At this point in time, the music industry probably needs another "dude with an acoustic guitar flying solo" type artist like it needs a hole in the head. I say that while recognizing that some of the great troubadors in folk music's history have made a huge impact with little other than "four chords and the truth", provided the lyrics and the performance were enough to make up for the stripped-down simplicity. But I'm not one of those people who reveres simplicity for its own sake. There are a number of acoustic-based artists whose music I respect, but most of 'em don't tend to be folk purists - they experiment, layer different instruments, color outside the lines of the genre that got them started in the business. So if you disagree with me and you are a folk purist, then I know the name of one particular South African Israeli New Yorker singer/songwriter that you should probably steer clear of.

For the rest of you who are still reading this, meet Yoav. He's not just some dude with a guitar. He's a dude with a guitar, a laptop, an ear for a catchy beat, and a good deal of ingenuity. His genre of choice is something that I prefer to call "folktronica" - in his case, it's a set of rhythmic and often highly danceable songs that are constructed from nothing but layer upon layer of his voice and acoustic guitar. We're not just talking about frenetic strumming here - you can get something rather intense that mimics the primal nature of rock & roll if you do that right, but Yoav's method seeks to replicate the drums and bass as well, such that his overall aesthetic leans closer to techno and R&B, if you can believe that. He's got a few mellower, pop-oriented ballads, but he seems to take the greatest joy in exploring what sounds his guitar can make when he knocks and bangs on it, or manipulates the strings in various percussive ways.

If you've ever picked up an acoustic guitar, gotten tired of practicing your chord fingerings, and just started messing around with the ways that the wood resonates when different spots on the body of the guitar are struck with you fingers, palms, or various objects, then you've got a little bit of Yoav in you. Not that I'm any good at it, but I've certainly felt that "closet drummer" urge at times, so I'm rather fascinated with this guy's ability to record and manipulate these sounds until they've been precisely interlaced, reconstructing the work of a highly digitized dance hit from the sounds of such a simple, humble little organic instrument. While many of these songs are melodic and incredibly catchy, it almost feels like rhythm is this guy's melody... kind of like how it is in funk music, even if that's not a genre label I'd use to describe Yoav's work.

Given the way in which his music is constructed, it's interesting to me that many of Yoav's lyrics have an almost nihilistic bent to them. Tearing down the superficiality of cliques and celebrity culture, lamenting abandoned dreams and failures to "seize the day", and probing the empty spaces that sit between the distracting and sometimes relentless rhythms. It's a bit claustrophobic at times, truth be told, but then, this music is about building something out of next to nothing. Sometimes you have to tear down the things that are meaningless in order to discover what's meaningful. There are small glimmers of that here and there, so it's not a completely hopeless cycle of songs. But there are times when Yoav's approach runs a bit dry, particularly when the tempos start to slow down later in the disc. Nevertheless, I can appreciate the creative energy that went into nearly every track, all the way down to the rather sparse Pixies cover at the bitter end.

Adore Adore
I got so many names, let Lucifer Longtail suffice
So many faces, so many devices
In the sweet smile of the talk show host
To the suicide celebrity ghost...
It's wonderful how this opening track sneaks up on you, fading in with light, tapping percussion and a barely-there hint of a melody being picked out on the guitar strings. The song is an insidious whisper, a reminder of the omnipresence of a divine being... or really, just a celebrity who thinks he's the Devil in disguise. Yoav plays his role with glee here, detailing his plan to infiltrate every form of media he can think of, with the intent of being "everywhere you did not think I could be" (you know, kind of like those singers who think they can act and those actors who think they can sell perfume and so forth), and commanding us to "Adore, adore, bow down before" in some sort of unholy act of worship, to the tune of an aggressive, angular acoustic chorus. It's wicked stuff. This is the album's standout track, actually.

Club Thing
One thing's for sure, one thing's for certain
That if you get behind the velvet curtain
You'll see that nothing's as sweet as it is on my TV
You need a cold soul of concrete here...
Here Yoav introduces us to the concept of the guitar as a bongo. He uses the body of his trusty acoustic to lay down a somewhat tribal beat, upon which he builds a weird spoken-word piece, almost hip-hop due to the rhythmic flow of the verses, but venturing more into R&B for the chorus, in which he laments the selling of a young girl's soul in his finest falsetto: "What would you say to be paid, to be one of the beautiful? Such a beautiful face... such a beautiful girl." Against all odds, he's come with a very catchy "club tune" here - it may not have the sort of slamming beat you can dance to, but it fit's the seedy, after-hours atmosphere perfectly, and he explores the persona of a man lurking in the shadows, taking note of his innocent prey, waiting to pounce on this naïve girl who simply wants to be accepted by the cool crowd. There's some wicked cool reverb-drenched guitar funk going on in the bridge here, and... did I just say wicked again? Sorry, but you know, if the shoe fits...

