related items
Rochester music interviews
We hit up the artists on their way to the ROC
We hit up the artists on their way to the ROC
Matisyahu is about as animated as you'd think a devoutly religious musician would be. Phoning from a recent tour stop in Boise, Idaho, the Hasidic Jewish reggae star sounds like he just woke up. He's soft-spoken, almost to the point of a whisper. And while the words he uses are positive, his delivery is monotone.
All of this is typical for Matisyahu, who spends most of his days praying and conserving energy for the spiritual connection he hopes to make each night onstage. It's something fans were looking forward to before his show at Rochester's Main Street Armory on Tuesday was postponed.
Still, there is one thing that evokes some emotion from the artist — his impending 30th birthday. "I got past my initial fears," Matisyahu says with a hint of laughter. "It was brought to my attention that my 30s in Judaism are looked at as a time when a person reaches their full strength. I kind of like that take on it."
That idea seems even more appropriate as Matisyahu gets ready to release his new album, Light, next month. Three years in the making, Light is Matisyahu's most diverse album to date and probably his best. Ironically, Light is much darker than 2006's Youth, and focuses on the anger and aggression that comes with discovering one's path in life. It begins with the forceful dub anthem "Smash Lies" and ends fittingly with "Silence," a ballad that closes with the sounds of a fading heartbeat.
"A lot of my (early) songs were about the initial excitement of finding God," Matisyahu says. "But this record deals a lot more with what comes next. It goes a little bit beyond the surface with things like death and madness, or insanity."
And, while most of his previous work stayed in the realm of reggae and dancehall, Light dabbles in electronic music ("We Will Walk;" "For You") and pushes Matisyahu further vocally than he's gone before, as is evidenced by the lead single, "One Day."
"I've spent a lot of time working on my voice," he says. "I've spent the past four of five years working with different teachers regularly, trying to develop my instrument and have the control and the ability to do what I want to do."
His experimentation in the studio has carried over to the live setting, where Matisyahu and his backup group, Dub Trio, work with a jam-band mentality, improvising and expanding on the instrumentation of new and old material. All of it comes back to what Matisyahu says is the overall theme of his new album.
"It's about breaking down the lies and negative things," he says. "Whatever it takes in order to come to the light."
