Matisyahu: Shattered- Album Review

Matisyahu: Shattered- Album Review

By T.O. Snob

When I first became aware of Matisyahu I assumed he would be a flash in the pan. Somehow the novelty of a Hasidic Jew who raps to reggae couldn't sustain itself.

Boy was I wrong.

This week saw the release of his new EP Shattered. Consisting of four new songs, the EP is a precursor to his forthcoming full length album Light (due in early 2009).

Much of the EP was recorded in Jamaica, and the island vibe is rife throughout the tracks. Matisyahu was joined by Jamaican reggae rhythm combo Sly & Robbie on drum and bass.

The lead-off track "Smash Lies" is the most hip hop song. Opening with banjo and string samples it quickly falls into a groovy hip hop beat over which Matisyahu lays down reggae infused vocals.

The standout song on the EP is "So Hi So Lo". The most rock(ish) track, it is lifted by bright, hopeful vocals and an easy-going mellow ska lilt worthy of Sublime. Speaking of ska, one of the all-time greats, Norwood Fisher of Fishbone fame, joins Matisyahu on the song.

"Two Child One Drop" is an intriguing song. Beginning with the island vibe that permeates much of Shattered, the 6-minute track eventually morphs into a middle eastern style outro.

While I'm still not sold on Matisyahu's ability to stay interesting and vital over the long term, Shattered is a decent feel good EP.

Best track: "Si Hi So Lo"

Track listing for Shattered:

• Smash Lies- MP3
• So Hi So Lo
• Two Child One Drop
• I Will Be Light

Matisyahu plays the Phoenix in Toronto on Nov. 16th and Metropolis in Montreal on Nov. 17th.

6.5

Review: Matisyahu’s new EP Shattered

Matisyahu strays too far from genre on new EP

by Michael Merline
Thursday, October 23, 2008

Matisyahu’s new EP Shattered is awfully short at only four songs and 18 minutes — but that’s a good thing. The accurately titled Shattered plays like a bad stepping stone between albums and should be treated as such.

It’s not that Matisyahu or his cast of bandmates are inherently bad musicians. In fact, that’s pretty far from the case. Matisyahu’s sometimes hard-to-find first album, Shake of the Dust…Arise, is notable for some truly novel moments and at representing a time in the Hasidic-Jewish reggae artist’s career when his lyrics and unique image didn’t feel tired or gimmicky.

But it’s been a solid live album, a mainstream LP that embraced syrupy production and finally a questionable remix-EP since then, and Shattered doesn’t suggest Matisyahu is going to return to that more hypnotic reggae sound. Instead, he just keeps pumping out the pop and not the well thought-out kind. These four new tracks, namely the likely single candidate “So Hi, So Lo,” are overproduced and feel dubiously canned. And who says “So Lo” and honestly expects success?

The moments of hypnotic dancehall digression that marked Shake and make up much of Matisyahu’s more satisfying live performances barely make appearances here. “Smash Lies” trudges along over a tinny drum-line that sounds like it’s pulled straight from a bad 50 Cent outtake, but at least the song’s refrain does shed a few layers of gloss. The whole track should have had that feel, and it’s a damn shame.

Matisyahu seems to have lost all his reggae charm that — for the same reasons Matisyahu was once more intriguing — got everybody and their cousin to buy Bob Marley’s Legend. Shattered moves away from the grimy authenticity inherent in reggae as a genre and instead embraces a soulless digital touch.

And it doesn’t help that Matisyahu’s moralist religious lectures are getting harpy and uninspired instead of refreshingly spiritual and sophisticated. His fun vocal stylings do come through in varying ways on “Two Child One Drop.” If only he didn’t ruin that satisfying moment with such banal lyrics as “These are the demons that come through my life/ They’ve killed me over 1000 times.” For the third studio release in a row, Matisyahu ends on a whiny note (“I Will Be Light” this time around), again asking an unsympathetic frat-party audience to heed his preaching.

Sure, the religious aspect is supposed to be the point of Matisyahu’s music, but people really just want to hear some quality reggae. His nods to traditional Jewish folk music are admirable but sound so out of place mixed with electronic beats and synths that they’re hard to take seriously.

As for the not-so-serious stuff, the few instances of Matisyahu’s beatboxing abilities present on Shattered are buried beneath suffocating production. They sadly feel like poorly-executed afterthoughts when they could have supplied some much needed organic sound — sonic fresh-air — to these new tracks.

Matisyahu’s style is still interesting, but it’s getting less unique. For this reason, the bearded rocker in the black steeple-hat shines in a live format but lets his work get mangled in the studio. Matisyahu is trying to lighten up, which isn’t a bad thing, but adding more and more polish and straying from slinky reggae song structures is going about it the wrong way.

It’s not that Shattered is totally unlistenable. In fact, it spins to a finish before you know it. But its faults keep it from being something worth returning to, and it doesn’t suggest promise for Matisyahu’s next full-length. Another concert recording is in order for Mr. Miller — maybe in the process of putting that out he can get back to his roots and recall what made him a novelty that lasted in the first place.

