Matti Caspi - Another World (Middle Parted 1998)

Matti Caspi’s first studio recorded album after his return to Israel is also one of his most emotional and best albums. The album symbolizes the continuation of the movement which began in “Matti” - Matti’s last album - in which many of the lyrics were about Matti Caspi as a person. This time, unlike in “Matti”, where all lyrics were written by Ehud Manor, Caspi decided to write the most personal lyrics in the album by himself: “…I never thought I could seriously write lyrics, with all the weight they have, but the truth is my wife pushed me to write, and she just proved to me, or made me prove to myself, that I can write… it doesn’t come out easy, but it works… there’s a different struggle here that I’m not familiar with, because with music when I compose, I do it out of inspiration, and it comes rapidly when it does”.

The song opening the album is simply titled: “A Love Song for You”, and represents the listener with his new inner world, a calm and pleasant world, a world filled with a great love, where “you can feel how happiness spreads in the resting body”. The instrumental and vocal arrangement emphasizes the contradiction between the search and restlessness presented in the chorus: “my childhood years have wandered/ without knowing where and when”, and the verses, which present the solution: “a glance, a movement, a touch, the softness of a graceful hand”.

The entry of Raquel, Matti’s wife, into his life, has probably influenced the cheerful Brazilian shades in some of the album’s songs, like the wonderful song “You Didn’t Return” which is sung in Portuguese, Raquel’s mother tongue, who also wrote the lyrics.

The songs “Not All Those Who Write Poems are Poets” (lyrics by Boaz Apelbaum) and “A Movie about my Life” (lyrics by Yaankale Rothblit) show the great intensity that wasn’t lost due to the change in his personal life. Both of the songs’ addictive arrangements make them two of the best songs of the album. “A Movie about my Life” has become one of Caspi’s hits and is frequently performed today in live concerts.

One of the beautiful songs in the album “Blues for Us Both” is one of the few jazz pieces (not necessarily blues) Matti has ever written. The beautiful melody and refined harmonies invite the listeners to dim the lights and open a good wine bottle. Matti has told that he chose to entrust the piano playing to Rammy Levin: “the opening is mine, but rest isn’t. That’s Rammy Levin. Because I don’t know how to play jazz. I suddenly had the urge to compose a jazzy piece, but it only happened once because usually I’m not so connected to this genre”.

The album includes, also for the first time in Matti’s part, a song performed as a duet between Matti and his daughter Suyan, who was six years old when they recorded it. The song was originally written by Raquel Caspi in Portuguese, and the Hebrew version was written by Ehud Manor. The album even includes two songs Matti sings about his two daughters, “Suyan” and “Sean” (lyrics by Raquel Caspi). Those who attended the tour after Matti’s return to Israel in 1997 got to listen to the songs “A Love Song for You”, “Blues for Us Both”, “Suyan”, “Sean”, “Not All Those Who Write Poems are Poets”, and “Nao Voltou” (You Didn’t Return) which were performed during the concerts about a year prior to the album’s release.

Like its opening, the album ends with an optimistic song that generates hope for “Another World”, where “The most secret dream is about to come true”.