Eli Yael!
All the way from Paris France via Eretz Yisrael...
Gary and Yael Naim, Paris | Click to enlarge
Yael Naim at the Bowery Ballroom last Wednesday night delivered one of the most soaring, uplifting concerts I've attended since I caught Joanna Newsom at Pop Montreal a couple years ago...she bounded out onstage with an infectious grin, her long black tresses flying, dressed in a fetching purple number with holes cut in strategic places (she is quite the babe, let's face it) and for the next hour or so mesmerized the packed to overflowing crowd (house had sold-out ages ago) with selections from her eponymous new album, just out on Atlantic/Tot ou Tard here...
The crowd ecstatically responded as One from the get-go, there were palpable waves of excitement coursing through the BB, and Yael was in superlative Voice throughout--she has one of the loveliest voices I've ever heard, such fantastic control and range--and she was Right There throughout, opening with her song "Paris" in Hebrew (a language which sung by Yael sounds amazingly soulful and seductive to my ears), finger picking her guitar, caressing her piano keyboard (girl was classically trained for 10 years), delivering a set that included material from her first album "In a Man's Womb" all the way to her current massive hit single "New Soul", the Mac Air Book theme, now poised to crack the Top 50 of Billboard's Hot 100 chart any minute--it's been downloaded over 550,000 times on iTunes in the US alone to date, making it the biggest ever French single to hit America since Paul Mauriat's "Love is Blue" (true)--(didya know the whole "Love is Blue" theme was lifted directly from the second and fifth movements of Prokofiev's "Lieutenant Kije Suite"? Me, I always preferred Jeff Beck's version)...
People were shouting "We Love You!" through her entire set, whooping it up in a celebratory party mode, cheering mightily after each song like they new every note (maybe they did, album's been out on import since last fall)...Yael played some new songs as well too including one haunting, emotionally wrenching composition near the end that brought tears to my eyes, as Yael produced a high, keening wail over Afro/Indian percussion--a song that brought one to brink of the Abyss, and then wafted one over to the Other Side, effortlessly...
In fact, I was misty-eyed throughout, to see a strong, assured woman I've known and admired for many years, who has struggled and persevered in this Money Jungle (as the Duke so elegantly put it) without the benefit of even indie label support (she recorded most of her new album on her own dime in her flat in Paris on a hard drive, with the help of the excellent percussionist/bandleader/producer West Indian born David Donatien, who did a phenomenal job capturing the essence of Yael Naim's heartfelt, whimsical, and tantalizing musical persona)--to see her now reap the rewards of all that sacrifice and hard work is incredibly gratifying to me (and to Caroline, who fell in love with Yael the instant she came out onstage)...
My only regret is that she didn't play "Shelcha" from her new album, I fell in love with this song when she played me an early version in her Paris apartment back a couple springs ago, after cooking a delicious dinner for me (musical savoir-faire is but one of her gifts )-- lease check out this song, it moves me so much every time I hear it (in fact I just selected it as one of my Top 15 Celebrity Picks for Rhapsody)...
The local media chose not to cover this show (because Yael got too successful too fast, thanks to the exposure from Apple? Six years spent in limbo between albums is a mighty long way down rock 'n roll, folks)--but the bloggers at SXSW (where she performed 2 well-received shows last weekend), and in New York (hehe), managed to get the word out just fine--as did Conan O'Brien, who rushed onstage after Yael's performance on his show Thursday night to hail her as "amazing!"...
After her set there was a lovely afterparty downstairs in the bar area, where label brass including Tot ou Tard's Vincente Frerebeau mingled Yael and her crack ensemble (her band is excellent!) and some of their old friends--including beautiful Israeli ambient dance chanteuse Anath and her guy, Chilean keyboard whiz Pablo Vergara, also Israeli singer Din Din Aviv who is currently on tour in the States...
Seems like female Jewish singers are taking over the world (again)--Amy Winehouse kind of kicked things off in a big way (you could say!) last year, the sensational Barbara Streisand came out of retirement to tour again...and the superb Carole King (one of the greatest songwriters of all time) was spotted as a guest on Stephen Colbert's show this week looking and playing magnificently as ever (her album "Tapestry" is about to be re-released)...
Plus--a show based on Russian Jewish New York wunderkind Laura Nyro's astonishing body of work played in NYC recently... Laura--my alltime favorite-- had one of the greatest stone soul voices of all time, writing hits for Streisand, the Fifth Dimension, Three Dog Night, and Blood Sweat and Tears while still in high school, songs that broke all rules of the time, mingling Tin Pan Alley with jazz, blues, r &b, and swinging girl group savvy, with lyrical subject matter touching on drug addiction, feminism, same-sex love...check out "Wedding Bell Blues", "And When I Die", "Stoned Soul Picnic", "Stoney End"...
and of course..
"Eli's Coming"...
xxLove
Gary
ps Check out this clip from national Israeli TV of my friend and collaborator, the super-talented and lovely Ninet Tayeb, the first winner of Israeli's Pop Idol program, performing and recording an unreleased song I wrote with Jeff Buckley ("No One Must Find You Here") here in NYC with me recently.
