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-
Brazil Beat 