Jack Frost was written in a thunder and lightning storm, one imagines. Evokes winter, not entirely successfully, as the issue at hand remains metaphorical. First of the E minor intensifications that appear throughout the record. Inspired by one of Bob Dylan’s numerous pseudonyms, who is wholly without influence, however, on the rest of the composition. Involves what can be described as the duality of time in interpersonal relationships, which is to say familiarity breeds contempt, which does no one no good. Too often an identifiable moment occurs at which a metamorphosis takes place, and the object of affection becomes instead a chained friend or perhaps a jealous foe, and the dreariest and the longest journey goes. One hopes that things end there, as often proves the case in our era of transient partnerships. A primary character, an imp or devil, of course receives full blame and bestows the title.

Benji Raziel (guitar, vocals)
Shlomo Mizrachi (bass, guitar)
Yehiel Braver (drums)
Amir Cohen (mastering)

Music and lyrics by Benji Raziel
Produced and directed by Shlomo Mizrachi
Recorded at Garden of Love studios, Tel Aviv

Once for the Clowns rides the trill of a pedal steel (courtesy of Zaky German, perhaps the only pedal steel player in Israel) as a certain poetic sense rolls its way through the byways of hillbilly territory, with a brief appearance by Matsuo Basho available to those in the know (you know who you are). The images are brief and pass quickly, but an overall sense of time standing still just before departure give the proceedings a certain quality of transience embodied in the unknown object of affection, who one feels really ought to make an appearance, but for some reason never does – perhaps out of spite, perhaps out of great affection – though the singer remains, as always, notably defiant throughout.

Benji Raziel (guitar, vocals)
Shlomo Mizrachi (bass, guitar, backing vocals)
Zaky German (pedal steel)
Yehiel Braver (drums)
Amir Cohen (mastering)

Music and lyrics by Benji Raziel
Produced and directed by Shlomo Mizrachi
Recorded at Garden of Love studios, Tel Aviv

Get Myself Together, in which heavy bass makes the trebly guitar lines shake just a little as a defiant plea breaks out, pledging a resolution to make one’s way out of a shaky situation involving a long-term irresolution finally transcended. Serious distaste expressed in keeping with the admonition of St. Skip James: “I’d rather be the devil than to be that woman’s man.” These days they might term it abuse, back then it was going upside your head when you weren’t in the mood. Either way, the eventual denouement is left slightly ambiguous, though one imagines the minor key guitar solo indicates a certainty of escape.

Benji Raziel (guitar, vocals)
Shlomo Mizrachi (bass, guitar)
Yehiel Braver (drums)
Amir Cohen (mastering)

Music and lyrics by Benji Raziel
Produced and directed by Shlomo Mizrachi
Recorded at Garden of Love studios, Tel Aviv

Juneteenth is a chiming hymn to liberation, though the word itself is never mentioned. Based, of course, on the African-American holiday, marking the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, though drawing in, naturally, certain aspects of biblical resonance and even autobiographical possibilities. A story song, as some might call it, though references remain oblique, and perhaps a song of freedom, though the thought remains allusive at best. However you heard it first, the possibilities of metaphor resonate, and an Irish-country violin rendered by Naomi Keren floats above, beautifully striking the fifth as the lengthy coda proceeds, along with the backing vocals of a gospel choir reduced to one, as one was all we could afford, and luckily Keren Corcos became a choir all by herself. By the end, much love is given to all, as one imagines the occasion demands.

Benji Raziel (guitar, vocals)
Shlomo Mizrachi (bass, guitar)
Naomi Keren (violin)
Keren Corcos (vocals)
Yehiel Braver (drums)
Amir Cohen (mastering)

Music and lyrics by Benji Raziel
Produced and directed by Shlomo Mizrachi
Recorded at Garden of Love studios, Tel Aviv

Bad Luck and Trouble (Singin’ the Blues), in which gut-string guitars render a rhythmic lament for the woman who done him wrong. Who knows where she got to last night, but a minor scale descending pattern tends to make it clear that wherever it was, it wasn’t no good. Along the way, the devil comes round to make the deal, which is gladly made for substantial recompense. But along the broke-ass road the cash gets locked into a let-it-ride spiral that leaves the narrator as busted as he was before, except now his soul belongs to Mr. Scratch, making life rather complicated. Some fine piano lines make up the difference before everything ends on the strangest of chords.

Benji Raziel (guitar, vocals)
Shlomo Mizrachi (bass, guitar)
Yehiel Braver (drums)
Amir Cohen (piano, mastering)

Music and lyrics by Benji Raziel
Produced and directed by Shlomo Mizrachi
Recorded at Garden of Love studios, Tel Aviv

Leave Your Keys Upon the Floor is where Bo Diddley meets David Lynch in this long strange trip intended to evoke the ambivalence of the object of desire finally leaving after a long night of who knows what, though one can imagine certain perversities perhaps best left unspoken. Where Diddley would go major, the melody goes minor, which we hope adds an untempered surrealism to what might otherwise be a much-traveled tale of the end of the affair. Along the way, the boatman, the blood-shot moon, and the curious sofa all make their appearance, which is no doubt when she begins to scream. The keys, thankfully, are available when she chooses to make her escape.

