Chico Buarque - Construção

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

Can - Tago Mago

Can are pretty much my favourite band of their era. The mother-band of sorts; at their peak everything they touched turned to gold. 1971 saw the coming of one of music's best experiments of all time; a double LP by the name of Tago Mago. Some great reading here from Stylus:

What can you say about Can? About The Can? Because, make no mistake, they are the definite article. Their name is an acronym of Communism, Anarchism, Nihilism. Or it’s the German word for “love”. Or an African word for “life”. Or something you keep beer in. On the cover of Ege Bamyasi it’s a tin of okra. Who knows? Can. The Can. Can formed because of an argument between a music teacher and his student. The student said The Beatles were more radical than Stockhausen, the teacher laughed, they formed a band. They recruited the greatest drummer in the world (Jazz-trained—instilled with the motto “never repeat, never repeat” from the day he picked up sticks. And when given the freedom to play how he wanted? Decided to repeat forever.) and a giant black American singer, a sculptor evading the draft by travelling Europe. They recorded in a castle, strange nursery-rhyme inverting songs about getting high with Mary, about your father being unborn, weird, European psychedelic junctions. 20-minute jams about nothing in particular but keyed in to the rhythm of the universe. Oh yes. The singer couldn’t take the stress, or something, and left. The rest of Can spotted a Japanese man shouting at people in the street, and asked him to join their band. He did, and proceeded to sing in a made-up language for the next five years. (Later he would find religion, and become a Jehovah’s Witness, which is the mentalist inversion of Americans or Europeans “getting” Buddhism or Taoism.) 

Everyone has stolen from Can. Talk Talk (the looped piano riff from “Life’s What You Make It”, everything they did from Spirit Of Eden on), Happy Mondays (“Hallelujah” is “Halleluwah” from Tago Mago performed by a load of Mancunian drug addicts with no sense of musical history), Primal Scream (everything,everything), The Fall (“I Am Damo Suzuki” to name but one of hundreds), The Stone Roses (“Fools Gold” is Ege Bamyasi’s “I’m So Green” run through acid house and The Byrds), Stereolab (everything, everything), My Bloody Valentine (texture over form), The Verve (10-minute spacerock grooves), any band that ever started playing around with electronics or weird jams, anyone who ever played at spacerock or being experimental (hello, Radiohead), anyone who ever went for texture and rhythm and sound over song, anyone who ever got a singer to sing in a made-up language (hello, Sigur Ros). Before every album Blur have released, Damon Albarn has either claimed that it was influenced by Pavement or by Can. The only two occasions when he wasn’t lying were Blur(Pavement!) and 13 (Can!). The Mooney Suzuki stole their name from Can’s two singers (Malcolm Mooney and Damo Suzuki). LCD Soundsystem’s most important namedrop in “Losing My Edge” isn’t about being the first person to play Daft Punk “to the rock kids”; it’s about having been at the first Can shows in 1968, “in Cologne”. Which is, of course, a lie, because James Murphy was a baby if he was even born. Eno, Mogwai, Cabaret Voltaire, Tortoise, AR Kane… You could keep naming bands forever.                  

A contender for one of the greatest albums of all time. A trip unlike any other, 40 years since it's release now and there still isn't anything that fucks with your head as beautifully as this album does. That album cover is pretty spot on, I'd say. Musical nirvana, if there ever was one. Give it a few spins, you'll see what I'm on about.

halleluhwah!

Françoise Hardy - La Question

Ladies and gents, the most gorgeous woman of all time, French chanteuse, ye-ye/style icon, Françoise Hardy. Her 1971 album La Question is definitely one of the most delicate and beautiful records I have ever heard. Listen for yourself. 

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