Matisyahu: Live At Stubbs : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Matthew "Matisyahu" Miller is a twenty-six-year-old reggae-toasting Hasidic Jew who's been acclaimed as "the most exciting thing happening in music" by no less an authority than Carson Daly. Intriguing, yes, but exciting? Sort of. This live album shows off Matisyahu's ample vocal skills, which include ornamented wailing, pseudo-scat improvisations and some convincing beatboxing. He lays these often dazzling moves over a series of midtempo, minor-key tunes -- roots-reggae songs of the kind that are performed each night at a half-dozen reggae clubs around the country. Matisyahu makes a connection between deep-feeling Rasta jams and Jewish religious singing, but his spiritualism isn't always so inspiring for the listener when he's moaning his pain on the slow jam "Lord Raise Me Up" or pedantically explaining that "everything in this life has an inner essence" on "Warrior." Watching Matisyahu ply his craft might be exhilarating live, but Live at Stubb's sounds more like a front-porch summer album for undergrads than the word of Yahweh.