Yair Yona

Last year, Strange Attractors Audio House reissued Remember, the debut album by a studied and eclectic acoustic guitarist named Yair Yona. Just a year earlier, Yona had released Remember through his own imprint, Anova Music, and it had done quite well, gathering a little online momentum and earning Yona praise from elder guitar statesmen like Glenn Jones.

But Yona’s reach into European and American folk circles was limited, as much as anything can be in this online age, by his location: Yona lives in Tel Aviv, a city far removed from the North American and English guitarists Yona channeled so diligently. Luckily, Portland’s Strange Attractors spotted Remember and added the adventurous little LP to its Resurrection Series, a set of seven such albums salvaged from out-of-print obscurity. To date, the Resurrection Series includes Jones’ seminal work in Cul de Sac, ECIM, plus two albums by Kinski and a mind-bending collaboration between Six Organs of Admittance and Current 93’s David Tibet. Suffice it to say, the reissue of Remember is the best coronation for which a young guitarist like Yona could hope.

Remember’s acceptance and acclaim stem largely from Yona’s ability to conjure and combine several different styles of guitar, not unlike Sir Richard Bishop or William Tyler. Yona is as comfortable with creaking old blues numbers as he is with long, uninterrupted strings of theme and variation. On Remember, his playing frequently turns from narrative to elliptical, from elegantly elementary to radically ambitious. There are tracks named for Jack Rose and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and both do their predecessors justice. It’s a quick proclamation of capability and promise, the sort of debut that makes you add the name to your Google Alerts.

Yona is working on his second album now; he is playing a rare American show at Hopscotch. —Grayson Currin