Matisyahu Shines with "Spark Seeker"

Rumors of the demise of Matisyahu have been greatly exaggerated.

On December 13th, 1.5 million Twitter followers of the reggae superstar received a strange surprise: a picture of a clean-shaven imposter claiming to be Matisyahu, with only a couplet from the 2009 album Light to explain: "At the break of day, I look for you at sunrise / When the tide comes in, I lose my disguise."

"No more Chassidic reggae superstar."

The tweet left fans scratching their heads, and the media scrambling to sensationalize the event. Another tweet - "no more Chassidic reggae superstar" - raised even more questions. Why did he shave? Was Matisyahu renouncing Judaism? Was the "king without a crown" we knew for over a decade gone for good?

But Matisyahu quickly allayed concerned fans and knocked the wind out of the media. "Today I went to the Mikvah and Shul just like yesterday," he later tweeted.

A note from Matisyahu in March seemed to put to rest any questions about the continued spiritual focus of his work. He revealed two albums in the works: one centered on the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac (Akeda, or "Binding"), and another called Spark Seeker, recorded in America and Israel and infused with both modern and ancient flavors. "Think Brooklyn meets a caravan of Bedouins traveling through the desert at night," he wrote, "BK to LA to Tel Aviv...searching for God and truth and redemption."

Our first encounter with the new Matis hints at continuity with the old. Fans will instantly recognize the album title from an earlier track off his 2005 Youth Dub, and songs titles like "Bal Shem Tov" and guest spots from rapper and convert to orthodox Judaism Shyne suggest a continued spiritual dimension in Matisyahu's music.

The album opens with the heavy-hitting "Crossroads," a song filled with dark imagery of desolate streets, black hearts, and tight ropes. "To me it had an edge and an attitude," Matisyahu said in an interview with Examiner.com. "It had a vibe, that I wanted to bring to this record off the top...Once I heard 'Crossroads,' from that moment on I knew that’s how the record had to start."

The seriousness wanes as we venture into the second song and the first single off the album, "Sunshine," where the fun summer vibes begin to emanate:

The sun has long been a source of inspiration for poets and mystics - a symbol of joy, understanding, and new life. Matisyahu's "Sunshine" builds on these old themes with new exuberance, and an almost rapturous feeling of hope expressed in its catchy chorus: "reach for the sky, keep your eye on the prize."

"Searchin" comes in with a late-80's Mantronix meets early-90's Masta Ace attitude, complete with the vocoder, beatbox, and synthy bass pattern. The earthy imagery of the skies, seas, and hillsides are reminiscent of songs from Light - but about halfway through, we see a Matisyahu as old as Shake off the Dust...Arise:

Now you wonder why you're going under

Got yourself on the run from the number one

That you can't run from

Your spirit fades, you feel hunger

This sense of existential pursuit of divine truth connects to the song's intro and outro, where a Hasidic teacher is heard saying: "In the earth, there are so many wonderful treasures. And if you know where to dig, you will find gold and diamonds and silver. All kinds of treasures. But if you don't know where to dig, all you will find is rocks and dirt. The Rebbe is the geologist of the soul. He can show you where to dig and what to dig for. But the digging you must do yourself."

Producer Kool Kojak

Spark Seeker sets aside the live reggae and rock instrumentation for an electronic vibe that makes for good summer listening - and, with producer Kool Kojak at the production helm (Ke$ha, Nicki Minaj), will no doubt appeal to a broader audience. One major source for the album's sprightly sound came from recording in LA: "It has a lot of light moments to it, and a lot of simple beauty," Matisyahu explained. "More lush and more fun. Like California." 

This breezy mentality pervades most of the tracks on the album, including "Fire of Freedom", a soulful throwback to his reggae and rap roots; "Bal Shem Tov", a quasi-80's jam filled with mystic prayer and meditation; "Tel Aviv'n," a windows-down, summer-night party song about loving life; "Breathe Easy", a hooky dance track about friendship and faith; and "Shine on You," about which Matisyahu said: "we didn’t know what it would become but every time someone walked into the room they would just start dancing." 

One of my personal favorites is "I Believe in Love", which sounds like a kind of sequel to "Unique is My Dove," but with twice the energy and passion. 

Another stand-out moment is "Live Like a Warrior," a song about fighting personal battles with the time-tested spiritual weaponry of courage and perseverance, and about making peace with the past:

We all swing high, we all swing low

We all got secrets people don't know

We all got dreams we can't let go

We wanna be brave, don't be afraid no

Today today live like you wanna

Let yesterday burn and throw it in a fire

Live like a warrior

But these lyrics also reflect an abiding focus in Spark Seeker on the darker side of life. The album is awash in sunshine  - but the daylight without the "dark night" loses its power, even its meaning. "Even though it's a summer record and it's a fun record," he said in an interview, "there's an edge to this record and a seriousness to it." Even the album's first single - arguably one of the most care-free songs on the album - conveys a sense of isolation ("it's the way of the world, you're on your own") and pain ("it's raining in your mind"). 

The album opener self-consciously taps into this darker element, as well as the tracks "King Crown of Judah" and "Buffalo Soldier" - not a cover of the Bob Marley jam as some might expect, but a hard-hitting hip-hop track that's half city-swag, half desert-wandering. The grittiness factor in these songs is boosted by guest rapper Shyne, who - after spending 10 years in prison and undergoing a religious awakening - has quite a few things to say, touching on everything from social unrest to political corruption.

The serious element also comes through in spoken word poems and Middle Eastern flavors sprinkled throughout the album, mostly in the form of intros and outros. While LA may have inspired some of the more blithe hooks, Matisyahu attributes these disquieting moments of Spark Seeker to the social and physical landscape of Israel itself - a place he calls "more desert and more mysterious," filled with "complexity" and "intensity." 

But on a whole, you can't call this album "dark" - not by a long shot. In contrast with his earliest albums, it feels like a work of almost carousing exuberance - wild, vibrant, and colorful. The album cover and the music video for "Sunshine" perfectly capture the sense of childlike awe and celebration that animates it from start to finish. Without a doubt, something has changed in his music, and in his outlook - something's different. But what is it?

That brings us back to the original question: why did Matisyahu shave his beard?

"The beard is like the manifestation or the symbol of God's mercy," he said in a radio interview. "And I had this fear in my head that if I shaved my beard, somehow those blessings would be cut off...I recently realized that God's mercy...how can that possibly be connected to me shaving or not?...If I'm deserving of God's mercy, I'll get it, regardless of my beard."

Matisyahu's decision to shave seems to reflect a spiritual maturity, accompanied by growing realizations: that God's mercy is bigger and more bountiful than imagined; that external rituals and symbols are means to an end, not ends in and of themselves; that "truth shows itself in beauty and balance"...not beards.

Spark Seeker is the musical playing-out of these realizations - and the result is as scintillating as its title suggests. Religious devotion is still very much the beating heart of the music, as in the singing of "Shema Yisrael" in "Tel Aviv'n," a prayer which translates to: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one." But what makes Spark Seeker unique is what we see flowering from that devotion - not only the compelling drive to love "with all of your soul, all of your heart, all of your mind," but the overwhelming sense of peace and joy that comes with it. 

And to my mind, this means that Matisyahu has never been busier trying to know who and what God is and does. Receiving and sharing the mirth of God, as James Martin, SJ put it in a recent book, are "at the heart of the spiritual life" - and so too are they at the heart of Spark Seeker. These are not songs of withering faith, but faith in full bloom - faith seeking sparks. 

Don't believe the hype. Matisyahu is still the king without a crown - beard or no beard.