Peter Wafa Abela, the Lebanese singer songwriter whose debut album, Life In The Middle, has been rocking my world for the past coupla weeks, claims he can sing. And he can. If Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed can be considered, why not this new eccentric rock and roller? Wafa-Abela has a rasping, smoke clenched monochromatic tone that adds menace to everything he sings and allows him to get away with some positive touch platitudes a sweeter voice would be trapped by.
This is never truer than on his cover of Bob Dylan's "Just Like A Woman", a song forever to be chuckled at after Woody Allen's brutal take down in "Annie Hall". But Wafa-Abela seems to spit out the bit and choke you on its opening strings, somewhere between horror and dread, it reminds you that Peter has been married three times. At first it feels like a mistake, yet after hearing it again and again, he deserves to own up to lost romance.
Actually, Peter's voice sounds like a mistake he makes well by willpower. It is a tenor but it lacks a melodic edge, he sing speaks, and sometimes more, but there is a trace of accent tugging at the edges of it. It goes from a whisper to a loud whisper.
Wafa-Abela left Lebanon at the age of fourteen, chased by the same civil war that took me to the States in 1979. Peter ended up in London and, a music fanatic, bought every piece of vinyl he could manage (he has an astonishing 13,000 album collection) and, returning to Beirut in 1985, he formed a local record label.
Back and forth from the UK, Peter closed up the record label and in 2000, at the age of 40, discovered he could write songs, and sing, so he recorded an album at Abbey Road with producer Haydn Bendall (chief engineer at Abbey Road and has worked with the likes of Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, XTC) and a hundred musicians in a "Festival of musicianship". The result is Life In The Middle -a flawed masterpiece. The album is wounded and missing parts, but it has a deep musical balance and a mystical quality. It is the definition of a cult album.
From early on the sound is at odds with the sentiment: deep, orchestrated arrangements and paddled rhythms, and Wafa-Abelas croak, in a bizarre song of hope, "Don't Yet" ("Totally awesome" are the valley speak opening words. It is beautiful and bizarre. The next song is sort of a folk number being derailed with girls whispering behind him, and Peter's odd claims of "unity". English is Peter's second (er, third) language, and perhaps where his lyric, whether or not you subscribe to the one world concept, are clumsy. So why is it great? The trumpet? I am not sure why it overcomes itself.
The unrequited love of "More Fine Wine" is chilling, not the effect I think he is going for. And his shortest most direct song "I Love You So" is the one time where his Tom Waits jones gets the better of him completely.
But it doesn't really matter, the bass heavy "Disconnect" is a Middle Eastern flavored jazz song, "Stop It" a rarified Tango, "Just Like A Woman" a psychedelic trip swept down to a type of Aria , the extended instrumental on "The Gift Of Life", a lucid musical gift to the listener – on and on . It is a completely unique blend of sounds and visions . (PS available on Itunes and Spotify)
Grade: B+