Favorite Albums of 2023

Looking back over my previous top ten lists, 2023 holds up well. The longer I’ve been at this, the more proficient I’ve gotten to finding good albums thanks to a mix of algorithms and sources. Also my ears get more and more attuned to the aural feel of music from Brazil: whenever I take a break from Brazil, it’s not too long before I miss the cadences of its sounds. Eventually I’ll stop doing this. (I actually put out fewer posts in 2023 than I did in any previous year.) But even when I stop doing the blog, I’m confident I’ll listen to the music I’ve discovered through it until I can’t listen to anything anymore.

But enough about me and the blog. What about 2023?

First, as always, take the “favorite” seriously. I’m long past trying for any whiff of objectivity or expertise in these things. This is just stuff I liked. You may or may not. You might be thrilled at one of those B- albums I like fine but will never actually listen to again. I’m tempted to follow Chris Monsen’s lead and not rank stuff. But I know some people like the numbers game. I guess I do, too. So the albums graded A- or higher are ranked. The B+ albums, however are alphabetical. I did put a * by a few of the ones closest to the top.

This year’s A-list has plenty of old favorites. Two Clube members land three albums, including that Fróes record that only I seemed to love. Marina Sena could well be setting herself up for a decade dominating run. Patrícia Bastos and Adriana Calcanhotto reminded what talents they can be. Jards Macalé leaned into his second collaboration with the Clube da Encruza for perhaps the best album of his career. But the A-list also includes five artists I’d never heard or heard of before this year as well as three I had merely passing knowledge of. The well of great music from Brazil doesn’t seem anywhere close to drying up, and given that culture’s love of music—perhaps only surpassed by football—there’s no reason to think it ever will.

As I said in my 2023 playlist post, music from Brazil is more varied than Anglophone marketing would have you believe, so below find 33 albums, some of which will fit exactly what you expect with that term as well many more that will expand your horizons on what Brazilian musicians do. I hope you love this stuff half as much as I do.

A-List

1. Filipe Catto, Belezas São Coisas Acesas por Dentro (A)
2. Ricardo Dias Gomes, Muito Sol (A)
3. Marina Sena, Vício Inerente (A-)
4. Patrícia Bastos, Voz da Taba (A-)
5. Romulo Fróes and Tiago Rosas, Na Goela (A-)
6. Anne Jezini, Em Fuga (A-)
7. Rodrigo Campos, Pagode Novo (A-)
8. Slipmami, Malvatrem (A-)
9. Febem, Fleezus and CESRV, Brime! (Deluxe Edition) (A-)
10. Ian Ramil, Tetein (A-)
11. Jards Macalé, Coração Bifurcado (A-)
12. Adriana Calcanhotto, Errante (A-)
13. YMA and Jadsa, Zelena (A-)
14. Cabezadenego, Mbé and Leyblack, Mimosa (A-)
15. Romulo Fróes and Rodrigo Campos, Elefante (A-)
16. Os Tincoãs, Canto Coral Afrobrasileiro (A-)
17. María Freitas & Jazz das Minas, Ayé Òrun (A-)

Honorable Mentions (B+)

• Ana Frango Elétrico, Me Chama de Gato Que Eu Sou Sua
• Bixarte, Traviarcado
• Rodrigo Brandão, Outros Estado*
• Sophia Chablau e Uma Enorme Perda da Tempo, Música do Esquecimento*
• Dossel, Badoque
• Fleezus, Off Mode
• Nei Lopes, Nei Lopes 80
• Carlos Lyra, Afeto
• Nuven, Zero
• Rodrigo Ogi, Aleatoriamente
• Ná Ozzetti, Zécarlos Ribeiro and Danilo Penteado, Ná Canta Zécarlos Ribeiro
• Sara Não Tem Nome, A Situação*
• Tasha & Tracie, Kyan and Rapper Gregory, Yin Yang
• Thrills & the Chase, Thrills After Dark*
• Tori, Descese
• Anna Vis, Como Um Bicho Vê

