WATCHING THE WORLD GO BY is the kind of album that sneaks up on you; not because it’s quiet, but because it’s patient. Jernej Zoran’s seventh full-length record since 2012 doesn’t announce itself as a grand statement so much as it calmly sets up a chair, plugs in a guitar, and waits for you to notice how much work is being done. Which, eventually, you do. And then you start wondering how long it’s been doing this while you weren’t paying attention.
Zoran, a guitarist from Novo mesto, Slovenia, has built a career on being quietly prolific. Seven albums and two EPs in just over a decade is the output of someone less concerned with chasing trends than with following a long, winding internal logic. WATCHING THE WORLD GO BY feels like the natural extension of that logic: a sonic collage of acoustic and electric guitar-driven compositions that borrow freely from classic rock vocabulary without sounding like a museum exhibit. This is not nostalgia cosplay. It’s more like a conversation with the past, conducted in fluent guitar.
The album opens with “Take Off Your Mask,” which immediately establishes the record’s tonal flexibility. The track has a theatrical, slightly ominous sway that calls to mind Nick Cave at his most accessible. Specifically, that strange era where Cave briefly flirted with animated family film soundtracks and somehow made it work. The guitars here don’t rush. They circle. They suggest drama rather than demand it, setting the stage for an album that’s more interested in mood than in hooks.
That restraint carries into “All They Say All They Do,” a mostly instrumental piece that feels like late-stage Pink Floyd; less The Wall, more The Division Bell. It’s expansive without being indulgent, atmospheric without dissolving into background music. The guitar work is deliberate, almost conversational, as if the song is thinking out loud and letting you listen in. This is a recurring strength throughout the album: Zoran understands that guitar virtuosity doesn’t require constant proof.
“Moonwalking Bear” shifts gears into something brighter and more playful, leaning into a Queen-inspired glam-rock guitar style. It’s fully instrumental, but it doesn’t feel empty of voice. The melodies carry a kind of theatrical confidence, the sort that suggests someone who grew up absorbing Brian May solos not as exercises, but as storytelling tools. It’s a reminder that instrumental tracks don’t have to be passive; they can grin at you.
The title track, “Watching the World Go By,” is the album’s emotional center. Calm, melodic, and unmistakably McCartney-coded, it’s a guitar ballad that seems content to exist without insisting on significance. There’s a gentleness here that feels earned, not sentimental. It’s the sound of someone who has made peace with observation; of standing still while everything else moves, and finding that stillness meaningful.
From there, the album unfolds like a travelogue of feeling rather than geography, even as its production is genuinely international. Zoran recorded guitars in Slovenia; bass came from Croatia; drums were tracked in Louisiana; keyboards mostly in Italy; guest vocalists appear from the U.S. and South Africa. This could feel gimmicky, but instead it reinforces the album’s core thesis: music as a collaborative, borderless language. You don’t hear the passport stamps; you hear the cohesion.
Tracks like “(Let Me Help You) Carry That Cross,” “Free,” and “Tears of Orion” continue to explore variations on blues-rock, cinematic ambience, and emotional weight. These aren’t songs that beg to be singled out individually; they work best as part of the album’s slow accumulation. Zoran’s guitars alternate between being “as tame as sleeping kittens” and “roaring like lions,” but the transitions are smooth, almost conversational. Nothing feels out of place, even when the styles shift.
“Angels with Broken Wings” comes closest to fully synthesizing the album’s influences, blending Pink Floyd’s spacious introspection with The Beatles’ melodic clarity. It’s the kind of track that could only exist once you’ve internalized both bands deeply enough to stop imitating them directly. The result is something familiar but not derivative; a recurring theme on this record.
The album closes with “You” and “(In Me You’ll) Live Forever,” the latter an instrumental that feels almost Cinematic Orchestra-adjacent in its emotional pacing. It’s a fitting ending: reflective, unresolved in the best way, and more interested in lingering than concluding.
Jernej Zoran’s musical journey, sparked by watching Rattle and Hum and falling in love with the guitar, feels embedded in every note here. As the leader of the Jernej Zoran Trio and one of Slovenia’s most accomplished blues-rock guitarists, he has little left to prove. WATCHING THE WORLD GO BY isn’t an attempt to reinvent the genre or outdo his influences. It’s a document of craft, curiosity, and continuity. This album trusts that if you sit with it long enough, it will reveal itself. And it does. Not all at once. But patiently. Like the world going by, while someone thoughtful enough is still watching.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
