IT'S CLOUDY NOW

Two years after "That's Only The Moonlight", Aviv Geffen released his second studio album, "Cloudy Now", that includes 14 tracks, 42 mins long. like "The Moonlight" this album also concerns about love, betrayal, violence, peace and parents-children relations, the production of Moshe Levi is felt like in the previous one, only this time Geffen's sound had became stronger a little bit and developed it's own nuance - unlike the last albums, who showed deep influences that you could hear simply in "The Moonlight". In the production process took part Moshe Levi, Aviv Geffen himself & his band - "The Mistakes". As usual, Geffen wrote & composed all of the songs, when at the visual aspect - it was Shachar Berlovich, who directed the videos for "Cryin On The Grave" & aspecially the controversial video for "Cloudy Now", that was popular at that time, due to the invasion of MTV to israel and the rock wave of the 90's.

It ain't hard to call "Cloudy Now" as the most successful album by Geffen; It reached gold in a month and a half from it's release date, and turned Aviv to a superstar level in the local measure, not only because of the growth of his shows, and became a local histeria (like in the Arad festival), but because of what he said & represented at that time - aspecially in "Cloudy Now", that shows social & political problems, and the video who added a visual vivid to this song, showing drugs, violence & prostitution scenes in the video, and even the presenting of his father, Jonathan, as drunk addict; but what will be most remembered from this song is the famous shout in the end - "WE ARE A [%*!#]ED UP GENERATION" (in hebrew... :)) that definitely caused chaos and negative responses, from education authorities. Pretty ironic is the fact, that the debut show of this song was in a educational TV youth series, "A Matter Of A Time", when Geffen played a short part and played "Cloudy Now" for the first time. But even though of the protest he absorbed, Geffen was an icon and a spokeperson for a whole generation.

The album was released in 7/9/1993 - and was a hit factory, with songs like "Don't Worry", "Maybe", "The Wimp Song", "Cryin On The Grave" and aspecially "Cloudy Now", which are songs that till today are played in Aviv Geffen's shows. The album is very evaluated in the "Moonlight Children" (Geffen's closest fans), and some even call it the best album he ever made, but in my opinion the album is too loud and provocative, most of the songs are too short and not well developed. Most of the songs are dealing with love, and have a weird look at the women - showing them as disloyal, and not to be trusted - which is very stigmatic, after all. But it will be an injustice not to mention the astonishing writing & composing skills showed by Aviv, aspecially in track no. 8 - "Fall", one of the best Aviv Geffen tracks ever. The song is about betrayal, but from the other side - the one who is hurt. The song is followed by piano & keyboards only with an addition of a very moving text.

To sum up - the album, like it's "old brother", in my opinion is not polished enough, and is too short. It might reach heights like "Fall" & "Cloudy Now" (upgraded 11 years later, on the "Blackfield" project), but most of the tracks are too amature. There are lyrical & musically brilliant pieces, but on the same time you can still feel a lot of downs.

Il'l give it 1.5/5 stars.