So, Nancy Ajram isn’t actually an obscure artist – the Lebanese pop star is a big deal in her home country supposedly, but for us non-Arabic Westerners, she is considerably less known. But here’s a good question: why is a blog that focuses on indie rock blogging about a straight up pop artist? Well, because Lebanese pop is far enough removed from our version of pop that some of it actually sounds pretty cool.

I only know a couple of Ajram’s songs, but there are two in particular that I’ve become a bit addicted to and wanted to blog about. The first one is “Fi Hagat”, which is a sprawling melodramatic masterpiece, alternating between soft, sensual sections and something of a smooth grind, all throughout managing to be hugely melodic and brilliantly colourful. From watching the video (which has 32+ million hits on youtube) I gather the song is about romance or something, but I really have no idea (I can only hope it’s not a song about hating Jews ). And Ajram’s Arabic make the vocals sound smooth and, again, amazingly sensual.

The second song of hers I’ve found that really impressed me was “Kol Ma Teddy”, a straight up electronic dance floor banger. So what makes this any different than the typical dance bangers we hear in North America? Mainly the glistening, gliding Middle Eastern-strings that punctuate the song amidst bright, bubbly synths. By any standard, this is beautiful, well produced, and well arranged tune-smithery. I’ve been listening to these songs for weeks and figured it was high time I posted something about them, so here.

Unfortunately, not all of Ajram’s music is as good as this: a lot of her songs really do sound like plastic crap with lame production, but I do encourage others to dig through the considerable amount of stuff she’s released and if you want, let me know what else to check out.

When I go to new places I like to find out about local music that perhaps I haven’t heard about in Toronto (where I lived up until last week). Though I’ve been to Israel six times before this one and investigated the music scene and history, I haven’t been able to find much good stuff. It’s a small country with more important things on its mind, no doubt. But I have discovered some really good bands that I’ve also blogged about; most notably Rockfour, whose last album HaOlam HaMufla (The Wonderful World) I consider a masterpiece by all standards and regardless of language.

A couple days ago I saw Danny Sanderson play a sunrise set as part of Tel Aviv’s White Night, and found myself really digging some of the songs. In particular, there was one song that had a killer chorus with awesome harmonies, so I started looking into Sanderson’s back catalogue and biography in an attempt to figure out what song it was exactly. I found that Sanderson had actually first come to fame as part of the Israeli rock/pop band Kaveret, so I started listening to some of their songs on YouTube, and the more I listened the more I was blown away. Every song I listened to was great – great hooks, clever lyrics (from what I could understand, at least), sharp arrangements, interesting time signatures and tempos, humour, heartbreak, etc. Now I was really interested.

As it turned out, Kaveret was only around for three years – ’73-76 –  and within that period of time they released as many albums. There’s no direct equivalent of them in anglophone rock, but the closest I can think of would be The Beatles, as Kaveret was hugely popular, featured numerous great singers and songwriters who almost all went on to have successful post-Kaveret careers in music, dabbled in numerous styles, and are loved by the older generation that grew up with them, as well as the younger ones that grew up with only their recorded legacy and sporadic reunion shows. On the other hand, they’re totally different because they don’t have nearly as extensive or consistent a discography as The Beatles do, and a huge part of their act and Israeli appeal was their humour, which they presented both in songs and skits. I can’t understand it well enough due to the language barrier, but I’m told it’s an essential aspect of the band.

The first two albums feature some phenomenal songs, like the classic night closer “Yo Ya” and the Eurovision entry “Natati La Chayim” (I Gave Her My Life), but aren’t that consistent quality-wise. The third album, 75′s “Stafuf BaOzen” (Crammed In The Ear), is the masterpiece, with fourteen incredible songs running the gamut from what sounds like children’s music to intimate organ-ic tracks to latin-fusion to joke-ey tracks and more, with none sacrificing compositional strength for novelty in the slightest.

Unfortunately, despite all my searching I didn’t find the song I was looking for – if any Israelis read this and think they know they song I’m talking about (it’s the one with the chorus that’s like “da da da da da da davar pashooooot, da da da da da da pachoooooooooooo, ooooooo, oooooot”) [update: it's this song] please let me know what it is! But even if I can’t find it, I found a ton of other great tracks along the way, and hopefully now you, reading this, will find them too

Hickey – Bad Things Will Happen

Hickey – The Only Lesbian In Oklahoma, Ok

When I was in Brooklyn this week, I went to my favourite record store in the world, Academy Records, and they had one album on the wall with a little note on it saying that it was like “the single most important punk lp ever.” So of course I was curious about it and checked the band out online. Turns out this band Hickey is a punk band from San Fran that existed in the mid-90s, released some stuff, and developed a cult following before and after the death of their lead singer Matty Luv. The album was Various States Of Disrepair, a complete recordings collection.

Other than that, I can’t find too much interesting info about the band, except that some members were in a Florida punk band before and bla bla bla.

The music is kind of thrashy but the chord changes have a melodic sensibility to them – the vocals not so much. They’re usually screamed and slurred in this Darby Crash-esque style, except maybe a bit more palatable. They’re pretty fun, and Matty Luv‘s lyrics are often just downright funny.

After listening to Various States Of Disrepair, I don’t think they made the most important punk LP ever (assembled), but I do think they made some awesome noise, and it seems as though they got better as time went on, assuming the LP is constructed in a somewhat chronological order.