Matisyahu review

Hi all, I usually don't do this, but I would like to share with you an interesting comment (see original page) from this guy called Avalon. Feel free to read his comment and my response. Please, add you opinion too, I would very much like to hear other thoughts too.

Avalon said...
I just saw Matisyahu on the PBS series "The Jewish Americans". I had heard of him, but I have never seen him perform or heard his music and lyrics. Intrigued, I read about him in Wikipedia and was curious to read his lyrics, so here I am. I am Jewish gay man in his early 60s. My parents were Polish Jews, lefties, who survived the Holocaust by fleeing to Portugal. They came to Canada in 1944, and I was born in 1945. I have never been a fan of Hip Hop or Rap Music. It's much too angry for me; it's not lyrical. It's homophobic, macho posturing, embraces gun culture and violence against women. I actually find it to be ugly music and I never listen to it. I do love reggae, Bob Marley. I find Matisyahu's lyrics narcissistic: it's all about him and his spiritual journey. I also find his lyrics unfocused and incoherent. He seems more interested in coming up with a rime at the expense of any meaning. The odd image is good, but too personal for this reader to understand. Using that other Jew, Bob Dylan, as a measuring stick, his lyrics hardly measure up. Using Bob Marley as a touchstone, his lyrics don't measure up either. I haven't heard Matusyahu's music, so maybe his focus is more on music than lyrics. Nevertheless, as an idea, I do find what Matisyau is doing very interesting: combining Chasidic music with reggae and rap. Obviously, a Jewish gay man in his early 60s is not his target audience. Maybe someone of Tony Kushner's vintage would be less critcial than I am.

Here is my reply:
First of all, thank you for your honest comment. I have a few things to say:

1. Narcissistic? Telling the world about his spiritual journey is being narcissistic? I don't think so, and saying: "it's all about him and his spiritual journey", is just not true, you obviously did not read the lyrics of other songs, go to the Matisyahu lyrics page and read some other lyrics, like Jerusalem, Exaltation, Dispatch the Troops and others.

2. Rimes are important in hip hop and rap.

3. You have never heard Matisyahu? It's your lucky day; you can download Matisyahu music legal and free from eMusic.

4. I would like to hear your opinion once you have listened to his music.

5. You are right: "a Jewish gay man in his early 60s is not his target audience", that is if you feel like one. Some other 60 year old people with a young spirit might enjoy it.

Matisyahu: “Youth” review

Matisyahu: “Youth” review

by S Shirazi | February 20, 2007

Matthew Miller was a Jewish stoner who dropped out of high school in upstate New York to follow the hippie jam-band Phish around the country. He grew his hair in dreadlocks and listened to Grateful Dead tapes. After finishing his studies at a wilderness school in Oregon, where he rapped at open mikes and practiced beatboxing in his bedroom, he moved to New York to attend college at the lefty-alternative New School. Sometime around 2001, he was approached by a Lubavitcher in Washington Square Park and subsequently converted to Orthodox Judaism.

Miller now fronts a rap-reggae band under his Hebrew name Matisyahu, performing in full Hasidic garb: a black hat, untrimmed beard, and long black suit jacket and trousers. His first album, Shake off the Dust and Arise, was released on the non-profit label JDub records and is currently out of print for contractual reasons. Though much of it is musically pretty generic, it feels solid and has a kind of purity to it, as if it were a lost piece from another era. There's something charming about it, especially the beauty of Miller's voice as he sings and chants.

His second album, Youth, was produced by NYC veteran Bill Laswell and released by Sony last year. More of a pop-hybrid, it quickly sold a few hundred thousand units. I have seen Matisyahu referred to several times as a superstar, which is undoubtedly an exaggeration, but his odd backstory does make great copy; he has been the subject of numerous magazine profiles, including one in Rolling Stone. Critics seem to agree that he is a genuine talent, not a novelty act, though Pitchfork came in heavily on the backlash at first, measuring him against the high standard of his Jamaican source material instead of gauging him more appropriately against bands with similar influences such as UB40, The Red Hot Chili Peppers or Rage Against The Machine.

Matisyahu has two singles which made the Billboard charts, “Jerusalem” and “King Without a Crown.” The refrain of the former is “Jerusalem, if I forget you, let my right hand forget what it's supposed to do.” This is a magnificent and haunting lyric. My first take on it was: I am a warrior for Israel and carry my weapon in my strong right hand and I must never stop fighting for my people.

After a few more listenings, I took its meaning somewhat more broadly, as a lamentation of age: If I forget my past and my origins, may I be crippled. If I forget my true self, may my own body betray me as punishment.

Maybe there's something wrong with me, but this song makes me cry so hard I think I'm going to vomit. Why should it be so moving? I suppose it is sad to be reminded that we live in a world in which a person can forget even the thing they hold most dear. Family, friends, youthful dreams, whatever is forsaken must eventually be forgotten as well.

Perhaps it is even sadder to me because I don't know what my own right hand is good for anymore besides jerking off in the shower. When my daughter was two I used to feed her yogurt with a spoon but now she can feed herself. I still hold her hand for safety when we are in a parking lot or going down the stairs, her extended index finger wrapped in my grasp or mine in hers — it always makes me think of a “pig in a blanket”-- but when she outgrows this I fear my hand will have little left to do but shred junk mail and tear open bills.

