Aviv Geffen - Achshav Meunan
On July 9, 1993, Aviv Geffen and "The Mistakes" released their second album, "Achshav Meunan" ("It's Cloudy Now").
If you're around our age, chances are you once shouted "We're a fucked-up generation" until you ran out of breath. Those words emerged from a song about a family falling apart and became a rallying cry for an entire audience. But remembering only the shout means overlooking everything that kept us listening long after it faded. The love songs, the hurt, the fear of being left alone, and the melodies we knew by heart before we understood how sad they were.
A year earlier, at eighteen, Aviv Geffen had released "It's Just the Moonlight", produced by Moshe Levy and backed by Haim Shemesh of "Hed Arzi". It featured "A Billion Mistakes", "Moonlight", "We're Both Equal" and "Last Night", but success did not come immediately. His live performances and appearances in the television series "A Matter of Time" helped him reach teenage listeners, and his audience gradually grew. Only after the second album's breakthrough did his debut receive the recognition it deserved.
Israeli rock was thriving at the time, loud and intimately connected to its audience. The "Roxanne" club was a meeting place for bands and fans, with little distance between the musicians onstage and the crowd pressed against it. In that environment, Geffen developed a presence that was impossible to ignore. His makeup, clothes and deeply personal songs provoked resistance, but for the teenagers attending his shows, they also offered permission to be different, confused and vulnerable.
His family life is woven directly into the songs. His parents' separation and the move to Tel Aviv found their way into the title track, while his breakup with Karin Ophir and new relationship with Ilana Berkovitch also shaped the material. Rather than placing fictional characters between himself and his experiences, Geffen sang as close to his own life as possible. That intimacy can feel almost uncomfortable, sometimes cruel, but it explains why so many listeners felt he was saying things on their behalf that they could never bring themselves to say at home.
Alongside his desire to push boundaries, he was learning from experienced musicians. Shalom Hanoch was an important mentor, someone who listened to his songs and supported his development as a songwriter. In the studio, Moshe Levy helped give those emotions musical form. That is part of what makes "Achshav Meunan" so compelling. Even beneath the bluntest lyrics, there is a melody you can sing and an arrangement that knows when to push forward and when to leave the voice exposed.
Geffen wrote the words and music for all fourteen songs. Recorded at "DB" and "Hamon" studios, the album was produced by Moshe Levy, with arrangements by Levy, Geffen and "The Mistakes". Guitarist Harel Ben Ami, bassist Shlomi Tzidki and drummer Oded Shachar gave the songs the weight and presence of a band. Levy also played keyboards, guitars, piano, organ and saz. Ofer Meiri contributed musical advice and programming to "The Rag Song" and "Everything Falls Apart". Behind the unruly image were musicians who knew how to serve a song.
The title track, "It's Cloudy Now", opens the album without unnecessary preliminaries. Home, the place that should offer safety, becomes a source of confusion and fear. The guitars and rhythm section sustain the tension, while the repeated title sounds like an attempt to explain something nobody is willing to hear. Then comes the shout. The shift from a family story to the collective "we" of a generation is the moment private distress becomes a shared experience.
Geffen recalled that the shout came spontaneously in the studio. Haim Shemesh suggested replacing the offensive word with a bleep in the radio version, but he refused. It is hard to imagine the song without it, though its force comes from more than the profanity. The preceding verses establish the pain, so when the shout arrives, it feels like an outburst that can no longer be contained rather than a casual attempt to offend.
Next comes "On the Kinneret at Sunrise", opening up a different kind of space. The sleeping bag, the water and the lunar imagery offer somewhere for love to escape, even when the surrounding story is far from peaceful. Moshe Levy's saz gives the arrangement a distinctly local color, and the chorus invites everyone to sing along. After the stifling home of the opening track, you can almost feel the fresh air.
