Once again I feel like I might not do justice to someone of such stature as Matti Caspi. A true giant of Israeli Pop music, it was Matti who spurred so many trends simply by following his muse, wherever it led to. Once there, he’d come back, fusing Israeli music with styles like psychedelia, prog, soul, and MPB, tweaking the singer-songwriter genre until it was this higher-quality thing leaving vast expanses free for exploration. In Twilight, undoubtedly, we get a snapshot of his talent, providing a perfect entry point for others to explore this tropical soul of a different stripe.
Matti’s life began not in any cosmopolitan locale or worldly capital. Born to the aftermath of WWII, Matti’s life started in the agrarian/egalitarian Israeli kibbutz of Hanita, Galilee. It was music that had afforded him an out from what would have been a long communal life in the fields. Then while inscripted with the Israeli armed forces, Matti began taking his first steps towards a music career. Under The Southern Command, Matti would treat Israeli audiences to his vast stylistic range writing hit songs in western styles, in ways that matched the pop smarts of those chart toppers lighting it up then.
In the early ‘70s unsure steps into the musical world as a solo singer, yielded a fruitful period under the auspices and sway of future Israeli musical icon Shlomo Gronich. Together, they explored the poetic side of Israeli musical lyricism and the further outreaches of sonic experimentation, typing with Middle Eastern folk music and Western Pop in a way that was quite unheard of in their homeland. Somewhere, around the time Leonard Cohen took his own sabbatical in his ancestral home, their own personal work would prove an influential source for that troubadour as he befriended them in his own tumultuous time. He could have continued exploring that Lennon-McCarney-esque side with Shlomo but they both had things to explore separately.
Matti began to see the benefit of seeking complete control over his music. His first proper solo albums were almost Rundgren-like, showing his mastery of all sorts of instruments, seeking to leave no stone (or instrument) unturned to create something distinctly of his own voicing. Graced with his distinctive baritone and equally distinctive slightly “latin”-tinged music, all those mid ‘70s Caspi albums were little hidden gems of little “p” prog folk of his own little world.
Matti’s second album, commonly known for its “bell” cover, would become his first widely heralded, critical hit. Once again playing all the instruments himself, Matt this time joined up with lyricist Ehud Manor and the rest, as they say, was history. Embellishing his compositions with string arrangements, it came close to matching the experimentation, heart-pulling, atmospheric pull of the most personal songs of one of his own heroes: Tom Jobim. This album also gave the Hebrew world a first glimpse into the tropical spirit flowing inside Matti. A masterpiece for anyone who happened upon it, “The Bell” marked a turning point in Israeli pop music. One could be serious and not stray into maudlin, one could make music to rival any locale.
Two years would pass and Matti’s stature would keep on increasing. A Eurovision entry went all the way to 6th place. Then in 1978, the duo release of albums Side A Side B and Pais Tropical – Songs From Brazil, would finally bring Matti into the cultural sphere as influencer. One album would prove him to be Israel’s next Dylan, reimagining older tunes as forward-thinking personal pop voyages. The latter would take Israeli music on its own voyage, reimagining little heralded Brazilian Tropicalia masterpieces as joyful Israeli versions, introducing Hebrew listeners to sunkissed soul music from a different parallel, jumpstarting Israel’s love affair with Brazilian pop music.
At the top of his game, Matti would release Another Side, a children’s album of gorgeous Brazilian-tinged remakes. Let down by its poor reception by 1981, compound that with personal relationship troubles, led Matti in a supreme funk. For once he needed to do something completely his, again. At a personal crossroads, somehow, Matti found in reggae and samba a way to speak to his personal turmoil, fusing sun-tinged deep dives with moody pop music that had little beachhead in any recent history.
1981’s Twilight would mark the next fork in the road. On songs like “Days Of Drought” or “Hebrew Reggae” repetition allowed Matti to sink his most personal hooks. Fusing the communal spirit of Israeli folk with deep echoes of Jamaican wizardry, each song felt like a little bizantine maze of emotions, mirroring his own moored life. Now the surface level exploration of Brazilian music felt like more profound meditation on the tools it had, that he could introduce into his own work to really flesh out something profound — the opener “You’ll Yet Find Your Way” pointed this way out.
Matti spoke of how the music coming out then, came out slowly, sparked by an intensity in his heart and flickering in his gut. Slowing things down, chopping tracks up, floating below the surface, yielded that personal masterpiece that no one else would follow after.
Vibrating through half-prayers and full exilement, songs like “Everyone” and “Night Trilogy” burning through deeply human emotions (clipped for maximum pressure drops), taking you through waves cycling through all sorts of feelings. No discos would play this, this was “head” music for all those considered.