Zozo - Blue Mountains
Album & Concert🤘
Wishing you a wonderful week🙏... Sure, our world is perfect, but sometimes it feels as if we'd change a thing or two.
Who am I to say? Still, one thing I would change about last Saturday night is that Zozo Ginzburg's show would have taken place in a packed Barby, at the very least!
But, as I said, the world is already perfect. In other places, people can only dream of going out freely and being surrounded by crowds, and I'm grateful that I got to experience the launch of "Blue Mountains" at a full OzenBar in Tel Aviv, alongside some other lucky people🍀.
After her work as an incredible guitarist alongside, among others, Asaf Avidan and "Mashina"... After releasing one of last year's finest local albums as a member of "Sus Mabit"... And especially after her excellent late-2019 single, "B.B. Cream", I behaved myself and waited for the solo album delayed by the coronavirus year😷. But I didn't get what I expected. I got much, much more!!! The same turned out to be true of my expectations for the show.
BB Cream
A little introduction🖋️
The album runs to just 31 minutes and came out at the end of February, but I keep coming back to it. "Blue Mountains" is easily among my favorites of the year so far, in Israel and beyond.
The album was recorded in a three-day blitz: ten songs, three live takes of each, with the best take selected for the record.
Normally this bothers me, but I can't remember the last time I enjoyed an imperfect English accent from a local artist so much. Even where there are inaccuracies, you can feel the guts of everyone involved, Nimrod Goldfarb on bass and Guy Ben-Ami on drums, and that raw🍖 quality. To my ears, it's one of the album's secrets.
The recording feels every bit as strong as the live performance, which was excellent last night! These days, Django and Asaf Reis complete the trio, bringing their bass and drums down hard on the audience's ears. The current lineup even recorded an EP last July, with material due to be released soon. The new songs aired last night maintain the high standard and vitality of the album!
Born in Israel's southern desert, Zozo describes her music as "Desert🏜️ Punk", a combination of Hendrix, "Pixies", PJ Harvey, "Sonic Youth" and more. Something about that description really fits.
Here is a Spotify playlist Zozo compiled herself, featuring some of her influences.
On to the album💿
You can feel the Desert Punk from the opener, "Baby", perhaps the album's most complex song. It's like a sandstorm you're happy to be hit by. It opens with a solo tinged with Mediterranean sounds, a little "Elephant"/Ehud Banai flavor, and fast, aggressive bass, then continues into a delightful roller coaster🎢. Punk sounds and rhythmic changes run through the vocals too, beginning sweetly, meeting the fast punk attack and ending with a wonderfully cool drop into half-time.
There are also two invigorating, thoroughly punk bursts of around two minutes each, "Clean" and "Boots". Both come after perhaps the happiest song on the album, the bouncing post-punk of "Filthy Morning", which flows into a joyful solo alongside groovy bass, then climbs in tempo and vocal intensity. It lifted my spirits along with it.
A great outdoor live session of "Boots" that I loved, featuring the original album musicians:
A deliciously sweet piece of old-school rock 'n' roll, "Load" even includes those 1960s "wah-wah" backing vocals. A treat🍬! It was lovely seeing Nimrod Goldfarb from the recording lineup come onstage to add tambourine and those backing vocals.
Perhaps the album's most desert-like and most chilled-out song is, amusingly, called "Fast". Slow, prominent bass and drums create a sea of atmosphere. Again, there's that old rock 'n' roll guitar style, with a few effects on the record adding welcome depth.
The gentler "Sweet Lies" follows, and was particularly special with Nomke at the show. It has a softer, wonderfully pleasant indie feel. The background guitar reminded me a little of "Radiohead"'s "Weird Fishes". The singing is excellent and moving, with a little whistling, and melodic shifts over relatively quick, groovy drums.
The pinkest🦩 song of the bunch, "Pink", is actually dirty and loose, particularly in its vocals. It moves into a brief pause dominated by bass, with singing that builds to a scream. A simple, effective guitar passage carries us to a happy "la-la-la" ending and joyful shouts in the background.
We reach the closer and title track, and it seems to complete the circle begun by the opener. Together, they sum up Desert Punk best for me, with an even more authentic finish. A love song to the blue mountains and the landscape of her childhood: you can smell the desert wind🌬️ in the air. Smoky blues rock blends beautifully with explosive post-punk. After all those repetitions of the line about the blue mountains being her home, there's no mistaking it. A loud, magnificent mantra. It's hard not to feel the emotional involvement and the power getting under your skin.
Despite all those illustrious influences, and although many of the songs were written in Europe, it seems that the desert and those blue mountains⛰️ are the greatest inspiration behind Zozo's wonderful first solo album!
I don't know when I'll get down to the southern desert, but I'll be returning to these blue mountains again and again.
Don't forget where you came from or where you're going... Listen to Israeli music too! With all this wonderful variety around us, you're bound to find great things you'll love.
If you enjoyed this, try to catch the next shows. Zozo and the whole band have charisma by the ton! Want to dig a little deeper and show some support?
Listen to the album on Spotify.
Enjoy! (...the blue mountains)
O.Miz 🎧
In the picture🖼️, from the top right, counterclockwise:
Zozo at OzenBar last night; the album cover; the outdoor live session; Zozo's pedalboard on the OzenBar floor; the setlist; and a smile from her Facebook page.
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