2023, Part Five

Ana Frango Elétrico, Me Chama de Gato Que Eu Sou Sua – Avoiding being pigeonholed as indie, Frango makes a disco move. Bass, string and horn arrangements, dance beats: Frango would be unrecognizable if not for that voice. But if the sounds change, the smarts remain. With each record, Frango’s grasp of music making has deepened. The records sound richer and more thought through. That’s not an entirely a good thing, however. The loose, punky spirit of the debut has receded. Instead you get something that’s impressive, but not quite as fun. Frango still has a sense of humor. “Boy of Stranger Things” plays with both Frango’s looks and nonbinary status for laughs. But back-to-back this album with scene- and label-mates Bala Desejo’s Sim Sim Sim, and you hear a difference. Bala Desejo’s Brazilian disco gets how essential frothiness is to the fun that makes the redux work. Frango has too many straight ones here. Sad or melancholy, the songs are still good. But impressive and well-built aren’t the first adjectives you want to reach for when describing disco music. Don’t let the relative disappointment of the words here distract you from the grade I give the album. Frango remains one of the bright young talents of Brazilian music. However much I hope Frango brings back the guitar, this latest album shows why Frango has a career worth following closely. Listen and buy here. Grade: B+

Rodrigo Brandão, Outros Estado – Give Brandão credit. He’s figured out a way to make spoken-word music that busts through the language barrier, made even more necessary by the difficulty in tracking down lyrics. His sprechgesang leans into mood and cadence that centers the music even if you can’t follow the verbal meaning. Instruments, played mostly by musicians from São Paulo’s  avant-jazz/instrumental scene, skronk over beat percussion that backs him, but then the nearly ten-minute “Dreams of Drums” flows by on the dulcet sounds of the kora while Brandão’s gravelly near-whisper soothes, interrupted by some African singing. As unlikely as it might have seemed when he made the spoken-word move a couple of albums ago, Brandão has ended up making some of the best music of his career. Listen and buy here. Grade: B+

Adriana Calcanhotto, Errante – Traditionalist and modern simultaneously, Calcanhotto inhabits a space where MPB held on to its innovations into the ’70s and then just decides to do its thing well. In her case, very well. Like Marisa Monte, she finds a way to make her neoclassicism click without getting stuck in retro, retread or retreat. If she doesn’t feel the need to incorporate rock or hip hop, that doesn’t mean she isn’t interested in finding new ways to make old sounds sing and, most importantly, she remembers the value of a good tune. It’s not so much comfort food as a favorite meal: the familiar is for savoring moments of beauty in life, not for dulling the pain of a world that so often goes wrong. Listen here. Grade: A-

Filipe Catto, Belezas São Coisas Acesas por Dentro – Drawn toward the showy and decadent feel of cabaret, Catto might seem like an unlikely candidate to honor the legacy of Gal Costa, but that assumption proves gloriously wrong. Unlike her fellow tropicalistas, Costa retained elements of bossa nova’s Vegas-y lounge aura. Early in her career she managed to turn those aesthetics inside out on albums that both celebrated and undermined those commitments. If she eventually became what she originally deconstructed, the impact of her early albums remains. What makes this tribute so effective is how Catto captures those two sides of Costa’s legacy while making music that sounds like nothing Costa herself made. Imagine Costa as a Velvet Underground fan—so, a Brazilian Bettie Seveert—but with the big, go-for-it riffs of arena rock latched to those alt sounds. Channeling and and transmuting her spirit, Catto sounds eerily like Costa without simply mimicking her thereby bringing out something in Costa that isn’t immediately present, but is obvious when heard. The ten tracks from across Costa’s career are assembled into a package that’s arguably stronger than any single album she released. Play loud. Celebrate Costa. Admire Catto’s impressive achievement. Listen here. Grade: A

Sophia Chablau e Uma Enorme Perda da Tempo, Música do Esquecimento – Cute indie pop rock band releases debut EP with a terrific lead track and mostly nothing else somehow comes back two years later and learns all the right lessons from that misfire: fast is better, slow needs a good melody or something to have a chance, surface is fine if you make it shiny enough, it’s best when she sings. Except two in the middle—tracks seven and eight if you want to get specific—they take everything that was good about that lead track and turn it into a full album. There’s nothing deep here, despite some lyrics that try. Just fun and pleasure. Which is usually enough, even in the bad times. Listen and buy here. Grade: B+

Bebel Gilberto, João – Daughter honors dad, but since he was a revolutionary and she’s merely a talent the results won’t make you forget the originals. Which is fine. Gilberto acquits herself well as she reminds the world how important her dad was as she gives us a goodbye album that won’t be as meaningful for us as it was for her—how could it be?—but is meaningful enough for anyone who likes João. Listen here. Grade: B

