Shlomo Artzi celebrates 50 years on stage at Live Park Rishon (15/08)

Shlomo Artzi's marathon three hour set was full of missteps.

The first of two shows to celebrate his fifty year career, the dazzling set list included plenty of his decades-spanning hits and a number of highly touted guest spots that didn't disappoint (Natan Goshen, Haim Moshe, Rita, Shalom Hanoch, and David Broza).  But Artzi's frequent improvisations (i.e. mid-song speeches and tempo changes) curtailed the momentum of the set far too often.  With his guests, Artzi resorted to calling out the verse numbers far too many times, directing his duets on the fly as if he was in a rehearsal, rather than in front of 12 000 people in a park.  He and his band are experienced enough to fly by the seat of their pants without letting the entire song go off the rails, but such ramshackle planning doesn't make for the best concertgoing experience.  After playing some of his bigger uptempo hits at the start (e.g. "Nitzmadnu", "Eretz Hadasha"), the set seemed to lose direction, becoming a sort of jam session with his band and his guests, and the various interludes were often charming, but also needlessly stretched out the evening to a nearly 1 AM finish, much to the chagrin of many exhausted audience members.

And yet, none of the above really seemed to matter.  Artzi is a captivating, dynamic performer, one of the best I've ever seen at interacting with a crowd and holding them in the palm of his hand.  He owns the stage even when he breaks the rules, and as he nears age 70, his voice sounds and good as ever and his onstage energy is boundless.  His guests are pros who can craft magic on stage simply with their presence. 

Consider the opening of this concert: quick cuts of Artzi and his family over the years, live shots of the band walking on stage, "Nitzmadnu", a mid-song speech about his lack of nervousness coming on stage and crying when his kids were born (among other things), and a final, powerful coda to the song.  It was a continuous lump-in-throat moment that happens only rarely in concerts, and virtually never in the first ten minutes.   

Billie Eilish, "WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO"; Emika, "Falling in Love With Sadness"

Lil Nas X has managed to fend off Taylor Swift not once, but twice on the way to his unprecedented 19-week run atop the Billboard 100.  And yet, "Old Town Road"'s biggest challenge has come not from megastar Swift, but from Billie Eilish's "Bad Guy", which has spent a total of nine weeks (and counting) at #2.  That's one week short of the all-time record for weeks at #2 for a song that never reached #1 (assuming it never gets there).

My first thoughts about Eilish's debut album were how simple and underproduced most of it is.  That's not a criticism -- I like stripped down, minimal recordings just fine.  It buzzes with life from its deep bass rumbles, and Eilish's strained whispers add a dose of fragility that isn't often heard in electronic music, let alone pop music in general.  I wasn't taken aback by the sound of the album, but rather, that such a thing could be so popular. 

I checked out some message boards and before the breakthrough success of "Bad Guy", there seemed to be a debate about how popular Eilish really was amonsgst teenagers.  Naturally, there were no teenagers actually frequenting these boards, so the discussion was heavily seeped in hearsay.  One person seemed sure (based on the opinion of a sister of a friend or wife or something to that effect) that her concerts are packed with thousands of kids who go all manners of apeshit for her every move.  So I checked out some clips on youtube and ... this person was absolutely right.  And at that moment, I felt the crushing weight of the generation gap, because I didn't get it at all. 

I think Billie Eilish is talented and I like a lot of her songs.  Her debut single, "Ocean Eyes", is probably better than anything on her debut album.  But since its release two years ago, her music has become darker and more blunted.  More importantly, her lyrics have gone from dewy teenage pop to ... something I can barely describe, because they weren't written for my consumption.  "Bury a Friend" is laced with depression and self-loathing, but it's more than that.  It's about the cadence of the lyrics, the way she sounds like she doesn't care but clearly does.  The lyrics are emo, sort of, but they're meant to be empowering rather than inviting your pity.   There are bits of philosophy sprinkled all over the album (in the title for example"), but I think you need to be a teenager to find them profound.  Her singing style is highly unconventional, but it speaks to the soul of a different generation. 

The best comparison that comes to mind is Nine Inch Nails from thirty years ago.  His music sounded catastrophically unlistenable to baby boomers.  His lyrics were puzzling to anyone born before 1970, but for us, it made perfect sense to hate others as you'd hate yourself ("Something I Can Never Have", "Sin", to name just two).  We got it, most others didn't.  And in concert, this wiry, violent brat was a superhero to us.  Similarly, I see something in Billie Eilish that I'm not capable of understanding, but if I was sixteen then I would probably be crazy for her. 

These days, Reznor is entrenched in the upper echelons of the music establishment.  I never thought the day would come when our people would be the gatekeepers and yet earlier this year, Reznor inducted the Cure into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  It's the circle of life.  Reznor is also the co-writer on the most successful song in Billboard Hot 100 history.  Unbelievable. 

Then you have Emika, i.e. Billie Eilish for grownups.  It's also dark electronic pop, but with a clear "made in Berlin" bent.  It's lounge singer sad, not complicated teenager sad.  It's not groundbreaking either, but I know that I get it.