Benji Raziel (guitar, vocals)
Shlomo Mizrachi (bass, guitar)
Yehiel Braver (drums)
Amir Cohen (mastering)

Music and lyrics by Benji Raziel
Produced and directed by Shlomo Mizrachi
Recorded at Garden of Love studios, Tel Aviv

Lost People is a hymn to empathy, the possibility and unknowability of other people, and the atomized retroactive emptiness of modern life we all embrace without knowing it. Semi-autobiographical, perhaps, as it is for almost anyone growing up in the midst of the vast unknowable McDonald’s that is today’s America. The point, however, is made without prevarication or pontification – at least we hope – and we are left with perhaps with a better fate than the protagonist, who expresses, in the end, a certain resolve and rebellion against the prevailing zeitgeist, promising the hint of human solidarity. Above it all, Shlomo Mizrachi’s guitar soars off into states unborn and accents yet unknown.

Benji Raziel (vocals)
Shlomo Mizrachi (bass, guitar)
Yehiel Braver (drums)
Amir Cohen (mastering)

Music and lyrics by Benji Raziel
Produced and directed by Shlomo Mizrachi
Recorded at Garden of Love studios, Tel Aviv

This Thrill (Is Killing Me) is closest of all to rock n’roll, a genre much maligned in our current age but nonetheless venerable enough to retain a certain integrity. As it always is in rock n’roll, the theme is physical desire, though tempered here by the realization that more and more of one’s vitality is being sapped by the demands of the body. This theme is recurrent to the blues, but perhaps not to its progeny, lending a hint of uncertainty to the proceedings.

Benji Raziel (guitar, vocals)
Shlomo Mizrachi (bass, guitar)
Yehiel Braver (drums)
Amir Cohen (mastering)

Music and lyrics by Benji Raziel
Produced and directed by Shlomo Mizrachi
Recorded at Garden of Love studios, Tel Aviv

I Wish the Night Would Last Forever is a tribute of sorts to he who shall remain nameless for legal reasons. Gliding slide guitar rolls mostly in minor over a major key, with the essential blue notes thrown in to aid in identification. Inspired by the author’s habit of staying up all night alone, which is by no means unconducive to creative endeavors. This was written sometime during the late afternoon, however, when one is already longing for sundown, when things quiet down and the irresolution of modern life can be easily ignored. An unusual Les Paul sings “The nightbird dries his tears,” a fortuitous line, as there are no nightbirds in Israel, so far as the author is aware. A shuffle lick lies back just far enough to propel the rhythm as “the ghosts are all of you” and “baby, I’ll pull the blinds.” ‘Nuff said.

Benji Raziel (slide guitar, vocals)
Shlomo Mizrachi (bass, guitar)
Yehiel Braver (drums)
Amir Cohen (mastering)

Music and lyrics by Benji Raziel
Produced and directed by Shlomo Mizrachi
Recorded at Garden of Love studios, Tel Aviv

St. James Infirmary constitutes an ancient lamentation at least three centuries old, which traveled the same circuitous route through the Republic as any other immigrant. Once upon a time, the old bards knew it as a London syphilis clinic before it crossed the pond and the cowboys got a hold of it, where it became Streets of Laredo and then, in the hands of the Brakeman, Gambler’s Blues, with its tale of 16 snow-white horses, and so on to New Orleans, where it acquired 7th chords and thus entered the church in the persons of Saints Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway, from whom we acquired the consensus lyrics and then added a brief aside from Rogers as to ascending and descending, gaining a form of words worthy of an American Aeschylus, to which we try to do justice. The denouement being, of course, that the woman’s gone, and who knows why or where?

Benji Raziel (guitar, vocals)
Shlomo Mizrachi (bass, guitar)
Yehiel Braver (drums)
Amir Cohen (mastering)

Music and lyrics traditional
Produced and directed by Shlomo Mizrachi
Recorded at Garden of Love studios, Tel Aviv

I’ve Seen Better Days may seem to be an old man’s lament written prematurely. Classic blues ballad progression much loved by the author, as well as the authors of “Need Your Love So Bad” and “Someday After Awhile,” but with a few surprise major to minor changes on the four chord. Could have been a folk ballad but the 7th chords, involuntarily included, made the difference. Harmonica rolls up and down at the essential moment, making elegant counterpoint thanks to the incomparable Nimrod Shemesh, who these days would rather play guitar, and very well indeed. “We’ve all seen better days,” said the bass player when it was first rehearsed. The recorded version defines a more elaborate aesthetic, but you still live until you die, and I aint dead yet, as the narrator, wholly imagined, states emphatically. It is, of course, written about somebody, but discretion prevents further explication.

Benji Raziel (guitar, vocals)
Shlomo Mizrachi (bass, guitar)
Nimrod Shemesh (harmonica)
Yehiel Braver (drums)
Amir Cohen (mastering)

Music and lyrics by Benji Raziel
Produced and directed by Shlomo Mizrachi
Recorded at Garden of Love studios, Tel Aviv

Sidewalks of New York is another ancient tale, a formidable American myth born this time of the brownstone steps and the skyscrapers foretold to come. It might be 100 years old, and thus has no original, being relegated at the first to sheet music, from which the writers never saw a penny. Evokes, however, that ethereal nothingness of childhood remembered, which evinces forever a certain pleasurable sadness for which only the Japanese have a name. The accordion isn’t an accordion, but it sounds like one, just as its evocation of childhood may not be childhood, but it sounds like it. Who knows when those who are “up in G” will actually give it all up, but one knows they wish to, and that’s enough for now.

Benji Raziel (guitar, vocals)
Shlomo Mizrachi (bass, guitar, keyboard)
Yehiel Braver (drums)
Amir Cohen (mastering)

Music by Charles B. Lawlor
Lyrics by James W. Blake 
Produced and directed by Shlomo Mizrachi
Recorded at Garden of Love studios, Tel Aviv