So the much awaited post and review of Idan Rabinovici's album got put on hold for 24 hours and after promising to deliver for about a week on said review, here we go.
So I've had this album for about a month now but decided not to listen to it for a couple of weeks. I guess I'd been so sucked in by the Strange Folks EP and the Roy Rieck and The Medley Band CD and the live performances here in London that I wanted to be able to listen to Idan's album objectively without comparing it to either other offering from my Israeli friends and listen to it as if it were unrelated. That idea I can assure you worked brilliantly...
The first thing I will say is that the entire album smacks of what I call visual songwriting, in the sense that, you close your eyes, you listen to the songs and you get the vision behind the songs and there isn't one weak song on the album.
The first song Morning Song welcomes you in gently within about 5 seconds. There's no big band sound here, just Idan (who does remind me a little of Cat Stevens) and a guitar for the most part and it hooks you in straight away because it's that simple, there's nowhere to go but to be drawn in. I found myself listening attentively throughout the whole album because of this almost claustrophobic closeness and intimacy.
There then follows some real stand out tracks. Jared's Blues is one of my favourite songs of this year, quite possibly my favourite. Just to set a context against this claim, I would happily suggest I have listened to it comfortably well over 50 times since the start of July! When I received the album Roy Rieck explained that this version was quite different from that of the Strange Folks EP, he wasn't wrong. It's slightly longer in length with an extra verse and a bit different musically although in essence the same song. But what really stands out more than anything and makes the song so completely fresh and in many ways even more beautiful is the sound of Idan playing piano towards the end of the song with Roy's Harmonica...it just works in a big way, to the point that I think I like this version as much if not slightly more than the Strange Folks version.
Thinking Cap is a song I'd seen live and loved because as Strange Folks, it's played quite uptempo but I never quite got the lyrics because I got carried away with the music, so in this version you hear the words and it's actually quite an amazing bit of songwriting.
The same goes for Jungle Man, Your Last Letter, Pretty Hard To Tell and Brand New Coat of Armour which seem to be a deeply emotive and personal set of songs and it feels slightly uncomfortable like you're poking your nose deeply into a life that isn't yours, which makes you listen all the more attentively and that in a way comes back to my original point about it being very visual songwriting.
It truly is a great album, rich in stories, outlooks on life and experiences and musically it just works amazingly well. A brilliant combination of outstanding vocals and well arranged instruments that keep you coming back to it over and over again.
It's actually quite an important album come to think of it. It sets that very first musical marker, for Idan's (and that of the rest of the guys who make up Strange Folks/Roy Rieck and the Medley Band) musical progression. It's that album you look at in years to come and think "that's where it all started". It's amazing listening to Bedroom Folk and being wowed by its raw nature and then hearing and seeing how far they've all progressed as musicians in such a short space of time. It actually highlights even more now in my own mind just how much of an amazingly talented bunch of guys they are.
Go buy it, trust me, it's worth it and you'll be hooked.
Enjoy xx
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