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20 years since Shlomi Shaban's debut album

Piano, you're a friend: Even 20 years later, Shlomi Shaban's bang is still mesmerizing

Everyone has said all sorts of things about this album, but at the starting point of the most sophisticated musician who has worked in Israel in the last two decades, there is more than meets the eye.

Even if some of these songs sound different in 2020, it's still one of the best debut albums to come out here.

Special Project - Part III

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• Shlomi Shaban

Nadav Menuhin

Monday, 30 November 2020, 00:00

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Shlomi Shaban performs "Daniela" in a live performance in 2000 (Director: Yael Badrashi)

The most important song for understanding Shlomi Shaban - the album, the phenomenon and the artist - is of course "deep".

54 burning seconds, one sentence of sincerity bursting with laughter: "I wish I was as deep as I am pretentious" - starting from a simple piano and by the time it's over it's enough to give a stage to guitar, drums and moments of moment, and end with a hoarse throat.

There's everything here: the mischievous enthusiasm, the joke that always hides some truth behind it, and the way he takes the insult and goes out with it for a victory round.

Some people think this is a joke.

Some people think it's brilliant.

20 years since his debut album was released, it is already clear that the depth and pretentiousness - in the best sense that this word has - met in the middle of the road.

Today you can count three albums (or seven or eight? Depending on how you count), countless collaborations with almost every significant Israeli rock artist of the last generation, covers full of handfuls, a few storms in a glass and one exercise in awakening.

Whether he is recording alone or with others, who today is still one of the most important and interesting artists in Israel, despite the years that have passed.

What did Shlomi Shaban bring that was rare in his environment?

The first word that pops to mind is virtuosity, in the broadest sense of the word.

Shaban's talent, on the piano, in writing, in composing - so striking to the eye, that it seems that everything comes to him almost without effort.

Virtuosity can be threatening and boring and annoying, but that a son prefers to wrap it in a joke, better rude, better one that will actually reveal his own insecurity: this is how the genius becomes a friend, and jealousy becomes an appreciation.

Part one of the project "20 years since the release of Shlomi Shaban's debut album" - a special interview with Shaban

Part two of the project - Shaban reveals the stories behind the songs

More on Walla!

NEWS

Anxieties, the past he hid and his uncle Topaz: Shlomi Shaban speaks candidly about everything

To the full article

virtuoso.

Shlomi Shaban (Photo: Reuven Castro)

And really, Shlomi Shaban's first album, which simply bears his name, is astonishing at the funny virtuosity that is present in it.

First and foremost, it's a verbal rampage, about the city and everything it represents, and within it quite a bit, what to do, about fucks: a lot of artists put listeners in their bedroom.

Not everyone turns it into slapstick: scratching the rug, having fun with contacts, fantasizing about hip friction.

But there are other forms of virtuosity in it, and not everything is kind: it's easy to forget that next to many such songs, there is also a song like "Tomorrow (Ltd.)", one of Shaban's most beautiful songs in his entire career - all expressions of trust in love. that has proved beyond a laugh: text enigmatic and melancholy piano picking boosted the road also take a "time songs", "citizen 1" and illegal practice awakening "- moments when he dared to burst very seriously.

if we return to the moment the thing itself, it seems There is something that is missed when referring to this album as a collection of conquest songs. The lyrics describe an almost opposite reality: song after song after song that Ben presents himself as a loser, as a loser. Even when he contemptuously describes his partner, the depth of contempt seems to be inward. About Eric, this is the guy we'll be from Eric; not the one who says all sorts of things about her, but the one who does not know what to believe; not the one who continues from the evening in his memory - but the one who is left behind. Moreover: this is not the story of someone who lives a life of debauchery. That this life passes by him, without him, as someone who is in the same "roof party" but busy watching how it happens without him, or as someone who hopes that maybe if he will be with Talia at last

See what's in it.

More on Walla!

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Reflections on Death, Anxiety about Abandonment and Dylan McKay: Shlomi Shaban Reveals the Stories of the First Album

To the full article

And if so, to be precise: the contempt - external and internal - is class contempt, for young artists (Yaela who mumbles something about Hanoch Levin, Aya who writes a short play about Pinocchio's myth, or himself who thinks of Garcia's solo in the middle of sex), for the image of Tel Avivians In general (the one who loves poetry and it's charming, and at the same time in it for ceremonies), for the boring bourgeoisie (the ordinary-person like that, who is dropped in front of the TV screen).

Unsurprisingly, he will further develop these issues on his next albums ("New Age Women" as a perfect parody of Tel Aviv; "IKEA" as the embodiment of the fear of ordinary life, etc.).

And so it rolls.

