"Eifo HaYeled?" second album, "it's the younger and more complicated but perhaps deeper brother of the debut album "Sugar Time" which was released on May 29, 1994.
In the early 1990s when the whole world was getting rock into the mainstream with rough distortions, loud drums, bouncing bass, and roars with moving lyrics. The Israeli audience also wanted his fair share and bands like "Doctor Casper's Rabbit Show", "Eifo HaYeled", "HaYehudim", "Nosey HaMigbaat" and many others managed to make headlines, on radio and television (true, not all, and not equally) and "Eifo HaYeled?" was one of them.
After the release of their debut album "Sugar Time" in 1993, produced by Yuval Shafrir, the band was already seated and belted inside the cockpit, first-class straight to the stars !! The hits from the album were played non-stop on radio and television: "Where's the Wind," "What's Happening to Me," "Her Sadness," "The Sky's the Border," "You Fell Strong," and "One God."
The year 1993 saw a group of "kibbutzniks" from Givat Brenner become rock stars with fame that can only be seen outside the borders of the State of Israel. That same year the band members wrote and recorded the material for the album "Shedim" (Demons). Three lost children from the kibbutz with one ordinary Haifa resident who received a strong blow from all the fame that surrounded them mostly became very confused and could not understand what was happening around them. Their shows exploded, the media kept putting them in every possible place, and girls in minimal attire would chase the band members on the street.
(Photo: Eifo HaYeled? YouTube Channel)
This intense encounter with the power of fame, of course in the proportions of the country, created in the band members and especially in Hemi Rudner an allergy and side effects that to this day accompany them. The fame was traumatic for them and they felt even more lost than they were. The band members felt this, especially in various performances in several places in the country when the audience would come only because somebody told them on the news that it was the hottest thing right now or wrote in magazines that "Eifo HaYeled?" is the best band today. In these performances, the audience was bored, did not connect to the music, and even led to violence.
Based on watching two music videos of the band filmed a few months apart in 1993. The clip of "What's Happening to Me", from the debut album "Sugar Time", shows the band playing on a rooftop in Tel Aviv in front of several dozen friends and family. This is "Eifo HaYeled?" a fraction of a second before the success. The clip of "Someone Hear Me", which came out as a single a few months after "Sugar Time", already looks completely different. The "Roxanne" Club is bursting with an enthusiastic crowd. A clip featuring a popular, even adored band, and its members, and especially its lead singer, behave accordingly.
The band's reaction or therapy to all of this was the album "Shedim" (Demons), in response to the quest for success the band members wrote darker and more pessimistic songs than the songs on the first album. In addition, Hemi Rudner, who was marked as the band's leader following the first album, preferred to take a step back and give the rest of the band more spotlight. In five songs on the album, Hemi is not the lead singer and in one he sings with Assaf Maroz. Hemi Rudner said that Assaf was in great bloom as a composer and the two big hits of the album, "Someone Hear Me" and "White in a Black Dream", he composed. Ophir Ben Ami shone with "Little Lover" and "The Demon Gets Into You".
The band members entered the studio and recorded 12 live demos. Haim Shemesh from "Hed Artzi", who is one of the most prominent figures in Israeli music in general and in the 90s in particular, felt that something was missing and the demos were not good enough, so he sent the band back to the studio to record more songs. This is what led to an album of 15 songs with more than 70 minutes of music. From time immemorial "the commitment to uniformity has been and remains far from us for better or worse" Hemi Rudner testified.
Stylistically, "Shedim" (Demons) has the protest grunge ("Israeliana", "The Ballad of the Defective", "The Demon Gets Into You"), Punk ("The Green Demons"), Broken Heart Ballads ("Football", "To Who", "Horn"), unexplained gothic ("White in a Black Dream"), love of soul music ("Inside The Panties", "Someone Hears Me"), psychedelic sixties ("Mid-Summer"), eighties ("Little Lover") and blues ("Rusty Nails"). All the songs have demon-piercing and insane demons: passion, remorse, anxiety, abuse, suicide, death, and love. Yuval Shafrir once again was the one who helped the scattered group create the collective album but kept them as a cohesive band.
Among the big hits on the album "White in a Black Dream" was not supposed to enter the album at all and was written out of anger. The melody of the song was created by Assaf Sarig at the request of another Israeli artist who wrote the lyrics, but when Hemi Rudner heard this he got upset and assured Assaf that the melody was excellent and that he would write better lyrics than the other artist in 5 minutes. And the song was written in 5 minutes about death at a time when there was tremendous panic over AIDS.
"Someone Hear Me" is one of the band's most accurate songs according to Hemi Rudner and probably their best recording. The song was created even before the first album when Assaf brought the bass line and Hemi improvised lyrics, it's also a song that the band felt was too simple and shelved in the work on the first album. The chorus is a powerful showcase of a band with confidence and fun.
The mid-90s was a time of alien craze and from there came the inspiration for the song "Green Demons" beyond a parody of aliens it was also an attempt by the band to make a loving tribute to the punk of the late 70s on which the band members grew up. This is one of the band's fastest songs and here especially but throughout the album, Ilan Green from "Revenge of the Tractor" participates on the keyboards.
"Shedim" (Demons) is kept on our shelf along with the other Israeli 90s, amazing, exciting, and thrilling that take us back each time with intense longings for the Arad Festival, the Tzemach Festival, and the Rock Atzmaot.
Listen to the album on: Spotify, Apple Music