Vaadat Charigim

An aural collection of every kind of shoegaze/dream pop you’ve ever heard, but with a hard left turn. Vaadat Charigim is the name of a band from Tel-Aviv, a trio consisting of guitarist/vocalist Yuval Haring, bassist Dan Bloch, and Yuval Guttman on drums. They came up as a band by practicing music inside of abandoned bomb shelters and such in their homeland, the very presence of which flavors their offerings in a way that no other shoegazers have. That, and Haring sings in Hebrew, which elevates the whole experience to an order of mysticism. One has no idea what he’s singing about, but the language has a rhythm and beauty not heard on these shores. The band’s songwriters are expert at the art of conflict and resolution with lofty, open suspended chords, massive amounts of echo, and harmonic guitar solos in counterpoint to vocals mixed to sound as if lost inside of a long and dark tunnel.

When they take the stage in San Diego, the trio is likely to perform material from Sinking as a Stone, due out sometime in mid-May. Sinking, the second installment in what is to be the band’s Tel-Aviv trilogy, is all about one subject: boredom, in all its shapes and forms. I find that Vaadat Charigim’s sound is not nearly as aggressive or occupied as Flyying Colours, but every bit as animated as No Joy. Otherwise, shoegaze/dream pop is kind of a vintage sound. Believe it or not, George Harrison’s 1970 tri-disc epic All Things Must Pass has been called the mother of all dream pop, with its wall-of-sound renderings that were pioneered originally by Harrison’s co-producer Phil Spector (now doing time for murder), back when Spector was the king of all pop music for a short time during the 1960s. All things must be recycled, yes?

Froth also performs.