It might have been possible to cut a few songs from it, but that does not detract for a moment from the fact that half of the album's power is its stunning opening.

The first nine songs - one by one - hit the listener, without a single moment of boredom.

Disappointed with "Puritan Slut", cultivating a single pride in "New York VS Ezekiel" and "Ezekiel Mashil", sinking into self-pity in "Evening for Men", torn in "deep" and even a little carried away by the background sounds and energies of "Everyone Says", enjoying From the dilapidated variation on Yaela, get excited about "Tomorrow" and end this part with "The Monumental Eric" - no one sings like that about his "this" in the country neither before nor after, so funny and offended and hates and even escapes to the Wild West.

Without exaggerating, this is a sequence that is nothing short of mesmerizing.

The closing third takes the leg off the gas, for a slower sequence, with visits from Daniela and Talia, and also from Shlomi Shabbat (well-wishers will remember that at some point a singer named Shlomi Saban was injured, as if to further confuse the situation).

There is not much to say, it is easily one of the best debut albums released in Israel so far and since.

But that's not the whole story.

One of the best debut albums released in Israel.

Shlomi Shaban (Photo: Reuven Castro)

It's time for Shaban's fourth

When Shaban wound up at the turn of the millennium, there weren’t many similar things around him: a witty writer, a virtuoso player, a (relatively) happy rock and roll.

Most of the pianists were gloomy, and the refugees of the nineties then turned in other directions;

Humor - other than Teapacks - was not really in vogue;

Virtuosity has never been too popular in Israel.

To find local references one has to go far, to the elephants.

And Shaban, without really meaning to, found himself mentioned in one breath with names like Meir Ariel and Yoni Rechter.

As the song says, they made it pretty beautiful - almost not it.

He understood the meaning well: it is a class to be deserved.

And really, he spent many years as an apprentice of masters who preceded him: Rami Fortis, Eran Tzur, Assaf Amdursky.

From the first he learned to appear, from the second the courage to write in crazy Hebrew about an ugly everyday life, and from the third uncompromising perfectionism.

Among the perfectionism and the plethora of collaborations he forged, the main victim was his original songs, which had to wait then and today for seven long years (at least) between album and album.

Like the code of the mouth and paws - only worse.

Apparently, the fourth solo album will already break the record.

Piano you are missing.

Shaban (Photo: Shlomi Pinto)

But for a moment Shaban did not seem to be gone.

He quickly became a cult artist with a very loyal audience, thanks in part to wild piano performances and ripping covers.

The cult is a significant element in the development of the Shaban phenomenon: so much so that it had a demand - that a few years later the sticker with the ironic title appeared independently: "Piano, you are missing - it's time for Shaban's second."

In this case, it was the audience that internalized the whimsical formula: a parody of pretentiousness as a way of expressing love.

The same audience had a few other idols: in the second half of that decade, a group of significant artists established themselves who stood at the forefront of the intellectual-elitist rock of the period, digging themselves and quoting non-stop, touching on the most painful points the Israeli mainstream can provide. .

There were Shaban, Rona Keinan and the entertainment, and from another direction also Noam Rotem, to whom Shaban is connected from other directions as well.

One of the characters common to this whole circle is the producer Assaf Talmudi, who is primarily responsible for the sound of that time.

That scene is not dead, and it has a new engine: one oak herd, whose influence of a son can be heard as far as Kiryat Shmona.

Lucky that Ezekiel won

Since then, everyone has said all sorts of things about these songs.

"Shlomi Shaban" did not sound in 2020 as it did in 2000. Part of the album sounds childish, even naive ("New York VS Ezekiel"), and other songs sound almost cruel ("Daniela").

To quote another song of his, some of the humor has deteriorated.

"It seems to me that no one loved" Lullaby "even then - it is a difficult song on a difficult subject, abortions, and the trigger warnings that have penetrated our lives since then make it even less listenable than it used to be.

A few songs ("Cigarettes") have been almost completely forgotten, which makes sense given the fact that this is an album with 15 tracks and another bonus.

In retrospect, one could also say that the albums that came after him really surpassed him.

"City" is Shaban's most elaborate collection of songs, a fascinating sketch of Tel Aviv and its images.

The theme song of "Exercise in Awakening" is a song that goes out to people once in a career.

The main issues - relations, anxiety about the bourgeoisie, longing for what Israel represents, disgust towards the bourgeoisie - are repeated over and over again, but it can be clearly said that he has slowly overcome "deep" - that is, the pretense that has no cover.

Still, even if some colors faded from that picture, this album is still powerful, funny and full of life, and still marks a dramatic moment in Israeli music: the starting point of the most sophisticated musician who has performed in Israel for the past 20 years.

Lucky that Ezekiel won.

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