Caetano Veloso: Livro : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Every once in a while, U.S. listeners fasten onto one strain of Brazilian music, and right now, guided by partisans like Beck and David Byrne, it's Tropicßlia, the mad rush of late-Sixties styles and attitudes dreamed up by Gilberto Gil, Tom ZT and Caetano Veloso. Veloso's current album, though, doesn't cater to anyone's reverence for his brightly collaged past: Livro is a fresh, fearless collection that balances ideas and sonics, art-song stream and pop sport, street hummability and academic achievement, Tropicßlia guts and Antonio Carlos Jobim grace. Veloso sings about samba singers, love, literature, grief, history and sunniness in a voice that's achingly alive, charged and shaded. Livro frequently equates musical luxury with freedom, ranging from muted glows ("Manhatp") to frisky sparkles ("Alexandre") to devastating flashes of drumming, woodwinds and strings ("Livros"). This is new music to listen to now; don't wait thirty years. (RS 816-817)

JAMES HUNTER