Pölkar - Caribbean Girl
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Agia Triada is a seaside village a few kilometres off Thessaloniki, founded back in 1922, by refugees from Asia Minor. It is the end of October, but the weather is still mild and there are even a few swimmers around, dotting the long, peaceful beach, typically crowded during the summer. I'm sure I've been here before, most probably on some family excursion in my childhood years, a long faded memory. As might soon happen with the deserted Hellenic Tourism Organisation camping. Designed by architects Vourekas, Sakellarios and Vasileiadis in 1960, its buildings are reminiscent of the re-emergence of the modernist movement in Greece at the time. Twenty years ago, this was among the largest campings in the Balkan area. For the past ten years it has been abandoned by the state, who is now looking for investors that could take over and revive it. Almost everything is still in its place - the pool, stagnant water filling its deeper section, the palm trees, the beach bar (once named Colony) with its wooden furniture, walls and ceiling painted in bright red and blue colours, and glass doors with red art deco imitation patterns almost intact… Everything testifies to a decadent luxury, a remembrance of our carefree past, that haunts our burdened present.
Pölkar's energy gives life to this ghost of a resort - as creativity always does. Caribbean Girl is one of their first songs, included in their recently released, first EP. According to Giorgos and Giannis, Pölkar is polish for "drunk dancer who sings off key". Even though their performance has an air of drunkenness and reckless vocal virtuosity, they do quite masterfully manage to walk the line for the first walking bandrop session. |