Geffen approaches relationships from several angles without trying to reconcile the contradictions. "Don't Worry" turns seemingly reassuring words into a sting, with melodic verses and a chorus that erupts in anger. "Ilana", by contrast, is a moment of surrender. Written for Ilana Berkovitch, it makes no attempt to conceal dependence or the need for closeness, and the gentle arrangement lets those feelings take center stage. The same singer who hurls accusations in one song can ask for love almost defenselessly in the next.
In "The Rag Song", the balance has already collapsed. It describes a relationship in which one person keeps apologizing even when he is the one being hurt. The catchy melody brings us closer to the humiliation rather than softening it. There is something particularly painful about being able to sing along with that hurt. "Maybe" follows, offering less than two minutes of searching and longing in a stripped-back acoustic setting. On an album so closely associated with defiance, this small moment reminds us how little Geffen needs to move us.
Then comes "Crying on the Grave", a song inseparable from any discussion of the album. Geffen sings about the imagined death of his mother, Nurit, who was alive and even appeared in the video lying in a coffin. That distinction matters. The song confronts the possibility of losing someone close and the tensions within a family, rather than documenting a bereavement that had already occurred. The melody and piano give it the character of a lament, and his voice sounds startlingly young and vulnerable. The decision to visualize that fear in the video is open to debate, but the song itself is difficult to hear with indifference.
The transition to "Falling Leaves" returns the album to its softer melodic side. Geffen's piano and Levy's keyboards allow the sadness to unfold without the title track's eruption. Here, too, he hardly sounds like someone who has made peace with a separation. The beauty of the melody draws us into the sense of loss, making this one of the clearest examples of how central his melodic gift was to the album's success.
In "Love Her", also known as "Love Her - Hate Her", the emotional swings are already there in the title. Love and anger coexist, while Levy's slide guitar adds another color to the arrangement. "Want to Sleep with You" follows with youthful, impatient directness. There is no attempt to dress desire in elevated language. This sequence keeps the album close to the experience of someone still learning what to do with his feelings.
"Everything Falls Apart" takes us back to one of the record's most exposed moments. Geffen describes depression, anxiety and the feeling that he no longer recognizes himself. Ofer Meiri's programming joins the instruments to give the song a different texture, but the confession remains its focus. Here, we can also understand the controversy surrounding his writing. Some listeners found that degree of exposure too difficult, while others heard their own distress being acknowledged.
As the album nears its end, "The Children" returns to the relationship between young people and adults, and the need to be heard. "Once Again" draws us closer with Fender Rhodes and backing vocals before "I Hate" closes the record with a list of provocations. Geffen directs his anger at symbols and ideas that have acquired almost sacred status. The excess is deliberate and occasionally childish. Yet his willingness to leave these words on the record completes the portrait of a twenty-year-old songwriter unwilling to restrain himself.
Not every line on "Achshav Meunan" has aged equally well. Some generalizations now sound simplistic, and the drama sometimes overwhelms the precision. Still, the melodies and the interplay between defiance and vulnerability keep the album alive. Geffen can sound fiercely confrontational, then lower his defenses in the next song. For us, those shifts are what make listening to the whole record so rewarding.
Upon release, the album made Geffen a major star in Israel. It quickly reached gold status with more than 20,000 copies sold and eventually went double platinum with sales exceeding 80,000. In Reshet Gimel's annual chart for the Hebrew year 5753, covering 1992-1993, "Crying on the Grave" placed sixth, "It's Cloudy Now" ninth and "The Rag Song" twentieth. Geffen was named Singer of the Year. The audience known as the "Moonlight Children" had become a force that could no longer be ignored.
The album was dedicated to his friend Nir Spiner, who died in a car accident, adding context to its recurring concern with loss and fear. The songs also found new lives over the years. The title track was adapted into English as "Cloudy Now" and appeared on "Blackfield", the debut album by "Blackfield". In 2018, "Achshav Meunan" was released on vinyl for the first time.
Ultimately, "Achshav Meunan" gave us much more than a phrase to shout at a concert. It connected the turbulence of adolescence to songs we could return to long after that turbulence had subsided. This was the album that turned Aviv Geffen from an intriguing, provocative prospect into a songwriter his audience felt it needed.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music
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