Gone are the rough, raw emotions. But don’t blame Koos Kombuis; it’s the production that’s the problem, writes Fred de Vries
IT’S confession time. I love the music of Koos Kombuis. But his first proper album since 1989s Niemandsland is a bitter disappointment. Or perhaps one should say: it could have been so much better …
Elke Boemelaar se Droom, which contains songs about love in its various disguises, lacks urgency, dynamics, a feel of here and now. Far too often Radio Kombuis comes frighteningly close to those Afrikaner luisterliedjies you hear on Radio Oranje on a dreary Sunday afternoon. And with a total playing time of 71 minutes and 38 seconds, that’s a bit hard to stomach.
It’s not that the songs are actually bad. Most of them are five chord Kombuis by numbers, even though the new compositions never quite match the magic of the old ones which include re-recorded versions of classics like Lisa se Klavier and Johnny is Nie Dood Nie.
What is definitely wrong with this CD is the production, which seems to have been drenched in liquid pink sugar and starts giving you a toothache as soon as the second song sets in. That particular song, Bicycle Sonder Slot, is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with this album. Those silky background harmonies, that subdued drum, those softly strung guitars, and most of all Kombuis’ vocals, which seem to be buried in fluffy background muzak. They give you the creeps.
On Elke Boemelaar se Droom Kombuis too often sounds like Anton Goosen. Which is no coincidence, because Goosen is the man responsible for the toffee production and his skills seem firmly rooted and stuck in the Sixties.
Gone therefore is the ragged bohemian appeal of Bomskok Babalaas. Gone as well are the rough edged emotions and bitterness of Johnny is Nie Dood Nie as it appeared on last year’s live tape Eendrag Maak Bach. It’s a harrowing song in which Kombuis laments the death of a junkie friend, and every time you heard that live version it made you swallow a few tears. And now they’ve somehow managed to ruin it with insipid backing vocals (a kind of all together now: buttons in die hemel) and an irritating Dire Straits-like guitar.
Even the unruinable has been severely damaged. Lisa se Klavier — which, after all these years, is still one of the highlights of Niemandsland, a song that invariably moves people to tears when Kombuis plays it live — now drowns in the productional candyfloss.
Here’s what’s wrong as well. Kombuis’ outlaw and bum appeal has now been acknowledged as his main selling commodity, and is therefore turning into something artificial which will become a burden for him in the future when people will get tired of the “Koos die Boemelaar” image.
“We want to make Koos a commercial artist,” announced the representative of the record company at the recent boemelaar launch of the CD. “We want to make him big all over South Africa.”
And less than an hour later Koos was off to a fancy shopping mall in Pretoria to promote his new album.
“Jeez, I’ve never done this,” he said with such a disarming smile that one immediately wanted to forgive him for this dismal album.
It’s all a bit sad, because Kombuis is still one of the best Afrikaner songwriters, who has been struggling for more than 10 years, never selling out or wanting to be part of the Afrikaner establishment. His songs are bittersweet observations of everyday life from the outsider’s bottoms-up perspective. None of his alternative cronies has ever recorded a song as beautiful as the haunting Swart September from Niemandsland.
A few days after the launch we met at the Grapevine in Pretoria, where Kombuis started his writing career some 10 years ago. He was slightly hung over but in good spirits, said he loves the album, and was genuinely taken aback with the criticism.
“We wanted a clean sound so it will get some airplay,” he muttered. “About 10 percent of the people I’ve spoken to didn’t like it.”
We talked a bit about Kurt Cobain (“I was so angry when he committed suicide”) and about Kombuis’ love/hate relationship with Kerkorrel (“I wonder how he is. Is he happy?”).
It was a useless interview. OK. Maybe I’m unfair. Maybe this is the anger and frustration of the unreasonable fan. Maybe it’s wrong to expect so much of a man who last year admitted that bum life is not as romantic as it seems, the man who softly added that also he sometimes longed for a fridge and a TV set.
But, on the other hand, this is also the artist who said he really loved the sound and fury of Nirvana. And the album is produced by someone who not so long ago professed a deep admiration for Neil Young and Lou Reed, whom he called “real rock and rollers”. And that’s exactly what Elke Boemelaar se Droom is not: real rock and roll.