I did a Youtube search for one of my favorite artists today and discovered that Ms. Spektor is doing the theme song for the new Chronicles of Narnia movie. It’s a big coup for the artist, whose music has graced many a Grey’s Anatomy/CSI episode over and over again, but has yet to venture into the lucrative, albeit potential shark infested waters of Hollywood.
Anyways, as we’re huge fans of Regina on this blog and were planning on sneaking a peak of the new Narnia flick this weekend (Note: Not the Sex & The City movie), I say a celebratory drink is in high order. However, given that it’s 5 PM and I have a night of work ahead of me, I think I might have to settle for a run to the local Dunkin Donuts…
One of my favorite preoccupations and possibly a career of mine in a former life is discovering really great music acts before they make it big. Given this disclaimer, it’s only fitting that I introduce to you an Israeli singer-songwriter that’s sure to gain some serious kudos and notoreity. His name is Oren Lavie and he’s one of a wave of Israeli singers whose music is getting airtime on big-time commercial broadcasts these days. (Yael Naim’s MacBook Air ads are also pretty catchy). So if you haven’t yet heard Oren’s hit single, Her Morning Elegance, on ads for Chevy Malibu, it’s only a matter of time. And if you’d like to hear a more crisp version of the track, click here.
Oren’s brand of music (think brooding Nick Drake meets orchestral overtures of Damien Rice with a little Beatle mania thrown in) is indicative of the type of music that is most likely going to be featured on a Morning Becomes Eclectic playlist and so not surprisingly, not only has his music been featured on KCRW, but it’s gained critical acclaim from the station, being honored as one of the Top 10 albums of 2007.
While it may be rare for someone who is just 31 to have already lived two professionally unrelated lives, it is even rarer to find someone who happens to be re really good at both and acknowledged as such by the public. Lavie, who grew up in Israel and gained early buzz as a playwright winning awards at the Acco Festival in Israel, moved from Israel to New York (with a stop in London) before realizing that music was more his calling. He started his own label, produced his own music, and even began to write his own music.
Lavie, who counts Jacques Brel, Leonard Cohen, and Tom Waits among his influences has a funny, self-deprecating tone to his demeanor. Perhaps evocative of his Israeli upbringing and attempting to create some sort of linear connection between the many different acts of his young life, Lavie likens the cities he’s lived in to the “green-ness” of the cucumbers. For those of you cucumber purists, don’t be betting on Berlin or London. They will only bring you tristesse, which for Oren Lavie might just suit him after all.
For more on Oren, click here.
