Yoav Looks To Charm With His Strange Approach To Music

Yoav Looks To Charm With His Strange Approach To Music

The globetrotting Yoav will tour across Canada next month to coincide with PHI/Fontana North's March 4 release of his Charmed & Strange debut.

Yoav — who was born in Israel and has lived in Cape Town, South Africa, London, England and New York City — made a name for himself last year opening almost 50 shows on Tori Amos' North American tour.

Charmed & Strange was recorded between Oxford, England and Montreal, and all the instrumental sounds on it were created by Yoav's guitar.

"I tried to translate dance music to guitar," he says. "I started pounding it, learning what I could do with it, using it as my decks.

"You can get an assortment of kick drums and snare drums by hitting it in different places, or a synthy sound by playing with feedback. The more I did it, the more possibilities I found. It became all-consuming for me."

Not only is it all-consuming, it's also somewhat hard to describe, though Yoav says many have tried.

"I've been told it sounds like Damien Rice produced by the Neptunes, or an acoustic Nine Inch Nails, or Beck meets [Jeff] Buckley meets Bjork. I'm not sure any of those is right. I guess I'd just say it's left-of-centre pop music inspired by all the big themes in my life and all the music I've been into."

Lead single "Club Thing" has been added by a handful of Canadian radio stations, and there's also a video for the song. The single and four other tracks can be heard on Yoav's MySpace page, but you'll have to look elsewhere for the album-closing cover of the Pixies' "Where Is My Mind."

Here are Yoav's Canadian tour dates:

March 3 Ottawa, ON @ Zaphod Beeblebrox
March 5 Montreal, PQ @ Le Cabaret
March 7 Toronto, ON @ Lee's Palace (CMW)
March 8 Toronto, ON @ Mod Club (CMW)
March 10 Edmonton, AB @ Velvet Underground
March 11 Vancouver, BC @ Media Club

Here are the tracks on Charmed & Strange:

"Adore Adore"
"Club Thing"
"Live"
"One By One"
"There Is Nobody"
"Wake Up"
"Beautiful Lie"
"Angel And The Animal"
"Sometimes…"
"Yeah, The End"
"Where Is My Mind"