I read a review of this thing somewhere in which the reviewer described trying to tell his friends who Matisyahu is. It read something like, "He's the Hasidic Jewish rapper with a reggae rock band."
And that pretty much sums up the public image he's cultivated on his last few albums, right? This new album presents him as a human being rather than a Jewish rapper; sort of like a Christian rock artist dropping the aspects of faith that are "normally" in their music and just writing about something that pertains to all of us. In fact--though I'd have to look--I suspect there isn't a reference to "god/God" in the entire thing.
So maybe he's aiming for a wider audience. Or maybe he's just evolving as an artist (not in the Darwinian sense but, rather, he's just into writing different stuff at the moment). Maybe this is why the album cover for Light has almost no trace of the traditional Hasidic garb that his previous album, Youth, did.
But that's just me waxing philosophical about how a marketing campaign might be made for someone as "out of the box" as Matisyahu. The bottom line is that Light is incredible.
The first song, "Smash Lies," is my hands-down favorite. It's got this really cool harmonic stacking on "You can listen stereo or monotone/Mega phone, mellow drone DJ with delay" that makes me enthusiastically ball up a fist every time I hear it. Then a few tracks later, in "I Will Be Light," he drops one of those amazing lyrics that just get repeated over and over again: "You got one tiny moment in time for life to shine/Burn away the darkness." It sounds a little preachy when I write it out here but I can assure you that he does it a huge amount of justice in the song.
I'm so glad he finally came out with a new album. It's been over a year since I saw him live so I hope he comes around the Twin Cities some time soon.
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