Words by Justin Turford
We don’t get sent many records to review quite like this debut album by Palestinian artist and multi-instrumentalist Rasha Nahas. An ambitious and dramatic tale of the journey from her homeland to life in Germany and back again told through a unique lens of Weimar-era theatricality, exemplary poetry and avant-garde Middle Eastern musical textures. The title track oozes the observational storytelling of Kurt Weill set to a backdrop of melodramatic Arabic melodies, swirling strings and a rock band’s foundation. A song without a chorus, more an epic poem, really quite startling in it’s emotional breadth.
“The Dead Sea, she used to be alive, she had a woman and a child, and she couldn’t live at home she said, she wandered lost and she wandered West”
Like the works of Weill and his fellow chronicler of Weimar Berlin, Bertold Brecht, these aren’t linear tales of being. There is deep satire and hallucinogenic phrases embedded amongst the bare honesty as perhaps a method of saying the unsayable.
As Rasha says, this album is “a chronicle of moments, when realizations rise from the depths to the surface, like tiny floods.”
When I first heard the opening song ‘Desert’, I instantly clocked a wave to the great singer/songwriter and author Leonard Cohen and unsurprisingly, sitting amongst her original compositions is Cohen’s own ‘Lover, Lover, Lover’. Performed like most of the album with the intensity and rawness of a live gig, I suspect Leonard would approve of the distorted desert blues guitar colliding with the intimate confession.
“with ‘Desert’, I wanted to navigate the gulf between the theatrical and the personal, between metaphor and raw storytelling. It evokes countless sentiments that define themselves and thrive in opposition to one another for me – arrival and departure, distortion and clarity, doubt and certainty.”
‘The Fall’ reminds me of the arch Gallic dancehall punk of Les Négresses Vertes or Manu Negra, angular even comedic timings with a cartoonish violin and a rockabilly heart, Rasha’s thrilling voice cutting and soothing as required.
‘A Lonely Snake Dance’ is a short sharp shock from her home town of Haifa. Electrifying Rock ‘n’ Roll, urgent Middle Eastern percussion and the evocative ululation of her voice hustle this into a frenzy. Ace.
The nine songs on the album were recorded with the band all in the same room and a number of the tracks were done in one take and it sounds it. There is an urgency and starkness about the performances, hot-blooded and potent with Rasha’s commanding voice prevailing over the show. There is a fire in the band not dissimilar to Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds and if Rasha carries on at this standard of songwriting, she could easily hit the same heights.
Having been a resident DJ on the Palestinian global community radio platform Radio Alhara راديو الحارة for the last year, this is actually my first review of a Palestinian artist so I’m mighty pleased that it is this one. Rasha Nahas is a voice that we shall be hearing a lot more from no doubt.
The album ‘Desert’ is released NOW on her own Rmad Records
BUY HERE! https://www.rashanahas.com/