Rodrigo Ogi, Aleatoriamente – Kiko Dinucci made his name as a guitarist. On both solo and group (Metá Metá, Clube da Encruza collaborations), he combined samba and rock as effectively as anyone in Brazilian music has. So his recent turn away from that strength toward more electronic sounds has been something of a surprise. But with Juçara Marçal’s Delta Estácio Blues and now Ogi’s latest, Dinucci is building an intriguing new stage in his career. Ogi has worked with Clube members before on 2015’s R Á!, but, like Dinucci, he seems to be pushing himself hard into new directions here. Ogi’s previous albums were fairly standard hip hop, but there’s often little funk in Dinucci’s beats and noise, and Ogi adapts by declaiming as much as he raps. Often he sounds as if he’s trying to escape the claustrophobic noise Dinucci as assembled, which heightens the tension and unease of the music. This is the sound of a city: dense, unnerving, exciting, hinting at both freedom and entrapment. Dinucci deepens the sonics of the Marçal album to create music unlike anything in his career, and Ogi rises to the occasion as well. If everything doesn’t quite land, it could just be the difficulty and disorientation of sounds that may sound much more normal as Dinucci continues to develop his new interests. Like Dinucci’s early samba work, the results here are as much about possibilities as they are arrival, and however much I want him to break out that guitar again, I’m also really intrigued with where he is going here. Listen here. Grade: B+

Os Tincoãs, Canto Coral Afrobrasileiro – Cult band from Bahia with a twisted history finds a lost album in the vaults and reminds current audiences why they deserved more than their cult. Os Tincoãs’ gorgeous melding of choral music to Afro-Brazilian traditions resulted in a several nice albums in the 1970s, but on a trip to Angola in 1983 two of the three principals decided to stay and the band mostly disappeared. (Two members recorded an album in 1986, and some sites say the band continued until 2000 in Angola.) In the ’00s singer Mateus Aleluia returned to Brazil and restarted his recording career there, which led to a resurgence of interest in the band. This final disc by the trio captures them leaning even more into the choral than on the previous three albums, and those  gorgeous vocal arrangement help send this one over the top. A few moments hint schmaltz, but mostly the trio and their choir create a beauty that sounds like the Beach Boys going to church although the religion in question—candomblé—here is different and the feel much less European. But both see beauty as a means of transcendence that can heal the everyday immanence, which is as relevant today as it was in 1983. Listen here. Grade: A-

2017, Part Ten: Wrapping Up

I’ve got a few more 2017 discs I want to review, but I plan to do them in artist posts. This is the final roundup of albums from last year. A best of 2017 will appear in February.

BK, Antes dos Gigantes Chegarem, Vol. 1 EP – With a title almost longer than the three songs it contains, this brief follow-up to last year’s Castelos & Ruínas mines similar territory, albeit not as spookily, which is a letdown. Listen here. Grade: B-

Juventude Bronzeade, Tropical Lacrador – Emerging from the Belo Horizonte street carnivals, these axé loyalists represent for their dance-inducing genre. Their street beats—which in this style signify celebration, not tough—capture the joy of carnavale, and if by the end of the 30 minutes it sounds a bit samey that’s probably because you sat and listened to it, which isn’t the point. Move. Dance. If not in the street, around the house. Then you’ll understand. Listen here. Grade: B.

Thiago Elniño, A Rotino do Pombo – Elniño releases his full-length debut after several EPs and singles. The album is a high-minded excursion into black identity, experience, politics and religion in Brazil. Collaborating with producing collective Espaço Casa, he fashions songs rooted in reggae, Africa and Brazil. But the music never quite lives up to the possibilities of that combination. So he’s KRS-One: an enlightened educator with music that doesn’t peak as high as you wish it did even as its pleasures satisfy. There are worse things to be, of course. Listen and download free from the artist here. Grade: B

A Espetacular Charanga do França, Bomba, Suor e Bapho EP – Of all the units Thiago França leads, this one has, to my surprise, emerged as my favorite. Where this brass-plus-percussion band first reminded me of a really good college marching band, familiarity—and appreciation of how, whether dancing or doing dishes, moving to this music opens up its pleasures—has bred enjoyment. It helps, too, that França tends to stick to EPs with this outfit: brass and percussion alone have a rather limited sonic palette, so the shorter length helps ensure the sound doesn’t wear thin. So if you have some quick sweeping to do, here’s a 20 minute boost to get you through the chore. Download free from the artist here. Grade: B+

Sabrina Malheiros, Clareia – Daughter of Azymuth bassist Alex, Malheiros has established a solid career working post-’60s bossa nova styles since 2005. Not groundbreaking or anything; just a solid recapitulation. She sings in the cool manner. Guitar shimmers. Beats move at mid-tempo sway. She does everything you expect her to given her aesthetics commitments. And that’s not a bad thing. Listen here. Grade: B

