Haolam Avad Mizman

KEXP listeners will find Vaadat Charigim oddly surprising. Like many new bands releasing albums these days, their songs’ hooky melodies draw heavily from the 80′s and 90′s, ranging from hazy MBV-esque shoegaze to jangly New Order-influenced New Wave, but American listeners wanting to sing along will be immediately confounded, as the Israeli band sings distinctly in Hebrew. Vaadat Charigrim, ועדת חריגים in Hebrew, translates to the “Exceptions Committee”, like the kind you might find at a university, who deal with underachievers. A twist upon their name, Vaadat Charigrim rather excels at placing their songs before an international audience. And their debut, The World Is Well Lost, is an instantly appealing calling card. The Tel Aviv trio, consisting of guitarist and vocalist Juval Haring, bassist Dan Fabian Bloch and drummer Yuval Guttman, compose lush arrangements that place the vocals in par with the other instruments so deftly that listeners not fluent in Hebrew might not even wonder at the songs’ meanings. But, after all, how deep are the lyrics of other shoegaze bands anyway? What does My Bloody Valentine even sing about? As Sigur Rós has shown, if the songs are engaging enough, the lyrical content itself matters little. Is Hebrew the new Icelandic, as one blog asks? It’s hard to say, and certainly there aren’t enough bands bubbling to the surface in Israel right now to match that small island’s prodigious output, but Vaadat Charigrim’s songs are compelling enough to break any language barrier for anyone one willing to give them a listen.

http://blog.kexp.org/2013/12/26/song-of-the-day-vaadat-charigim-haolam-avad-mizman/