Record of the Month
May 2009


Oi Va Voi
Travelling the Face of the Globe
Oi Va Voi

Astonishing. On several counts.

The first surprise is that such a good record can pop up with so little warning, a collection of 12 songs just like an album from another era, and almost every track worthy of inclusion in its own right.

The second cause of amazement is it had seemed safe to assume that Oi Va Voi had gone for ever, after their three previous shots had failed to hit their targets.

The third realisation is that the UK finally has a band to match the best of the current American groups who are exploring alternatives to the guitar, bass, keyboard and drum line-up that has become such a cliché of international alternative music. Watch out, Calexico, DeVotchKa, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Beirut, you have company.

By my count this is the fourth album under the artist name Oi Va Voi. Several of the original group have left the band and while there’s not much point in calling a roll of honour for those departed, much credit is due to the group’s surviving founder members Nik Ammar, Josh Breslaw, and Steve Levi for their thoughtfully crafted songs, and especially to the featured vocalist Bridgette Amofah who delivers them with such poise and conviction.

Pizzicato violin and rattling percussion launch the album and an ensemble of clarinet, trumpet and soaring violin soon establish that this music is not to be lumped in with anything else you’ve heard recently. Unfamiliar with the Bristol-based Bridgette Amofah, I tracked her down at MySpace to confirm that she is clearly a singer of promise; but at the moment this band is her best context, just as these musicians equally needs her voice to avoid being bunched with all the other indie boy bands cluttering up the racks.  The duet, ‘Every Time’, gives the group’s male vocalist Steve Levi a shot at taking the lead, but he is soon blown away when Amofah comes in to join him.

Guest vocalist Agi Szaloki establishes a distinctive atmosphere on the Hebrew song, ‘S’brent’, one of the album’s several highlights. Levi’s clarinet comes back to lead the way through ‘Dusty Road’ – this would be a good start for any radio show and I’m planning to use it for one of mine. I’m bewildered by the familiarity of ‘Foggy Day’ – having listened to the album only four or five times, it already sounds as if it has been here forever. The band’s trademark sound of clarinet, acoustic guitar (Ammar) and violin (Anna Phoebe) violin is so coherent, it’s hard to believe that nobody discovered such a combination before.

There are just a couple of tracks where Amofah slips dangerously close to the little girl whisper that bedevils so many English female folk singers, but the rest of the album is so good, she can be forgiven, especially when the violin sweeps in to rescue her, and us.

There’s a strange last track which has the listener glancing across the room to make sure nobody surreptitiously switched to a different album. A Frenchman called Dick Rivers intones a monologue that seems to bear little relation to what has gone before. But no doubt somebody has thought this through and its logic may emerge in due course.

All in all, the album is an impressive Pheonix arisen from the ashes of Oi Va Voi, and much credit must go to producers Kevin Bacon and Jonathan Quarmby who were also responsible for the band’s previous success, Laughter Through Tears, but had nothing to do with the catastrophic follow-up that made this enjoyable and welcome fourth album so unlikely.

CG