129. Caetano Veloso - Caetano Veloso (1968)

1. Tropicalia*

2. Clarice

3. No Dia em que Eu Vim-Me Embora

4. Alegria, Alegria*

5. Onde Andaras

6. Anunciação

7. Superbacana

8. Paisagem Util

9. Clara (feat. Gal Costa)

10. Soy loco por ti, America*

11. Ave-Maria

12. Eles

A

Another Brazilian album which I can't hope to do justice to. The biggest problem is of course language. Thankfully, we live in an era when I can google translations of these songs. That doesn't really help, since lyrics are about how they're sung, and a literal translation can't convey that. Also, Veloso seems to have peppered his songs with countless references to pop culture Brazilian and otherwise, which means there's a whole weight of meaning lying in these songs that I can't hope to grasp.

Putting all that aside, this is a great album. The sound is hard to explain. At its core, it's Latin pop, but it's all been subtly mutated by psychedelic pop and rock from around the world. The result is something thrillingly modern, but also defiantly Brazilian. The rhythms are Brazilian, and there's the tasteful string arrangements and the like that one associates with the classier sort of samba, but there are also fuzzed out guitars, odd instrumentations, elements of studio trickery and forays into a more rock-oriented sound. Through all this wind Veloso's understated, vaguely feminine vocals, which can swing from tender to declamatory in the course of a single song. As for the lyrics, they manage to be political in outlook more than explicit content. As with Os Mutantes, Veloso is pushing a mindset and a worldview rather than openly attacking anybody. It's telling that he wound-up making enemies of the far Left (who thought he was selling out to American culture) and the far Right (who considered him an enemy of the state, and wound up first imprisoning and then exiling him).

All of which sounds pretty heavy, but since I don't speak Portuguese my main take-away from this album was that it's a pretty, quirky album of ultra-sophisticated pop. Tucked down here at the bottom of continental Australia, it's the start of Winter and things are (by my country's standards, at least) getting very grey and cold. No matter how long I run the heater, or how many cups of hot tea I drink, I have to accept that I'm going to spend the next three to four months with cold toes. So a buoyant album of tropical pop was exactly what I needed.