When the Idan Raichel Project came to Hillel at the UW four years ago, I was blown away — and I wasn’t alone. I hadn’t seen so many Israelis since being stuck in a traffic jam in Tel Aviv. Seeing the Project again, this time in their home country of Israel, in 2007 was no less exciting. Their blend of rock with traditional Arabic and North African music had me — and much of Israel — at hello.
Raichel, a dred-locked musician whose real talent lies in bringing out the best in the musicians that climb over each other to surround him — nearly 70 in all on his earlier efforts — is probably the closest thing Israel has to a musical superstar these days.
The Idan Raichel Project plays three shows at the Triple Door on Aug. 10 and 11.
Songs from the Project’s releases, beginning with its self-titled 2002 album (released here in 2006), to 2005’s Israeli release Out of the Depths, wowed me and they’ve created a musical genre that has found fans who might otherwise not be fans of anything Israeli. The wailing horns, the bass grooves, the soulful voices from all corners of the world — I’m breathless just thinking about it.
Which is why the Idan Raichel Project’s latest album, Within My Walls, is something of a letdown. Don’t get me wrong: It’s good. But it’s not great. It feels, more than anything, like Raichel is trying to be more like Pink Martini, cramming three, four, five languages onto the album. Not that he can faulted for that. He’s been hailed as a world musician, and when he’s producing tracks beyond his native language, the results are stellar.
Kicking off the album with “Todas Las Palabras,” which you Spanish speakers can translate as “All the Words,” renowned Colombian singer Martá Gomez shows off the chops that have made her famous in her own country (she’s got four critically acclaimed albums of her own).
Also in Spanish, and also sung by Gomez, is “Cada Dia,” “Every Day,” which strips down the instrumental to piano, clarinet and a light percussion, and lets her voice really shine through, to remarkable effect. It’s obvious Raichel has done his homework in finding his artists for this album, because Gomez, more than any of the other vocalists, sets the tone for Within My Walls.
The piano sets a tone as well, particularly for one of the other two female vocalists to grace this recording. Cuban-born singer Maya Andrade, who grew up off the coast of Africa on the isle of Cape Verde, was surrounded by music in her youth and recorded “Ôdjus Fitxadu” — “With My Eyes Shut” — in her island’s native Portugese.
Thankfully the liner notes have all been translated into English for us dumb Americans, because I would have been happy to enjoy the music and Andrade’s lovely voice and never realize how sad a song this is: “When I looked at the sky today/ All I could see were stars/ Telling me that you are gone/ Forever my love…. Bearing the sword and the power of longing and pain/ With my soul free in time/ I vow to live with my eyes shut/ And thus keep you with me/ With me….”
“Maisha,” sung in Swahili African by jazz musician Somi (though she was actually born in Illinois) was probably what most made me compare this album to just about anything by Pink Martini: Powerful vocals backed up by what could be called a chamber orchestra, though it lacks the brass that got me so excited about the Portland band’s early stuff.
My favorite track, however, is the one sung in Arabic, by Moroccan Shimon Buskila: “Min Nhar Li Mshiti,” or “From the Day You Left.” The song would sound like any Arabic dirge you might hear blaring from a radio above some Middle Eastern shouk, were it not for Idan’s excellent production behind Buskila’s wailing voice. The song builds to a crescendo before letting itself go, but it is exactly the type of collaboration that got me excited about the Idan Raichel Project in the first place. The liner notes, incidentally, are printed in the original Arabic as well.
Which is why it’s so disappointing that virtually everything else (with the exception of “Nin’al Be’Mabato,” Hebrew for “Locked in His Gaze,”) sounds like something rejected by an ‘80s glam band. It’s almost as if Raichel, when writing in Hebrew, felt like he had to play to the lowest common denominator of Israeli Top 40 radio. It’s over-produced, over-electric, and just not that interesting. Perhaps in a live setting, which is where the Idan Raichel Project shines, they can do something that better showcases what Raichel is trying to do, but instead it comes off as an unfortunate counterpoint to what otherwise could have been the Project’s strongest album yet.
Break down these walls