Gary and Yael Naim, Paris | Click to enlarge
Yael Naim at the Bowery Ballroom last Wednesday night delivered one of the most soaring, uplifting concerts I've attended since I caught Joanna Newsom at Pop Montreal a couple years ago...she bounded out onstage with an infectious grin, her long black tresses flying, dressed in a fetching purple number with holes cut in strategic places (she is quite the babe, let's face it) and for the next hour or so mesmerized the packed to overflowing crowd (house had sold-out ages ago) with selections from her eponymous new album, just out on Atlantic/Tot ou Tard here...
The crowd ecstatically responded as One from the get-go, there were palpable waves of excitement coursing through the BB, and Yael was in superlative Voice throughout--she has one of the loveliest voices I've ever heard, such fantastic control and range--and she was Right There throughout, opening with her song "Paris" in Hebrew (a language which sung by Yael sounds amazingly soulful and seductive to my ears), finger picking her guitar, caressing her piano keyboard (girl was classically trained for 10 years), delivering a set that included material from her first album "In a Man's Womb" all the way to her current massive hit single "New Soul", the Mac Air Book theme, now poised to crack the Top 50 of Billboard's Hot 100 chart any minute--it's been downloaded over 550,000 times on iTunes in the US alone to date, making it the biggest ever French single to hit America since Paul Mauriat's "Love is Blue" (true)--(didya know the whole "Love is Blue" theme was lifted directly from the second and fifth movements of Prokofiev's "Lieutenant Kije Suite"? Me, I always preferred Jeff Beck's version)...
People were shouting "We Love You!" through her entire set, whooping it up in a celebratory party mode, cheering mightily after each song like they new every note (maybe they did, album's been out on import since last fall)...Yael played some new songs as well too including one haunting, emotionally wrenching composition near the end that brought tears to my eyes, as Yael produced a high, keening wail over Afro/Indian percussion--a song that brought one to brink of the Abyss, and then wafted one over to the Other Side, effortlessly...
In fact, I was misty-eyed throughout, to see a strong, assured woman I've known and admired for many years, who has struggled and persevered in this Money Jungle (as the Duke so elegantly put it) without the benefit of even indie label support (she recorded most of her new album on her own dime in her flat in Paris on a hard drive, with the help of the excellent percussionist/bandleader/producer West Indian born David Donatien, who did a phenomenal job capturing the essence of Yael Naim's heartfelt, whimsical, and tantalizing musical persona)--to see her now reap the rewards of all that sacrifice and hard work is incredibly gratifying to me (and to Caroline, who fell in love with Yael the instant she came out onstage)...
My only regret is that she didn't play "Shelcha" from her new album, I fell in love with this song when she played me an early version in her Paris apartment back a couple springs ago, after cooking a delicious dinner for me (musical savoir-faire is but one of her gifts )-- lease check out this song, it moves me so much every time I hear it (in fact I just selected it as one of my Top 15 Celebrity Picks for Rhapsody)...
The local media chose not to cover this show (because Yael got too successful too fast, thanks to the exposure from Apple? Six years spent in limbo between albums is a mighty long way down rock 'n roll, folks)--but the bloggers at SXSW (where she performed 2 well-received shows last weekend), and in New York (hehe), managed to get the word out just fine--as did Conan O'Brien, who rushed onstage after Yael's performance on his show Thursday night to hail her as "amazing!"...
After her set there was a lovely afterparty downstairs in the bar area, where label brass including Tot ou Tard's Vincente Frerebeau mingled Yael and her crack ensemble (her band is excellent!) and some of their old friends--including beautiful Israeli ambient dance chanteuse Anath and her guy, Chilean keyboard whiz Pablo Vergara, also Israeli singer Din Din Aviv who is currently on tour in the States...
Seems like female Jewish singers are taking over the world (again)--Amy Winehouse kind of kicked things off in a big way (you could say!) last year, the sensational Barbara Streisand came out of retirement to tour again...and the superb Carole King (one of the greatest songwriters of all time) was spotted as a guest on Stephen Colbert's show this week looking and playing magnificently as ever (her album "Tapestry" is about to be re-released)...
Plus--a show based on Russian Jewish New York wunderkind Laura Nyro's astonishing body of work played in NYC recently... Laura--my alltime favorite-- had one of the greatest stone soul voices of all time, writing hits for Streisand, the Fifth Dimension, Three Dog Night, and Blood Sweat and Tears while still in high school, songs that broke all rules of the time, mingling Tin Pan Alley with jazz, blues, r &b, and swinging girl group savvy, with lyrical subject matter touching on drug addiction, feminism, same-sex love...check out "Wedding Bell Blues", "And When I Die", "Stoned Soul Picnic", "Stoney End"...
and of course..
"Eli's Coming"...
xxLove
Gary
ps Check out this clip from national Israeli TV of my friend and collaborator, the super-talented and lovely Ninet Tayeb, the first winner of Israeli's Pop Idol program, performing and recording an unreleased song I wrote with Jeff Buckley ("No One Must Find You Here") here in NYC with me recently.
posted by Gary Lucas at 4:46 PM
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