik – bass guitar
Martin Oblak – drums
Matjaž Parfant – backing vocals
Production
Robert Likar
Tracklist
- Barve
- Prisluhnimo
- Waco
- Trubadur in Angel
- Vse kar sem pozabil
- Ljubeči Jack / Ain’t Got Nobody
- Sladke sanje v mračni sobi
- Komu se dam
- Svetloba
- Vlak
- Stran
- Lorelaj
