It’s been a long time since I have written about Eyal Erlich, but it is great to hear that not only has he not lost any of his charm and songwriting prowess, but, as hoped, given that our last encounter was seven years ago, his music-making has gone from strength to strength.
The four tracks that have come my way are all in the form of videos of live performances, which is, perhaps, the best way to get a real feel for an artist. Studio recordings can often be a sleight of hand on the part of the artist, with all manner of tricks available to them; who knows how close those renderings might be to the live experience? Also, a live performance is just that —a performance —and the format not only shows us an artist in action, but it also puts us in the room with them, allowing us to look them in the eye, gauge their sonic personality, their charisma, and their…well, their ability to perform!
“Already In” is a great place to start, although joined by drums, bass, and a second guitar, the song remains relatively unadorned for the most part, sonic shards are lightly floated around Eyal’s emotive performance and soaring vocals and eventually just enough bass and back beat pick up the momentum, but none of this ever gets in the way of the delicacy at the heart of the song. And that is the key to the music that he makes. Less is indeed more.
“Jenny” is a strange hybrid of the upbeat and the sonically shaded, a blend of reflective lyrics and an interesting sonic ebbs and flows. Again, the additional tones and textures merely frame a singer-songwriter performance, with deft and dexterous guitar runs and melodic basslines doing just enough to both propel and underpin the performance.
And proving that space is an instrument in its own right, “I Wish I Knew” is as much built on the atmospheres that linger between the passages, the sonic moods that pool and percolate at the end of the lyrical lines, as from the instrumentation itself. And, rather than making the song feel more ambient or fleeting, it actually hits harder, deeper, laying on us an emotive weight, evoking intangible feelings that are as much about our own lives as the story being told by the performers.
The last track is “All in All”, a brilliantly bluesy number that is so confident in its own charms and musical guile that it takes nearly two minutes making its presence felt before the vocals are ushered in. And even when they are, the electric guitar simply serves as an additional eloquent voice, establishing a six-string dialogue with Eyal’s calming yet cascading vocals.
What a sensational set of songs, what a great band —a band that understands the art of serving the song rather than massaging the ego, other bands take note! And, even though I have only experienced these songs via the audio-visual medium of video, what a fantastic performance they capture: subtle, seductive, and sublime.
