Yoav / May 2nd, 2008 / Plaza Club / Vancouver, Canada
A
rather innocuous guy, with curly brown hair, dressed in blue jeans and a tee
shirt walked onto the stage at Vancouver’s the Plaza Club on May 2nd. He was
in his bare feet and carrying an acoustic guitar. Not having seen Yoav before,
I was wondering if this was him or one of the road crew simply checking out
his gear. There just was not much that made a big impression on you---until he
started to play and to sing!
By the time, the singer / songwriter started to play his second tune, “There Is Nobody,” a song from his new CD Charmed & Strange, his fans in the mosh pit were swaying and dancing to the mixture of alternative, pop, world percussion and trance beats. Yes, you read that last sentence correctly. Yoav’s blending of diverse musical elements is far from being gimmicky, because he is a good guitarist, who does need to depend on such cheap tricks. He simply possesses good songwriting and arranging sensibilities and knows how to make this work, and work well.
On his myspace website, Yoav, who originally hailed from Capetown South Africa, and who has also laid his head in England and Canada, describes his music as Beck meets Buckley meets Bjork. On some of his more mellow tunes, his melodies reflect the John Butler Trio’s, “Peaches And Cream,” and parallel universes for Yoav and Bjork emerge, when you draw comparisons to songs such as Bjork’s unplugged, “Come To Me.”
Yoav’s music is so subtle and laidback, that it would be easy for one to overlook his vocal abilities. He can however, hold his own, and he performed a nice falsetto on the dance groove, “Club Thing,” while being backed by tabla beats. “Club Thing,” is aptly titled, for we suspect that this song will be spun in dance clubs for a long time to come.
“Where Is My Mind,” is a song which projects Yoav as a grittier version of John Mayer. Darker tones cover, “Wasteland Waltz,” a song whose lyrics suggest a personal apocalyptic moment for our boy in bare feet. He plots with his conspirators to escape the concrete jungle, to a place where he supposes he can breathe easier, and exorcise his metropolitan demons. “Wasteland Waltz,” is available as a bonus track on the U.K. release of
His finger picking produced more pronounced guitar riffs for, “Adore, Adore,” a song that possesses dark lyrics and channels the Nine Inch Nails.
Darker overtones to some of Yoav’s songs stand juxtaposed to his onstage persona as the harmless, innocent guy you wish your daughter would bring home, next time she tells you that she has a new boyfriend.
Yoav played the Astoria in London, England on the 15th of May and in Brighton, England on the 16th. He appears at Toronto’s Mod Club on May 29th and New York City’s Pianos on June 3rd, before heading back across the pond, for gigs in Denmark and Moscow.
All photos by Joe Montague, protected by copyright©
Reviewed May 2nd, 2008
Riveting Riffs wishes to thank Live Nation for making it possible for us to review this Gig
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