This New York trio (and many pals) tap an interesting, if emotionally and musically familiar, vein within Jewish music. It's where tradition meets Downtown.

There is frequently a deeply soulful quality to Shlomo Gaisin's singing and sometimes a funky acoustic style which touches on street-pop busking: Think the Violent Femmes or Morphine rockin' the kibbutz. And as you might expect a minor chord melancholy.

The point-of-difference, if you will, is that Gaisin sings in wordless vocals which allude to language without actually pinning it down. So this is more about invoking and evoking emotion—and sometimes just sentiment—than anything more specific. So it's about how much you as a listener puts in, because at one important level they aren't putting out.

As with so many bands, their inevitable default position is crowd-pleasing reggae rhythms: As on the bland "Mashiash" where dub-influences and jazzy funkiness can't disguise its thin melodic idea, and the equally transparent "Binyan Ariel".

At 32 minutes this is a further brief, unconvincing introduction to Zusha—following their EP of 2014—which is doubtless best experienced live. Because on record it merely works crowd-pleasing and obvious musical motifs, and often threadbare tropes.