Chico Buarque is a legend amongst men. He was born in 1944 in Brazil and was a leading figure in the MPB (musica popular brasileira, or brazilian popular music) movement and wrote a lot of stuff in opposition to the authoritarian regime that was present in Brazil at the time - he was jailed and subsequently exiled from Brazil in 1970, only returning after this album was made. His music features many influences, from western popular music to samba, choro, bossa nova, beat poetry and singer songwriter flourishes. He also worked as a playwright, a screenwriter, a novelist and a poet amongst other things.
Let me take some time off and write to you guys, the grand total of 10 or 11 people that read this blog. It usually isn't easy writing objective reviews for records you like. What the heck does that even mean anyway? When you listen to something, it affects you subjectively. Trying to objectify said feeling as a stimulus/response situation calls upon describing things from an almost outsider point of view, and then I usually sound jumbled and incoherent, and at worst, scramble for the nearest thesaurus so I'm not repeating the same 4 adjectives in my arsenal over and over again.
So what does a good piece of art in the form of an album mean to me? I don't know. I can't quantify it. It captures certain moments in time and crystallises them as memories and feverish daydreams in my head. There are so many moments in music where for a couple of seconds or so, time just fucking stops. Music at this point transcends the limitations of its definition and goes on to more wonderful things. Let's call it magic.
Kind of an odd example that an album should be both immediately accessible yet at the same time distant, and a huge grower. I attribute most of the distance in this record to my incredibly poor understanding of Portuguese. What is he singing about? I'm not sure I can tell after a couple of listens. Does it matter? I'll get to explaining this in a bit. *
The album is hard because it offers us no hooks, no discernible standout choruses, no instrument that is so ahead of everything else in the mix that it can be separated and dissected. It only offers you a glimpse, which for an idealist like me, is drinking from the chalice of life itself. A world where everything coalesces, where unison of sound is more important than the distinction of it, and a moment where beauty steers your helm to wherever you wish to drive it. And it is an eerie, almost spectral kind of beauty hanging over the bookends of the songs like the best of your memories. They evoke the summery lit of bossa nova, the mellowness and lightheaded feeling of tropicalia, the giddiness of samba, the poetry of a man who has everything to lose and everything to live for, the feeling of a breeze, warm summer air, wine, food, literature, dancing all night. There is something inherently cool with Construcao, how it is arranged, how it's performed. These sounds, they're bustling with excitement and grandeur and yet diffusing within themselves, like a quiet withdrawal and an invoked memory that takes you away for a couple of moments. Frienship, solitude, panic, euphoria, love, despair. These are things we deal with daily, these are things that make us human. This is what Construcao attempts to signify, in my opinion. The human condition, the beauty of it.
So I suppose the grand sensation I am trying to elicit is pleasure. Good music gives us pleasure. Well, Construcao transcends that by just a little bit, it also gives you a peace of mind, when it finally settles in. And whilst the search for pleasure is endless and knows no bounds, I take great comfort in knowing that in my endless search for music that sounds good to my ears, I can always come home. It would not be a stretch to call this the greatest album of the 70's.
*I am not usually a lyrics person, in the sense that where good lyrics usually elevate a song and make it more relevant or visceral (and that's always a good thing); a song with bad lyrics don't necessarily detract from its quality, where I'm concerned. (After all, a lot of good music has really bad lyrics, but whatever, right?). But if you stumble upon this post and happen to be enjoying this album, I implore you to seek out the lyrics and their translations on google. To call Chico a poet is an understatement, the way he plays with words, the way he enunciates, just brilliance on every level imaginable.
deus lhe pague