Airto Moreira, Aluê – Septuagenarian Brazilian jazz artist well known to ’70s fusion jazz fans for his work Miles Davis, Weather Report and Return to Forever. Seems to be his first album in about a decade. Revisits some of his old classics and attempts to write a few new ones. As always, his music tends toward fussiness, but when he doesn’t cross that line it’s as beautiful as ever. None of the three new ones live up to the best of the remakes. Excluding the dud final track, the shortest pieces here are nearly seven minutes. They are also the highlights. Listen here. Grade: C+

Rodrigo Ogi, Pé no Chão EP – Another solid effort from the São Paulo rapper who’d apparently wow me with his lyrics if I knew Portuguese. (Google translations just don’t cut it.) The production’s not as adventurous as on RÁ, but the shorter length brings a welcome focus to the music. Listen here. Grade: B

Hermeto Pascoal & Big Band, Natureza Universal – After a few years of silence, veteran jazzer Pascoal released three albums in 2017, two new ones and one vault find. The first half of that vault find is the highlight, but this collection with a jazz orchestra, with its Gil Evans’ inspired sound, is solid as well. While at 81, Pascoal’s not much of a revolutionary anymore, any of us would be pleased to be this creative and vital at his age. But at nearly 70 minutes the pretty good that runs throughout the record tends to wear out its welcome. Listen here. Grade: B

Laura Petit, Monstera Deliciosa – Singer/songwriter who combines MPB and more alternative rock sounds in the manner of Mariana Aydar and Iara Rennó. She’s not as creative as those talents, but puts out ten solid song on her debut. The kind of minor talent who is a sign of a healthy musical culture. Listen here. Grade: B-

Vitor Ramil, Campos Neutrais – High and clean. Sensitive and delicate. If you don’t have tolerance for such traits in music, an extended stay in Brazilian music may not be recommended. And while those traits don’t rank high on my preference meter, if you can do it well, I’ll listen. And Vitor Ramil, from Pelotas in far southern Brazil, pulls it off. While his arrangements risk fussy, they mostly work. Even as he tempts Sting-y levels of horridness he, unlike Lucas Santanna, avoids that aesthetic void. Nothing here tops the dynamite opening track, but almost everything repays your attention. Just put on the headphones and find out yourself. Listen here. Grade: B

Satanique Samba Trio, Xenossamba EP – Instrumental pranksters who’ve somehow managed eight releases, all of which are more or less interchangeable. Chops and jokes can work fine, but they can only take you so far. Listen here. Grade: C+

Various Artists, John Armstrong Presents Afrobeat/Brasil – Fela Kuti’s music has had an impact on Latin America commensurate to its significance. But too often those Latin and Brazilian followers see his extended grooves as a chance to hone chops and solo, which wasn’t the point at all. So by focusing on key tracks and having a generous definition of afrobeat, John Armstrong manages to cut through those issues to present a solid compilation, complete with an appropriate title nod to Jorge Ben’s seminal Africa Brasil album. The problem is that most of the better cuts—Metá Metá’s “Logun”, Tássia Reis’s “Desapegada”— come from albums worth owning. Still, you get the right amount of bands like Bixiga 70 who normally wear out their welcome after a cut or two. So those with deeper collections might find the value of this compilation reduced, but newcomers could find a valuable sonic map. Raise or lower the grade as is appropriate to you. Listen and buy here. Grade: B-

2015, Part One

Having wrapped up 2016, why not start doing the same for 2015?

Boogarins, Manual – On their second album, the psych-rock quartet from Goiânia moves past echoing the past to putting their on stamp on it. The album leads with a brief guitar instrumental and then launches into four near perfect psychedelic nuggets. The playing is straightforward, with Dinho Almeida and Benke Ferraz’s guitars tracing out simple lines or riffs, usually repeating or slightly varying them, while drummer Ynaiã Benthroldo and bassist Raphael Vaz keep the songs from drifting away. The effect is expansive, recapturing that late ’60s soaring sense of mind-altering utopia before the overdoses, addictions and bad trips sent everything crashing back to reality in the early ’70s. Of course, these four were born well after that beautiful lie, so translate the lyrics to read a bleaker worldview and hear the music take on a more melancholic ennui without losing it’s power. Either way, heady stuff. But after the fifth track, mood begins to replace songs, tunes drift and the energy enervates. They bounce back on the final two tracks, although they still miss the highs of those opening numbers. Listen here. Grade: B

