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CD Review: The Klezmatics, Rise Up! Shteyt Oyf! (Piranha PIR1686)
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Songlines, CD Review: The Klezmatics, Rise Up! Shteyt Oyf! (Piranha PIR1686) >>
BY: Simon Broughton
A Different-and Successful- Departure for the Klezmatics
It's been five years since the last real Klezmatics album (though in 1999 they did record The Well, a very fine disc with singer Chava Alberstein), and that seems a long recording silence from the leading klezmer band. But now they're back, and on a new label: after four albums with Piranha, they've moved to Rounder, which probably makes practical sense as band and label are now both in the U.S.
The Klezmatics' success has been their ability to combine a surefire familiarity with klezmer tradition and Yiddish culture with a radical devil-may-care abandon. I miss some of that fire here, but this is a different sort of album, heavily studio-produced by Ben Wisch.
There are a couple of insturmental highlights - the playful 'Kats un Moyz' wth spectacular solos on violin (Steven Greenman) and bass clarinet (Matt Darriau) and the hot 'Peretz Tants' - but generally there's less letting rip on instrumentals on this album, as Ten out of 15 tracks are songs. There are two that I'd like my CD player to permanently skip - the jaunty 'Tepel' with sickly children's backing vocals (waggishly described as a 'faux-Hasidic boy's chorus) and the nauseating Purim song 'Makht Oyf' (Open Up) - but elsewhere vocalist Lorin Sklamberg is in top form and the themes are as provocative as ever. The beautiful 'Loshn-Koydesh' (Holy Tongues) has a gentle, seductive melody and tells of a homoerotic Hebrew lesson harking back to 'Honikzaft' (on Rhythm and Jews), their gay interpretation of the Song of Songs. Controversy in a sugar coating. And the anthemic Holly Near song 'I Ain't Afraid' is sadly topical, sung in English and Yiddish: 'I ain't afraid of your Yahweh/Allah/Jesus, I'm afraid of what you do in the name of your god'. The message is underlined as the song returns at the end of the album.
09/01/02
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