Thiago Pethit

Cabaret, chanson, glam rock aping such. Not for me. Add in a libertine aesthete persona, and I’m ready to check out. But singer Thiago Pethit does what he does well enough that I keep listening despite the misgivings. (And, to be honest, because I figured his career was worth an overview here.)

Dabbling in acting, pronouncing his love of literature, singing in three languages (Portuguese, English, and, of course, French), making sure he keeps the sadness up front so you know he’s deep, Pethit takes the artist thing seriously, even if it’s hard sometimes for the listener to take him as seriously as he might wish. Yet he also has a knack for melody, arrangements and presentation—or at least the smarts to bring in producers who can juice his songs in those ways—that overcomes those aspects that sound like deficit to my ears. If you are in tune with his sensibilities, you might fall completely for him.

He debuted in 2008 with an EP, Em Outro Lugar, that regurgitated influences without making them his own. Plus, too much gentle accordion (which means any gentle accordion, right?). But with his proper debut, Berlim, Texas, Pethit and producer Yury Kalil strip out the excess for a spare sound—usually just piano or guitar—that gives Pethit’s melancholy voice and melodies space to breathe. On the followup, Estrela Decadente, Pethit brings in producer Kassin and expands his sound to a full band set up. The extra energy adds kick and fun. He’s still sad and mourning failed love, but he manages to have some fun along the way, usually, per the title, of the decadent kind. Which might actually be his problem, but more on that below.

Not surprisingly, Pethit adores ’70s Lou Reed, David Bowie and Iggy Pop. It’s short leap from cabaret to those arch masters of artifice and decadence. So he goes rock and roll on his third LP, Rock’n’Roll Sugar Darling. Or, really, “rock and roll”, because the appropriation here feels as received as his cabaret and chanson. It’s all an act, as the opening monologue where the narrator claims the kids need a “rock’n’roll superstar” who “hustles on the same streets they do” and then asks committed sensitive and stylistic dilettante Thiago Pethit to fill the bill. Yet, as with his other work, he overcomes his handicaps to turn out a solid record. If it lacks the punch and swagger of great rock music it’s a more than passable reclamation project in an era when so many indie dudes have forgotten how to rock out. Plus he still has his sense of melody and presentation to get his shtick across. Definitely helps that whoever is drumming knows the value of the Diddley beat.

And then five years of silence. Pethit finally re-emerged in 2019 with Mal dos Trópicos (Queda & Ascenção de Orfeu da Consolação), an album unlike anything he’d made yet. The cabaret, chanson and glam rock is transmuted into an orchestral bossa nova art album. Which actually makes sense when you think about it.

For all its down and dirty appeal, the kind of glam made by Reed and Bowie very much aimed high and arty, as does cabaret. This is music for aesthetes and self-aware sophisticates. Without ever pretending down and dirty, so is bossa nova. So his move to the form, with help from producer Diogo Strausz, fits his path. Musically the influences sound like early bossa at its most ambitious fused with John Barry’s Bond scores and dinky dance beats. Thematically, he jumps off the story of Orpheus to analyze Brazil’s current political pathology through the lens of decadence as liberation.

Which gets us back to that problem I mentioned above. Pethit has said he writes about the impossibility of love, but his performing persona’s heartache seems more grounded in his own failings than any problem with love. He claims he changes as much as the moon and has the devil inside him, but really he just seems to lack the stick-to-itiveness that actually is love. Trapped in his own pleasures and experiences he drifts from lover to lover bemoaning that he can’t be forever lost in ecstasy, which surely means just sex for him. So, on one level, you can see how his embrace of pleasure in the midst Brazil’s demi-fascist government promising a return to “Christian values” constitutes a political act. But nothing in his lyrics on earlier albums or here gives the impression that his rebellion is for anyone other than himself, no matter what he claims. Instead of pursuing decadence as revolution, why not emphasize solidarity or class or indigenous identities under threat from Bolsonaro’s right-wing government? In the end, Pethit too often comes across as a parody of decadence and edgy living.

Most of his albums fall on the shallow end of the art pool, but the music made up for the lack. Here the whole is less satisfying in some ways than its three predecessors despite being the best music of his career because its efforts to try to be more than cheap fun flop so badly. But there’s still that music, so be thankful for the language barrier, forget the preceding paragraph, and just enjoy it for the aural rush that it is. That’s my plan.

Most of Pethit’s albums can be heard at his Youtube channel.

Em Outro Lugar (2008) – C

Berlim, Texas (2010) – B

Estrela Decadente (2012) – B+

Rock’n’Roll Sugar Darling (2014) – B

Mal dos Trópicos (Queda & Ascenção de Orfeu da Consolação) (2019) – B+