Margi performs "Sucks to know you (FU)" in a live concert at Walla Studio!, August 21, 2022 (lyrics and music: Yonatan Margi, Yuval Mein, Itai Shimoni, Jordan Pelag and Eitan Pelag; production: Shay Verker, Hagit Barak and May Steinfeld; director : Nitai Barry; Sound: Ilan Levy, Itai Harubi; Management of the show: Healy Shani; Lighting: Yossi Adiges)
1. The sound of Israeli music at the end of 2022 is a sound of depression and loneliness.
In mainstream and indie, in oriental music and pop, sad songs lead the playlists.
The radio plays mournful ballads such as Yuval Dayan's "There will be someone who will love you like this" ("When everything in you trembles again to the same erosion, and you have no hope that you will hug and touch"), Eliad's "I came in a dream" ("I can't sleep, all the time you came to me in a dream") or "What's left for me of you" by Anna Zak ("Only pain and tears, only question marks");
Curled and melancholic breakup songs such as "Violins" by Eden Ben Zaken ("Violins play for me at night alone like this without you"), "38" by Par Tessi ("I dive into the sea, I threw everything away a long time ago"), "In the next chapter" by Bar Sabri ("Come scratch me like this at least it hurts"), Osher Cohen's "Thursday-Friday" ("I told you to cry, cry") or "Alone"
Dikla's ("Alone with the good rain and one lonely lantern");
And the singles from "The Next Star" Gaia Shaki and Shay Humber, "Toy Box" ("You played with me until I broke") and "Hayati" ("The pain tonight climbs all the stairs in a whisper"), are not too happy either.
More than all the hits that speak in the first person will testify - Tipax singing "We forgot how to dream", or the new and minor duet of Shlomo Artzi and Keren Peles, whose singing is slow and broken, and answers to the name "Not Lost".
The need for negation, it seems, is more indicative of the presence of the opposite sentiment.
Is it only autumn, with the cloud, and with the howling wind?
Maybe it's just the national mood.
2. The saddest, and most beautiful song of the last few weeks, unfortunately went under the radar.
The reference is to the song "The Immigrant" by Avi Belali (Tractor's Revenge), the first single from a solo album.
Belali, who himself is responsible for some of the saddest songs in the Israeli rock pantheon such as "Game of Tears" or "Bicycle and Book", writes here a dialogue between a boy and his father, in their long and difficult journey out of the rift and blood, when the roads are all closed and there is no one.
This is a humanist response to the global refugee crisis, which can easily fit into the historical Jewish story as well.
Belali's voice and guitar, Itamar Duari's percussion and Udi Turgeman's keyboards, which he also produced - all these combine into a chilling and shaking soundtrack of a terrible story, which has hope and despair, bereavement and fear, in three and a half minutes.
A terrible little masterpiece.
Belly released the song in two versions, a brilliant rock version, and a piano-based "epilogue" version.
As possible, the second is even more heartbreaking.
3. Trauma can also be heard in Leyli, the celebrated group of Gal Thorn (Mercedes Band) and Guy Levy, whose new second album is simply called "2" and among its songs you can find "Switzerland".
This is not a poem about Herzl in Basel, nor about chocolate or banks, but an ironic description of reserve service in Lebanon.
The simulated pastoral gives way to nihilism in the face of chaos: "Look at the beauty, little Switzerland, in the name of all our people, they destroy the routine... A small country that has no choice, you have to be ready to accept the judgment. In the corner of an orchard I occupy, me and you, it's a game tool in the hands of others".
The almost celebratory production, in the style of Mati Caspi's "You'll see another time", further distances the melody from the situation it describes, in place and time.
The rest of the album, by the way, is uneven in its level.
The best song, without competition, is without a doubt "Criminal", one of the excellent songs of the period, a sweeping and moving rock piece about a relationship caught in a whirlwind of betrayals.
This is also not who knows what pleases,
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4. Even in the second album of Laura Rivlin, known first of all as a wonderful actress, you can hear some kind of war.
In her case, the Yom Kippur War.
"When you write down a day in October, a point jumps out, something sharp, as if wounded... engraving. Some history was recorded there at some point", she sings in the song "October", and then, among all kinds of everyday things, which are private history, she reminds to the sounds of a piano: For fifty years, my friends from the layer - in the ground. It didn't cross my mind at all."
Here, too, there is a gap: between the weight of the big events and the small ones, and between what you snorted in time and the life that insists on going on.
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Rivlin's previous album, "Traveling Woman" which we praised here, was a fascinating journey through the actress' stream of consciousness, a hallucinatory cabaret full of quotations.
The second album, "In a foreign city" - is also the result of a collaboration with her son, composer Shaul Baser and producer Yami Whistler (Haviloyim), with supporting actress Nurit Zarhi who also contributed to the editing of the texts - is a sad album, and our spirit can also be heard in the quotes.
This time, whether she sings "I believe (play chess)" to her father, or renews with rather surprising choices "I lie on my back" by Ariel Zilber, "Forbidden love" by Zehava Ben or "The night" by Hachis Ober Habibi, It always sounds like a melancholic lament for a world that is disappearing.
5. Another actor, Tamir Bar - a brilliant comedian who specializes in the interface between music and comedy (Shem Tov Habi, Habib Naim, etc.) - recently released his debut album.
I have reserved here the lead single, "Tikva", and I must admit that similar feelings accompany the entire album, which goes by the name "The Big Holiday", which received musical advice from Ravid Plotnik and partners such as Matan Aguzi, Yishai Suisa and Aya Zahavi Feiglin.
On paper it's great, but in practice, it's a rather obscure collection of hip-hop songs, with internal humor that doesn't communicate outwardly, excessive vocal play, anti-vocals, and lyrics that were worth at least one more round of editing.
I wanted to hear the one who knows how to create such focused characters finally distill himself.
But there is one moment in the album where he finally gives up the mask and doesn't give in to the teasing.
It is called "When the anger is great and the sadness is great", a song dedicated to the memory of Batum Zarhom, an asylum seeker from Eritrea who was lynched in the central station in Be'er Sheva, by Israelis who suspected him of being the terrorist in the attack that happened a short time before.
Here the autotune and production give way to naked guitar and direct shouting, and the wild humor is replaced by bitter and subtle humor.
There are no brilliant puns and no fancy production in this song, just raw anger and defiance.
And faced with such an issue, there is probably no other choice.
culture
music
Israeli music
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Mast wave
Laura Rivlin
Abi Belali
Shlomo Artzi
Keren Ples
Tamir Bar