Matthew Miller—better known to his fans by his Hebrew name Matisyahu—must have left record execs a little confused when he explained how the tour for his third studio album was going to work.

Reached by phone in Jerusalem, the rising reggae-rap star (who happens to be a Hasidic Jew) tells the Straight that Dub Trio, the band he is touring with, had no input on Light, the album the tour is promoting. Matisyahu hooked up with the group of fellow Brooklyn musicians in the spring of 2009, long after work on Light was under way.

“I went to one of their shows and I just was really taken by their sound,” he says. “We did a show together in Brooklyn and just totally improvised. They didn’t learn any of my songs. We just booked this place, told a few people about it, and it got packed.”¦I just had the time of my life, and I was like, ”˜You know what? This is going to be the band.’ ”

The rapper is making something of a routine out of switching things up.

Matisyahu’s first taste of commercial success came with the help of Roots Tonic, a three-piece rock-reggae band that played with him for his breakthrough release, Live at Stubb’s, and on the 2006 studio follow-up, Youth. But the only member still touring with Matisyahu is guitarist Aaron Dugan. And while Stubb’s was recorded in a single night and Youth put together in less than two months, Matisyahu and producer David Kahne laboured over Light for more than a year.

Heavy drums and dubbed-out bass suggest Matisyahu hasn’t gotten over an obsession with ’70s-style reggae, while a beatboxer’s natural flow and chaotic internal rhyme schemes make it clear he still loves hip-hop’s dark alleys. Adding to the genre-mashing are spacey strings that surface out of nowhere. Standouts include “Motivate”, where a dark-side-of-the-moon guitar solo breaks through speaker-tearing bass that would be right at home in Kingston’s grimiest dance clubs.

Anchoring it all are Matisyahu’s trademark rhymes of optimism. “One Day”, the album’s first single, finds him rapping: “Sometimes in my tears I drown/But I never let it get me down/So when negativity surrounds/I know some day it’ll all turn around.”

Another highlight is “Smash Lies”, a ska-injected banger that opens the album and signals a leap into a world of genre-twisting musical complexity that earlier work from Matisyahu only hinted at.

“To me, it is about whatever it takes to create the sound that I want to create,” Matisyahu says about the split from Roots Tonic and the new direction his live shows are heading in. “Their [Dub Trio’s] vibe and the way that they play reggae music and the way that they play hip-hop and rock is all along the same lines that I am feeling those different styles.”

So what can fans expect from shows by an artist who breaks out with one band, records his next album on his own, and then promotes the new release with a group that wasn’t involved with its creation?

“They should expect the unexpected,” Matisyahu answers confidently. “There is all this kind of production and everything that goes on to create those songs in the studio. And the way that I see it, live is a totally different ball game.”

Reports from Matisyahu’s early gigs with Dub Trio speak of jam sessions more reminiscent of the Allman Brothers at the Fillmore than a dancehall set in Jamaica (where much of Light was recorded).

“We’re taking in songs even from the Youth record and totally redoing them,” Matisyahu says, adding that some tracks on Light can expect the same treatment.

“Basically, we go through it, verse-chorus, verse-chorus, et cetera, and then we just kind of open up,” he explains. “So those open jams in every song will go anywhere from maybe a minute to 10 or 15 minutes, or maybe into a whole improvisation that will go on for like 20, 25 minutes, into another song.”

Palpably excited about the tour, Matisyahu adds: “We really go all over the place.”

Matisyahu plays the Commodore Ballroom on Sunday (October 18).

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