Letuce, Estilhaça – Rockish/electronica-ish MBP duo comprised of singer Letícia Novaes and Lucas Vasconcellos. Met in Rio de Janeiro. Made music, made love, broke up, but kept the band together for one more album. There are moments across their three albums that are intriguing, but Novaes’ singing tends to slip into mannered and forced, while the music’s disparate parts rarely gel. And when she sings in English, the lyrics let you know there are conceptual problems, too. This is probably their best album. So, yeah, breaking up the band, too, was probably the right thing to do. Listen here. Grade: D+

Rodrigo Ogi, RÁ! – São Paulo rapper and former member of the Contraflow troupe, Ogi’s favela lyrics are reinforced by lean funk for a very ’90s feel, and that’s a compliment. Though hard and complicit, he’s not without compassion or a sense of humor. He’s also not above some pop sellout—check out that laughing hook on the delectable “Hahaha!”—although he could use a little more to push past the sonic monotony on the second half that holds this otherwise strong album back. Listen here. Grade: B

Jonas Sá, BLAM! BLAM! – Rio de Janeiro singer, songwriter, producer, dabbler Sá’s sporadic career befits a bohemian in music for the pleasures rather than the career track. Another Brazilian musician from an artistic family—father Rô Tapajós is a writer, mother Tetê Sá a singer and graphic designer, brother Pedro made a name working with Caetano Veloso in the ’00s—Sá has released just one EP and two albums over 14 years, less because he’s a reclusive studio genius than because it fit his life plans. This second album is weirder, more scattershot than the perfectly fine debut (2007’s Anormal), but it also peaks much higher. Opens with an electro-tinged rock, then funk-tinged rock then Curtis Mayfield homage followed by a Serge Gainsbourg nod and then wanders from there. What unifies it is a commitment to rhythm, sometimes subtle, but always there. Even without a translator, you can guess Sá’s concerns from the cover, which depicts the a naked woman from just below her breasts to her knees. Finding a company to print the cover delayed the release of the album by about a year and it appears (understandably) censored on my streaming service of choice. Even the interior artwork was inspired by Brazilian porn magazines from the ’70s and ’80s. And, especially on the first half, the music matches the lyrical mood: slippery, sly, raucous, seductive. The back half moves toward quieter, more traditional Brazilian sounds without abandoning the sonic commitment to transmuting ’70s/’80s funk/R&B into current MPB, but two or three tracks dial down the party too much. The rest, however, showcase a fertile talent who might benefit from the focus less fun and more work could provide. Listen here. Grade: A-

Elza Soares, Mulher do Fim do Mundo – When released last year in the United States (under the title Woman at the End of the World), Soares’ 2015 album was interesting in two ways: it sounded nothing like anything the singer had recorded, and it was the first taste most North Americans had received of Brazil’s Clube da Encruza collective. For most of her career, Soares (born in 1937) was associated with Carioca schmaltz, a kind of Rio de Janeiro Vegas equivalent, so a turn to postpunk samba was more than a bit jarring. But teaming up with a group of younger musicians at the cutting edge of that scene in São Paulo might be an even bigger surprise. (Imagine Dean Martin cutting tracks with NYC punks in the late ’70s.) Before this album, Soares biography may have been the most compelling aspect of her artist career: born into poverty, forced into marriage at age 12, widowed at 21, becoming a star, playing the other woman in the marriage of a famous alcoholic soccer player, later marrying said player and putting up with his friends and fans who despised her, burying two children. Yet her music, focused on mainstream samba, big band and pop schlock, didn’t convey that desperate, rollercoaster life. But in 2013 Cacá Machado brought together an eclectic group of support musicians for his Eslavosamba album, including Soares and some of the Clube members, who had recently begun cross pollinating their solo careers into Passo Torto and Metá Metá. Although the Clube weren’t Soares’ only collaborators, their signature avant samba defines the sound of the record. Or, I should add, the instrumental sound, because Soares is no mere puppet for these ambitious younger musicians. All the excitement and pain of her biography springs to life in a stunning vocal performance. Every gargle, groan, moan, every bit of spit you hear flying from her lips signifies someone pushing past loss and pain, who’s seen through the lies of fame and clings to life even as she edges ever closer to death. If, a year later, the album doesn’t sound quite as striking as it did upon release, that’s only because she led me into the wider world of the Clube da Encruza, whose best work surpasses this excellent album. Figure it’s Diana, with the Clube’s wings clipped like Chic’s were on that superb Diana Ross album: while great on it’s own terms, it also points to something richer. Plus Soares takes singing risks here like Ross never did there (at least in the official version remixed and released without Chic’s approval). Let’s hope she has another album like this in her before she plays for her final audience. If not, what a testament. Listen and buy here. Grade: A