I have no idea what I should be working on: another blog entry, a short story, a longer essay, some kind of publishable book. I'm not sure either of these hands ever knew what they were supposed to do. Did I forget my Jerusalem or never know it? Have I forgotten it once or a thousand times?

But isn't every Jerusalem lost the moment it becomes a symbol of something other than itself? Isn't a person lost the moment they have an emotional reaction to a mythic name, forgetting their actual hometown or the actual place where they are currently living?

Part of the figure's pathos comes from the employment of prosopoiea and catechresis, i.e. speaking as if one's hand were a person who could forget, when actually only a brain or mind can do so. The wrongness of this subliminally and fatally stacks the deck against memory's prospects: of course the hand will forget, dummy, because hands can't remember in the first place. The metaphor works in part by not working, by its awkwardness. It is programmed to fail, like a chassis meant to crumple in a crash or a windshield that will shatter to reduce injury.

Since the 19th Century, modern religion has tried to salvage itself by turning doubt into the central religious experience instead of faith, by feeding off of doubt as a noble and hysterical species of suffering, peddling agony as a replacement for grace, making doubt into a divine punishment for unworthiness and into a punishment for doubt itself. The lyric partakes of this strategic self-flagellation.

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Matisyahu review

Matisyahu review

Andrew Drever
July 14, 2006

You'd think he'd be used to it by now, but US Hasidic reggae star Matisyahu was taken aback by the reaction in Portugal recently.

Although afforded a near-messianic reception by fans at his shows, a 6' 5" Jewish singer-rapper in traditional Hasidic garb of black suit, white shirt, long beard and black hat - the same uniform he wears on stage each night - is still something of a novelty in Lisbon.

"We had a tremendous turnout at our concert for our first time there," he says, while between concerts in London, "but when I walked down the street, I got two reactions. People either recognised me, because there's no one else in Portugal who looks anything like me, or they think an alien just walked off the spaceship and is walking down the street. They kind of got freaked out. When I'm in Europe, England, Spain or Portugal, it's so in-your-face! You really begin to realise why Jews started cutting their beards and not wearing their yarmulkes. You stand out, and you know what it feels like to be a minority, because you get people looking at you and feeling that you're strange."

Described by Rolling Stone magazine as "the strangest thing to climb the Billboard charts this year", Matisyahu cuts a striking figure, and his unusual look has piqued the curiosity of many music fans.

His breakthrough live album Live at Stubb's has sold 500,000 copies and went top 40 on the album charts in the US, and his latest, Youth, went to number four. His relentless gigging and impassioned, uplifting shows have converted a secular audience to his unique Hasidic reggae sound.

Still dismissed by detractors as a novelty act despite being America's biggest reggae star, Matisyahu is cautious about revealing his theories on his success.

"Some people would say that this is oversimplifying it," he says, "but I think the bottom line is that my music speaks to people. Music touches people, hopefully, and that's why there's a response."

An orthodox Jew doing reggae music is unusual, and reggae purists aren't yet convinced by him, but Matisyahu is unconcerned with appeasing that audience.

"I think that my music is different from the typical reggae sound or even the typical dancehall sound you hear coming up right now," he says. "It's a lot different, and we'll continue to make music that's not reggae music necessarily, because we're constantly listening to different styles of music and we don't feel like we owe it to reggae music to have to stay within the lines of what's considered reggae."

Born into a secular Jewish household in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and raised in White Plains, New York, a camping trip to Colorado and subsequent trip to Israel when he was 16 awakened the then Matthew Miller's dormant Jewish identity.

After he dropped out of school and followed US stoner rock group Phish on a US tour, his worried parents sent him to a wilderness school in Oregon that encouraged artistic pursuits. He attended a weekly open-mic session at a coffee shop, where he rapped, sang and beat-boxed.

He continued honing his skills upon his return to New York in the late '90s, finally converting and adopting the observant name Matisyahu (Hebrew for Matthew).

Now with a wife, Tali and baby son, Laivy, he keeps kosher, prays three times a day and observes the traditional Jewish Sabbath from Friday sunset until Saturday sundown, during which time he can't play gigs. He also cannot come into physical contact with women, which has forced him to do away with his famed stage-diving. Arguably, he is still fighting for credibility, but there is a huge interest in his music.

He comes across as a private, serious and somewhat humourless person, although one senses he has been burned by the press before. He was particularly cagey about discussing messages in his lyrics and is reticent about aligning himself with the Lubavitch stream of Judaism, an association he has freely discussed in the past.

"I don't want to be tied to a movement or be the poster boy for anything," he says. "I don't come with a prescribed plan, like I'm going to convert the world to Judaism or something. But I am going to try and influence every Jew that they should come back to religion!

I just try and make music that's ethical and allows people to find their own answers. I think that's the important thing. People have the answers, and they have to come to it themselves, make decisions and be able to come to a place in themselves, and music is one of those tools that can provide that".