We will not stop wanting: even after 15 years, Rona Keenan's "Foreign Eyes" is a shining diamond

The wonderful singer returned in a festive show at Barbie for her second album, the masterful and heartbreaking, in an evening that mixed the present and the past.

As the crowd joined in a desperate chorus to the chorus of the theme song, it seemed that there might be one weapon that could beat time after all.

Nadav Menuhin

07/10/2022

Friday, 07 October 2022, 05:50 Updated: 06:27

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We will not stop wanting.

Rona Keenan (Photo: Ben Falhov)

Yossi Elephant once wrote - and Ehud Banai sings - that time flies, because that's what time is supposed to do.

On Monday at the Barbie Club in Tel Aviv, with the 15 year celebrations for Rona Keenan's "Foreign Eyes", time provided an illustration of his journey, in an event that at times felt like a reunion of old friends, on stage and in the audience.

The years have taken their toll, sure, but at its peak, this show managed to pull them back.

"Foreign Eyes" is today a clear classic for anyone whose ears are on their head, but it is difficult to explain to those who have not heard it in real time the monumental leap that Keenan made at once from a great promise to a central and significant artist, who signed a masterpiece, one of the greatest of Israeli rock in the 21st century.

Even in a career full of diamonds like hers - and it is very full - this album sparkles from afar.

There may be moments in other stages of her career that are no less powerful, perhaps more daring, but "Foreign Eyes" has established itself as a stamp, as the ultimate distillation of Rona Keenan's voice as an Israeli creator.

Duel guitars.

Rona Keenan and Eran Weitz (Photo: Orit Panini)

Keenan sang throughout the evening all the songs from the album, in an uncommitted order but in very binding arrangements, fairly faithful to the original, and with some additions that may not have anything surprising but were requested considering the situation.

And yet there was something explosive around, and not trivial.

Keenan is always a very meticulous singer, and there is always a tension between her precise performances and the stormy content, which is sometimes deceptive and confusing.

This time the opening conditions were slightly different: Kenan went on stage at the beginning of the evening with a somewhat hoarse voice.

Is it a flaw in something?

Not necessarily: add to this the effect of the lighting constantly flashing above it, and you will get the feeling of a stubborn struggle, for every song, for every note.

In a strange and exciting way, it shocked the gathering well, the shaky nature of these songs, which always describe ground falling away from underfoot.

"Foreign Eyes" is truly an album of nocturnal struggle, from the bleak evening that begins with "Inside a Frozen Lake", through the hours of drinking and loss of control of "The Blood System" and "My Prison by the Sea", to the hallucinatory wee hours with "The Spring The dreamy glow, until there is nothing to do but wait for a new morning to arrive.

Kenan weaved here a whole story about longings and separations and heartbreaks one after the other, and longing - oh how much longing!

- that everyone who listened to him found himself in him.

And in my full Barbie, it seemed that each and every one was holding on to some memory, some wound that hadn't completely closed to the end.

And suddenly the passing time was very noticeable again.

It was a great opportunity to hear songs that are rarely performed live.

"Miracle", an underrated song, left no room for breathing, and how can you breathe.

"Shina Shana" on its sad keys, and in it the unofficial introduction to "Shimar Liuel", is one of the album's moving parting descriptions, and it didn't lie.

And of course there were all the rest: 20 songs in total, with modest or non-existent representation for the other albums, nor for the original bonuses that came out alongside the album, and the excess went to the guests.

Community event.

All the participants of the evening on stage (photo: Orit Panini)

First came the musician Adi Rennert, who was involved in the album, and took over the keyboards.

A vague hope that his hospitality would be used for the performance of "Situation", the same innovation by Keenan and Barry Sakharof of a song that Rennert wrote for Shlomo Artzi at the time, was dashed - but there were enough compensations.

Shai Zabri rose to a joint and powerful duet of the mysterious "The Shining Spring", and amazingly it was the third voice, that of the audience directed towards the stage - "Come to me one more time, don't let me stay thirsty" - that ignited the barbie with great meaning and love.

Tzbari also went on to perform "Levi Oti" and "Ana Ana Ana Ana", the interlude of Leonard Cohen's "Lover Lover Lover", which shocked the Hebrew calendar, less than a day before Yom Kippur.

Later on, Yizhar Ashdot, the album's producer and perhaps the man who helped shape Kenan's sound more than anything else, came up for joint performances of "Rege", the intense "In the Blood System" and "A Touching Distance from Here".

The first part, the central part of the performance, had to end with "Flood" and close the circle between the song that opened the performance, "In a frozen lake", and the line "And everything will suddenly freeze".

More in Walla!

Rona Keenan manages to capture moments of love and stay a little away from death

To the full article

The first encore brought with it a surprise: the new and folky single "I didn't return to smoke", a kind of intriguing attempt to do something that combines some Leonard Cohen with, say, a variation on "My Life is Good" that Shlomi Shaben borrowed from Randy Newman.

It's a rather long self-protest song about abundance and privilege and indifference to the catastrophes around.

Keenan has never shied away from politics, but usually her songs are more ambiguous and wrapped in imagery, and here the bittersweet irony is fully apparent.

Is this what her new album will sound like?

This is an interesting direction.

The encore was completed with "The Strange Dance of the Heart", unfortunately without Gidi Gob but with great guitars, and "Live Right" for which all the guests came on stage.

It didn't end without a second encore which included "On the way home".

approaching the audience.

Nested in a barbie (photo: Orit Panini)

It was an evening that mixed what was and what is now, and it is difficult to consider the performances that came out separately from the versions in mind, which he played as he pleased.

Sometimes it was the present on the stage, but more often than not the thoughts wandered to those performances, and the memories associated with them.

In this sense, the drama of the celebratory show did not arise precisely from the live performances, some of them wonderful and some of them less so, but from what happened between Kenan and the audience, and between the present and the past.

A perfect balance really came, of course, in the theme song.

What is "foreign eyes"?

love song?

Is it also, like "old sleep", a kind of initial prelude to parting with the father who fades into himself?

- The words are appropriate.

But the object is less important than the subject, the one who insists: "I will not stop wanting, I will not give in to this idea that it is impossible because it is impossible."

This is the cry at the base of everything, in direct Hebrew but so full of charges.

How can you say so much just by using the phrase "and end, end of the story"?

Or "a hug that never ends, then in an instant it's over"?

These are words whose pain is greater than they are, and together with drums and guitars and Adi Rennert's trumpet, this anthem can beat anything.

Before the performance, Kenan invited the audience to help her, to sing with her.

She played the guitar, and the entire Barbi island sang the chorus in chorus, like a desperate prayer: "I will not stop wanting", and it was clear that the power of this song has not faded even a little over the past 15 years, but has only grown and intensified.

When it happened, I thought maybe Rona Keenan was wrong:

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Tags

• Rona Kenan

• Yizhar Ashdot

• Shai Sabri

• Adi Rennert