BY SAMMY LOREN
How do you review a musician like Matisyahu? Does he perform Jewish music or music exploring Jewish themes? Is he a Jewish artist or an artist who happens to be a Hasidic Jew? Does any of it even matter? These conundrums plagued me throughout Matisyahu's al fresco concert Friday at the Crossroads at Grinders.
When Matisyahu and his quartet hit the stage promptly at 6:30 p.m., the low end struck first. Warm, languid and laconic. Next the drummer punched in the backbeat tighter than a coiled rattlesnake. By the time the guitarists began picking through the melancholic harmonies of "Aish Tamid," I figured not too much had changed since I saw (and reviewed) Matisyahu in 2005.
That they were still a charming group of guys - one an ultra-orthodox Jew with antediluvian facial hair, side curls, and yarmulke - who played catchy reggae music. But surely as the sun began to set and the Jewish Sabbath approached on Friday eve, the changes that happen to any artist surfaced.
His group had put on weight. Added to the slim original lineup were a rhythm guitarist and a keyboardist. Their set list has two more studio albums from which to draw. The stage and audience had swelled. He had grayed. Likewise, his songwriting, though still rooted in reggae, but with a bolder sense of structure, has mellowed. Though critics lauded his new album as experimental, the show at Grinders was by and large flaccid. The music was all at once poppier, jam-bandy, and longwinded.
This became most apparent when he waded through "One Day," the single on his forthcoming album, Light. It strikes a more universal tone than his earlier work, whose themes tended to be as Semitically-inclined as a slice of gefilte fish:
All my live I've been waiting for
I've been praying for
for the people to say
that we don't wanna fight no more
they'll be no more wars
and our children will play
one day
Now, there's nothing wrong with Matisyahu secularizing this prophetic message. If he started as a Jewish artist and segues into an artist who happens to be Jewish, he has every right to, and I believe, should do so. All great artists share a chameleon's sense of the transformative.
Matisyahu Miller, who was raised by his secular family as Matthew and later became an observant Jew, understands transformations. Nevertheless, these lyrics, while appropriate for a Bono UN speech, have no place in what should be the more emotionally and morally complex world of music. It's not just lyrics. The composition on paeans such as "One Day," while more daring than his earlier work, suffers from an over-polish: synths, strings, and other anthemic culprits of overproduction.
Compared with the closer, "King Without a Crown," the breakout single from 2004's Shake Off The Dust...ARISE, "One Day" - and most of the entire set for that matter - felt lazy and waylaid. Maybe "King Without a Crown" is simply a better song than "One Day," but only when he broke into this workhorse crowd pleaser did his own concert-length stupor subside as he finally spun and shuffled across the stage like a windstorm, spurting the praises of a born-again believer:
What's this feeling?
My love will rip a hole in the ceiling
I give myself to you from the essence of my being and I
Sing to my god, songs of love and healing
I want Moshiach now
From wanting the Messiah now, a quotidian refrain among Hasidic Jews (moschiach in Hebrew), to sounding like my anarcho-communist friends marks a significant difference. Or maybe it doesn't. Perhaps both dreams take a certain dosage of blind faith. In any case, I haven't seen any of his other concerts this tour, but gone from his shtick are the signature sermons about King David, Jerusalem, and other biblical tall tales. Matisyahu remains an inquisitive and talented musician, but assimilating musically seems to have watered down his earlier intensity.
With Iran in flames, Israel/Palestine smoldering, and the American Bible beaters stuck in the boonies, most agree that church and state don't mix. But what about church (or synagogue in this instance) and music? After witnessing Matisyahu's forays into the realm of the Godless, the verdict remains undecided.
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