Live
Today sees a dawn of a new daylight
I know the last chance, put the loud to light
But if we've got no control of the skin that we're living in
Then tell me, why I can't have another hit of that adrenaline?
Here Yoav starts to get the blood pumping with a quick thump-and-tap rhythm filtered to sound like a techno beat, and it's a strange combination of hushed musing about mortality and haunting, driving rhythm. There's almost no melody to it, save for the zippy, distorted background vocals during the chorus, and a moment of clarity when the beat falls away for a tranquil bridge (perhaps too tranquil - it threatens to kill the momentum of the song) and some more impassioned singing before he goes back to his sprechgesang thing. All of this is essentially to say, we don't know how much life we've got left, so live it up and trip on that adrenaline for all it's worth. Hmm, they could almost use this one in a commercial for Red Bull.

One by One
I did not dream of drifting away
In a boat that was made without heart and mind
And I do not mean, did he slow the tide
To leave me astray in the land where dreams die...
Yoav goes into "ballad mode" for the first time here, and the results aren't bad - he works up a guitar loop that is both melodic and mechanical, and uses a bit of string bending and palm muting to create a distant, spacey sort of backdrop for a reflective song about the tendency of adults to abandon their dreams and turn into lemmings, mindlessly following one another to their eventual demise. It's a song about dreams left unfulfilled, I suppose, and perhaps this "vague overall disenfranchisement with the system" stuff is a bit overplayed in modern music, but I still think it's an affecting song that asks us if we like what we're doing with out lives. Consider it the moodier flipside to the kind of song that Switchfoot might write.

There Is Nobody
All the seas bursting up
The Queen rules the sidewalk
And now I noticed the face of three who didn't notice me
I didn't notice and assumed a God...
Time to light up the dance floor again! Yoav lays down one of his thickest, most bada$$ beats here almost as if he's manipulating the sound of his palm slapping his guitar to sound like a DJ is scratching it back and forth. His guitar chords are in a sharp and sassy mood, insistently bursting out of the speakers right at the beginning of the song, and for the chorus he transitions to more of a trance-like picking pattern. It's a highly addictive song that questions the very nature of existence itself - OK, maybe that description's a bit lofty, but he seems to be wondering whether anybody's really there, really conscious, really anything other than products of his overactive imagination. You can get all philosophical about it or you can just dance. I'm cool with it either way.

Wake Up
In my dream, people are slaves
False prophets on the airwaves
And every channel, every station
Preaches to our separation...
The intro to this song, with its slow earthy beat and its "soulful" vocalizing, really reminds me of the incidental music heard in a typical episode of Boston Legal. This seems like a laid-back tune at first, but it has that same "sneak up on you" tendency as "Adore Adore" did, this time a bit more apocalyptic in its scope, basically pointing out a culture that is undoing itself with its lust for money and fame. "We are religion to the human race", he points out in one particularly haunting verse. He seems to wish that the world would just end and cause all of this exploitation to cease, since he lingers on the thought of how relieving it would be if the empire would tumble and the world would just fade away, out of existence. There might be some strings infiltrating the one-man band as the song builds up to its intense climax and then dissipates... or it might just be a clever sound manipulation that I can't trace. But I think he probably cheated on the "guitar-only" thing once or twice on this album, if I really listen carefully.

Beautiful Lie
All the same, it's a game, it's a play, it's a war
It's a shame that we're always fighting for
I don't mean to cast no blame
I don't intend to pretend that I could never love you more...
This track is another of the album's highlights, and it's strange how captivating Yoav's layering of sound turns out to be here despite the fact that there's almost no "percussive" sound to build a beat off of in this one. It's all strumming and plucking, which is very sparse at the beginning, echoing off into the distance due to the use of guitar delay (imagine The Edge with an acoustic and you'll sort of get the idea). But it starts to pick up gradually, the rapid plucking (and mechanical playback) of each guitar note weighing heavier and heavier on the listener, like a light rain gradually turning into an intense downpour. Yoav whips out the falsetto again as he calls out to a deceptive lover - someone desperately trying to hold on to a relationship even though he can see right through the lie and tell that she really doesn't feel the same way for him any more. It's a cathartic song, one that sends its cry out into the dark, rainy night, knowing it will probably receive no response, but feeling somewhat relieved just by the act of verbalizing the pain.

