Album Review: Ce by Caetano Veloso

During his long career, spanning five decades, Caetano Veloso has managed to sustain a remarkable consistency, year after year composing beautiful, inventive, and very often simply ingenious music. His previous album, A Foreign Sound, where Caetano interpreted classics from the American popular music scene, was widely applauded abroad and especially in the U.S., but Brazilian listeners were much less impressed. And truth be told, by Caetano's own high standards and with the exception of a few songs, like the reggae-rap version of Bob Dylan's "It's Alright Ma," A Foreign Sound lacked much of Caetano's usual inspiration.

Full Review >>

Throughout his multi-decade trajectory, Caetano Veloso has largely excelled while paring down. The perfumed pungency of his early Tropicalia milestones aside (though it should at least be noted that 1969's self-titled album is sheathed in the blankness of an empty page with only Veloso's signature and a Phillips logo providing any graphic landmarks), its the solemn nudity of 1975's Jóia, the poured concrète heat of 1973's Araçá Azul and the spectral desolation of his English-language efforts (1972's Transa and 1971's "London" album) that stand out from a teeming discography. These works find him experimenting with unconventional instrumentation and amorphous song-forms that continuously afford him more space to unspool lingering melodies in his inimitable voice: soft yet precise, a gentle timbre that is never as diffuse as it is sharply lathed.

Full Review >>

How's your Portuguese? Me either. Surely, though, Cê means s-e-x. Either way, Brazil's Lennon cum Sinatra, 64-year-old Caetano Veloso, is feeling randy. Without the lyric translation, the singer's native tongue seduces nonetheless. With it, Cê goes NC-17. Rattlesnake "Other" fires first, with "a ….

Full Review >>