Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Nula Kelvina
Label: Celinka
Release: 2018
Length: 32:41
Rating: 4/5
That’s how it goes. Here’s already the fourth studio album from the devilish, thunderous word doctors Nula Kelvina. Their fourth for the music co-op Celinka. The members are constantly tangled up in several different musical projects at once. That includes holding down the arrangements and playing behind the Goriška »fast-talker« Smaal Tokk, who has put out two wildly successful studio albums that way. The years fly by: Klemen Kotar has meanwhile released an excellent studio album with Dušni pastirji, and Gašper Kržmanc has headed into somewhat more country waters with his new band Šlajn. In the three years since the album »Levak na Luni« (2015), this tireless crew of four incredibly busy and sharp musicians still found enough creative space, time and, of course, inspiration to knock together a fourth studio album.
It keeps going with Boh’s vision and poetry: another gallows-humor sermon on relationships between men and women, plus plenty of bite and sting aimed at the glitz and misery of this little sub-Alpine cauldron, which has few equals in the solar galaxy when it comes to corruption. Self-irony, sarcasm and jester-style mockery are once again in good supply! Boh remains a piercing provocateur, a master of twisting stock phrases and a blacksmith of sharp wisecracks. It’s precisely this teasing fantasy of Boh’s that keeps Nula Kelvina highly compelling lyrically, new album included.
Theater has always been an essential part of the band’s confessional passion. Over the years the group has only deepened, honed and built up that theater, with the occasional flash of cabaret, all while preserving and nurturing the lucidity, the prankishness, the goofy childlike streak, and the bite and sting. You could say that in this department Nula Kelvina have become real little masters of their craft. New to the foursome is Ana Marija Mitič, a formally trained musician who takes the piano at gigs and, above all, gives Marko vocal backup. The guys “befriended” Ana Marija after their successful joint music-and-theater stagings of the album »Levak na Luni«, and carried the new “romance” over to the new studio album.
On the new album Nula Kelvina »smuggled in« a few tricks already used on past albums, which make up a chiseled musical dossier and were quietly expected, while also trying out a few new things. The variety in the use of available instruments has grown another notch, which means Kržmanc wove his banjo playing into the arrangements (opener kje si bla, ko sem se ženu), plus ukulele. Otherwise, the band has again managed to stitch together some instantly memorable, invasively catchy songs that once more entertain and win you over wholeheartedly! On this album too the band ventures into a varied genre mosaic, with detours from the basic song format, now toward reggae, now toward blues, while the »chanson-style grimacing« stays a constant. The closing track Pse na vrvice can also easily be called the toughest composition in the band’s story, since the guitar spits out a few distorted decibels. The band shows off its internalized feel and natural talent for creating highly infectious (pop) musicality, and in that musical rhetoric you can detect inspiration from The Beatles. Senad absolutely has to hit the radio waves! It’s a real heavyweight if you’re looking for a top-notch, finely carved evergreen hit on the album.
Just over half an hour of playing time. But stuffed to the brim with sharp messages. The music of Nula Kelvina remains a homegrown mosaic of Boh’s entertaining poetry, in which the guys and Ana, in creating tangible musical substance, dole out deliberately short, concise and relaxed levers of composing. That holds on the new album too, with the great infectiousness of its compactly finished melodies, which finally leads to a simple realization. Nula Kelvina have a great new album out!
Lineup
Marko Boh – vocals, keyboards, backing vocals
Ana Maria Mitić – vocals, backing vocals
Klemen Kotar – bass guitar, saxophone, synthesizers, backing vocals
Gašper Kržmanc – guitar, banjo, ukulele, backing vocals
Miha Kržmanc – drums
Production
Gašper Kržmanc & Nula Kelvina