Angel and the Animal
Breathe in the air for me
You don't know what it feels like to be free
But your innocent experience can lead you astray sometimes...
This is the one song where Yoav gets a little too quiet and sparse for my tastes. It's also the song that seems to reply the least on his ability to make the guitar sound like something else, strumming lightly in much more of an orthodox fashion, with only subtle hints of percussion to provide a bare-bones rhythm. I get a picture of water dripping in a dark, damp cave when listening to this one. There's probably more to decipher amidst this song's scattered poetry than I'm giving it credit for, but the refrain of "Angel and the animal are always in your heart" gets me wondering if this is some sort of an analysis on human nature - the capacity to do something good and benevolent being subverted by the nagging desire to do something purely self-serving. Then again, it could just be a breakup song, a quiet send-off to a girl who looked heavenly enough but did him wrong in the end.

Sometimes...
Sometimes a man is a fool when he thinks he's wise
And he just wants to see the fall with his own eyes...
This is the last of the album's up-tempo "danceable" songs, its rhythm hitting the highest amount of bpm's due to the incessant tapping of Yoav's fingers as they roll across the body of the guitar. This one takes its time to build up, just like you'd expect a good techno song to behave, with the little hints of guitar melody getting tossed in one by one, where synthesizers might normally go. Truth be told, it might take a bit too long to get to the point, but it's an unstoppable force once it does, with Yoav's vocals reaching a fever pitch and another strong "acoustic funk" bridge swooping down to save the day/ The lyrics are really just a big, broad, sweeping cliche about man having to choose whether he’ll live for love or live as a slave to fear - the specifics kind of get lost in the shuffle, as they often do in songs like this that try to capture the essence of the suffering of pretty much every human in existence. With all of the time that this song took to get going, he probably could have stood to explain himself a bit more specifically.

Yeah, the End
And something's always dying, something's always been born
But if something's always been born, that means some things always die
And if no song plays on when this plays out
Then what's the use in trying?
This song takes on an "urban hick" sort of vibe with its crunchy, hip-hop-styled beats colliding with twangy slide guitar antics, which feels like some sort of homage to Beck or something. Remember how I referred to Yoav anticipating the Apocalypse earlier? Here, I think he's trying to ease our fears about it, because now he's settling into a chilled-out groove and keeping his cool as he reminds us not to stress out over the various signs and wonders and the four horsemen looming in the distance. It's mildly amusing, but Yoav doesn't quite have the wit to pull off the irony or the camp factor or whatever he's trying to go for here. The song starts to feels a bit leaden and played out once you're about halfway through it; it just sort of slogs along toward the end as it repeats its chorus.

Where Is My Mind?
I was swimming in the Caribbean
Animals were hiding behind the rocks
Except the little fish, and he told me
He was trying to talk to me...
The album closes with that Pixies cover I mentioned earlier. If you've never heard of The Pixies, they were apparently an alternative band that was around well before "alternative" was cool. They've influenced Radiohead and likely a few other modern greats. You can probably tell that I'm only tangentially familiar with them myself - I've never heard any of their material and I can't compare this cover to the original. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that it's probably a pretty radical genre shift for the song, though - Yoav's version is almost entirely constructed out of the steady, slow pulse of single guitar notes being plucked and then repeating in a syncopated fashion due to the liberal use of guitar display. It's a cool exercise in making something out of almost nothing, but again, I think the novelty kind of fades about halfway through once you're used to the gimmick. The lyrics are definitely going for trippy minimalism as they talk about doing handstands and headspins and talking to fish and so forth, and repeatedly asking the question, "Where is my mind?" It's sort of an anti-climactic way to end the album, but he gets points for experimentation that at least interests me on an academic level.

I think Yoav himself realizes that it might be a bit gimmicky to continue constructing songs out of nothing but his guitar - he's already expressed an interest in expanding to other instruments on future albums. I do like the idea of one guy playing everything in the studio and then playing it all back on top of itself and figuring out how to piece it together electronically, so I hope he doesn't plan to shift to a conventional "rock band" lineup. But I would be interested to hear what he does with an expanded sonic palette. That said, he managed to squeeze more sonic properties out of a single instrument here than I thought possible, and he deserves credit for doing that and making it work in a singer/songwriter context. If you like music that blurs the line between the manic energy of an all-night rave and the mellow, bohemian vibe of the coffeehouse next door, then there's a good chance you'll fall in love with Yoav and his strange, charming way of making music.

ALBUM WORTH:
Adore Adore $2
Club Thing $2
Live $1.50
One by One $1
There Is Nobody $2
Wake Up $1
Beautiful Lie $1.50
Angel and the Animal $.50
Sometimes... $1
Yeah, the End $.50
Where Is My Mind? $1
TOTAL: $14

Websites:
http://www.yoavmusic.com
http://www.myspace.com/yoavmusic

Recommended: Yes