Tag: Thiago Pethit

Favorite Brazilian and Latin Albums of 2019

As much as a pain as it felt at the time, I preferred it when year-end lists didn’t print until February or March. Gave you time to suss through late-year releases and hear meditate a bit before compiling your own list. These days publications are putting out lists before a year even ends. So, although the new cycle has left 2019 behind, I’m finally ready to put out a list of what I liked most last year. And, hey, it’s my 100th post. So that’s fun.

My two favorite Brazilian albums on the list below are actually 2018 releases. So, yeah, it was a down year.  What’s more, there’s not a single full A, much less A+, record in the bunch. But that’s not to say these are not great, or at least pretty great, records. If nothing sounded ear-shattering or life-altering, well I feel lucky to get one or two of those from worldwide in any year.* So I’ll happily make do with the thoroughly enjoyable pleasures of Brazilian albums that have held up to dozens of listens each, many of which didn’t just make good sounds, but upped the political content for dangerous times in a homeland under rightwing siege.

Plus, it might be the most sonically diverse list I’ve assembled: hip hop, jazz rap, northeast meets central Africa, Krautrock revivalism, neo-samba, alt-rock. Three years into this project I continue to be surprised how deep and varied Brazil’s musical culture is, and how much American and Western engagement just nips the tip of the iceberg.

There is one notable gap, however. For the first time since 2010, not a single Clube da Encruza record made my year-end top ten. Douglas Germano is something of an affiliate member, but it’s not quite the same. It wasn’t because of bad product, but rather a lack of options: the Clube members and their side projects were quiet in the studio even as they maintained relentless touring schedules. I would have loved to see that Metá Metá/Passo Torto show, or Romulo Fróes tour interpreting Caetano Veloso’s Transa. But I don’t live in Brazil. The good news is, spoiler alert, one of them has already released a fine album this year.

And Latin music? I had plans of deeper engagement this past year, but life upsets plans, so I didn’t dig in as much as I wanted to. I still found several 2019 albums that made my ears perk up, so I’ll do a list there, too. As usual, I tend to feel the Brazilian stuff more because I devote so much more time to it, but for a change of pace, these albums more than merely serve the purpose. (I haven’t reviewed the Rodrigo y Gabriela one yet. Consider that a preview of coming attractions.)

*If you are interested, those two albums this year were James Brandon Lewis’ An Unruly Manifesto—my favorite jazz album of the decade—and Billy Woods’ and Kenny Segal’s Hiding Places, where creepy ssounds and lyrical detail keep drawing me in further. Billie Eilish wasn’t far behind. Don’t underestimate her.

Favorite Brazilian Albums 2019

  1. Dona Onete, Flor da Lua (2018) (A-)
  2. Ana Frango Eletríco, Mormaço Qeuima (2018) (A-)
  3. Douglas Germano, Escumalha (A-)
  4. BaianaSystem, O Futuro Não Demora (A-)
  5. Rincon Sapiência, Mundo Manicongo: Dramas, Danças e Afroreps (A-)
  6. Ana Frango Eletríco, Little Electric Chicken Heart (A-)
  7. Karina Buhr, Desmanche (A-)
  8. Leo Gandelman & Baco Exu do Blues, Hip Hop Machine Series #6 (A-)
  9. Ema Stoned, Yantra and Makoto Kawabata, Phenomena (A-)
  10. Siba, Coruja Muda (B+)

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical):

If I included compilations, two fine, recent ones that would make the list are Levanta Poeira: Afro-Brazilian Music & Rhythms 1976-2016 in the top ten and Jambú (E Os Míticos Sons da Amazônia), in the honorable mentions.

Favorite Latin Albums 2018

  1. iLe, Almadura (A-)
  2. Los Wembler’s de Iquitos, Vision del Ayahuasca (A-)
  3. La Yegros, Suelta (A-)
  4. Daymé Arocena, Sonocardiogram (A-)
  5. Las Yumbeñas, Yumbotopía (A-)
  6. Rodrigo y Gabriela, Mettavolution (A-)
  7. Yapunto, Yapunto (B+)
  8. Fumaça Preta, Pepas (B+)
  9. Femina, Perlas & Conchas (B+)
  10. Nicola Cruz, Siku (B+)

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical):

Oh, and I’m not quite done with the year yet. Expect something 2019 related around March 1.

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+