AKA Pella 2: Review

Full Disclosure: I was involved in the very early stages of AKA Pella 1 (my work had nothing to do with what was actually on the album), and because of purely logistical reasons, I could not see this through to the end.

AKA Pella’s first album was a breakthrough album for Jewish acapella. It combined mostly secular songs with Hebrew lyrics, and also incorporated heavy use of vocal rhythm sections (drums and bass) complete with distortion guitar sounding solos and rhythm. Cb-productions, who are John Clark and Ed Boyer, did a large portion of the work for AKA Pella 1, including many of the background vocals and arpeggios, as well as sampled work when used. AKA Pella 2 continues this concept and extends it to “popular” Jewish group songs.

The songs choices for this album, although Jewish, are certainly unique. Standard groups’ songs are used, such as Lev Tahor, Shalsheles and the Chevra, but other non-standard groups’ songs are used as well, such as Hamsa Boys, Avi, David and Donny (the former Chevra), Vahaveinu and The Alumni, with one original song, similar to the first album, by Elchonon Majeski. Although when choosing Jewish group songs there isn’t a large selection, I do disagree with some of the obscure song choices. Instead of filling up half of the album with obscure songs, why not use that space to sing new songs? Further, why not have an album entirely composed of original songs? Perhaps this group is thinking of releasing an album with music, similar to Lev Tahor, and is saving the original songs for that? Regardless, the songs choices are unique at best, strange at worst.

Although the songs used are Jewish, many of the intros draw from secular songs, such as Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” (Track 8, Iv Lavan Garti), Backstreet Boys’ “Everybody” (Track 1 L’Cha), Alanis Morissette’s Joan Osborne's “What if G-d Was One of Us (Track 2, Gadol), as well as several others. This is a cute idea, but little more, and it fits in with AKA Pella’s shock marketing strategy.

The arrangements to the songs sound very similar to the first album, and are, for the most part, unoriginal. This is no surprise as Ed Boyer was heavily involved in this project as well, and Boyer probably used samples from the first album on this album. There is only one “fast song”, Vahaveinu, a rock song. The rest of the songs are disco/hip-hop (L’Cha, Raninu, Ba’u, Im Lavan Garti, Ivdu, Naar Hayisi) or ballads (Ekro, Rifaeinu, Gadol). Similar to first album, many of the ballads and even some of the discos are sleepy. There’s something about the sampled pads used in the background that is just very sleepy. Many of the songs do little more, and don’t do it as well as, the originals. The album is full of add 2 chords, which gets old very fast, and has few original arrangements beyond the original song. The only exception to this is Ekro, which uses a few original chords.

The vocals in general are good, with a couple of exceptions. Some of the other vocals sound rigid, or to the other extreme, over the top, such as the two times that a particular singer sings. His vocals are almost intentionally nasal, replete with over the top runs.

Acapella is a style of music, not just a copy of instrumental music. AKA Pella has to learn to improve on what they accomplished in the first album and not just extend the concept to Jewish songs.