Transcending the skeletal spaces with Bones Garage

Exploring the sands of time and rhyme with Bones Garage; photograph by Yul Shift.

Beyond the pale of political polemics and the corrosive cult hype of perpetual conflicts; Tel Aviv has always had an understated and astonishing pop art underground. Enter Bones Garage, a group that emerges out of the angst, rancor and endless confusions of the modern era with songs of experience, hope and a whole lotta inclusive heart. Following up their EP Massacre/Dance; the band of Ariel Pedatzur, Eden Atad, Yaniv Bin, Dor Harari, Yoni Deutsch and Raz Copperman return with their towering debut full-length Oi Ma Yeah.

The album takes the audience to lands of quagmires, land grabs, tensions and stalemates on the grandiose "Great Rift Valley". The madness and mayhem of current times can be felt in "Topolopompo", before rewinding back the clock of inquisitions and insurrections to the formidable Darwinian origins of our species on "Back to the Ape", right as the squall of sound blasts of "What Was the Question" outnumber the answers with an eternal array of hazy inquiries. Internalized personifications of states and fractured unions ring about in the survey of interpersonal conflicts on "Third World Country", as the scuzz winds of "I Have to Apologize" swarm while "Farhud" stands as a sonically sewn monument of remembrance to violent uprisings past (and present), as "Grenades" transforms storms of pestilence into a peaceful rain of floral petals. Bones Garage continues their trajectory of transcendence on the serenity summoning of "Renaissance", showcasing the primal and principle expressions and exchanges of "Amour" displayed on "Homo Sapiens Love", before shepherding the listener into a valley dimension of enlightenment with the closing ballad "The Future of Illusion" that is erected like an electric mirage orchestrated by angelic hosts.

Bones Garage’s Ariel Pedatzur shared some streams of thoughts about their new album and more:

Reflections on the foundations of Bone Garage.

On the outside, Oi Ma Yeah is only our second album. But the truth is, this band, in some variation, have existed for more than 15 years now. Musically, we’ve been through so much — from rock to home recorded prog albums with 12 minute songs, to so much in between. Before Bones Garage we were touring in Israel as a theatrical prog band and it got really over the top. Even one of the songs on the album, “Back to the Ape”, was written 12 years ago. Massacre/Dance, our debut album, was about getting back to basics — melodies, guitar lines, simple emotions. Oi Ma Yeah is about finding balance between the two.

Meditations on the evolutions of ethereal approaches to dissonance in the group’s audio aesthetics.

We write about our life, our experience of being Israelis. But rather than conveying an explicit political message, we tell our experience — of trying to live our normal lives in this crazy place. Some songs are love songs, some are more personal or philosophical, but the environment we live in is always there in the background. In Oi Ma Yeah, we feel we finally found our sound and our identity. The balance between making a music that’s epic and profound, but also fun and catchy. And most of all, for us it’s a very personal and emotional record. We’ve put so much of our hearts and lives to every moment in it. It’s ultra special for us — we hope people will like it even half as much as we do.

Thoughts on the creative fusions that would give rise to the album Oi Ma Yea.

In Oi Ma Yeah, we sought to make something bigger, more significant than our debut. To reincarnate some of the complexities and theatrics of our teenage works, without losing the essence of melody and emotions. We were open to more influences, more styles, crazier ideas. We experimented a lot and we’ve stepped out of our genre, but for every weird or unusual decision we took, we made sure there’s a good reason, rather than just being unusual for the sake of it.  And we’ve also made sure that every single track on our record have strong melody, lyrics and a very strong emotional core to it.

Bones Garage’s Oi Ma Yeah is available now via ATH Records.