CD Reviews

Yael Naim

Atlantic

By SHARON STEEL | April 8, 2008

3.5 Stars

I can’t understand half of what Yael Naim is singing on her homonymous sophomore release, and her inscrutability only adds to her charm. Naim’s breakthrough, chart-topping iTunes single, the piano-driven “New Soul” (the one from that ubiquitous MacBook Air commercial), is sung in English; Naim, however, was born and now lives in Paris — which explains why she weaves French phrases into her songs and offers “Paris” in homage to the city of lights. Thing is, she was raised in Israel, and nearly all of the tracks on this disc have Hebrew lyrics — some exclusively. Her voice boasts the nervous cracks and cadences of Regina Spektor, the sweet charisma of Leslie Feist, and a lilting accent all her own that rises and falls with lovely irregularity. A soulful cover of Britney Spears’s “Toxic” is an unhurried, down-tempo interpretation that proves almost unrecognizable from the original; “Lonely” and “Far Far,” come off as shy, humid pockets of emotion. “New Soul” might be Steve Jobs’s top jam for spring ’08, but Naim’s piano-driven, almost absurdly tender Hebrew folk hymns (“Yashanti,” “Lachlom,” “Baboker”) tremble with an aged loneliness powerful enough to outlive the Apple hype machine — or at least one of its laptops.

Related: From Bono to Blake, Scenes 4 tweens, From the Web to the Workplace, More

Topics: CD Reviews , Britney Spears, Feist (Singer), Yael Naim, More

| More

Most Popular

The Current Issue

Table of Contents

Cover Archive

Masthead | Authors | Contact us

Blogs

Where To Follow Me
Talking Politics | March 24, 2013 at 11:09 AM

Mo Takes His Turn
March 21, 2013 at 12:59 PM

[Q&A] KMFDM's Sascha Konietzko on art, Columbine and having balls
On The Download | March 18, 2013 at 3:22 PM

See this film series: The Belmont World Film Series @ Studio Cinema in Belmont
Outside The Frame | March 18, 2013 at 11:00 AM

See this film: This is Spinal Tap [with post-film talk by expert from Acoustical Society of America] @ the Coolidge
March 17, 2013 at 12:00 PM

ARTICLES BY SHARON STEEL

YO, JONNY! THE LOVE SONG OF JONNY VALENTINE | February 05, 2013
Sometime after becoming a YouTube megastar and crashing into the cult of personality that has metastasized in contemporary society, Teddy Wayne's 11-year-old bubblegum idol Jonny Valentine is hanging out in his dressing room getting a blow job from a girl who doesn't even like his music.

LENA DUNHAM AND HBO GET IT RIGHT | April 13, 2012
When a new television show chronicling the lives of young women arrives, it tends to come packaged with the promise that it will expertly define them, both as a generation and a gender.

EUGENIDES'S UPDATED AUSTEN | October 12, 2011
For his long-awaited third novel, Jeffrey Eugenides goes back to look at love in the '80s — and apparently decides that it's a lot like love in the early 19th century.

REVIEW: RINGER | September 08, 2011
Sixty seconds into the CW's new psychological thriller Ringer, star Sarah Michelle Gellar is seen running from a masked attacker in the darkness.

LOVE'S LEXICOGRAPHER | February 10, 2011
As the editorial director at Scholastic, David Levithan is surrounded by emotional stories about adolescents. Being overexposed to such hyperbolic feelings about feelings could easily turn a writer off pursuing such ventures himself — despite the secrets he may have picked up along the way.