The cover is bonkers, but who cares? Caetano Veloso’s first album as a solo artist marked the birth of the culturally revolutionary tropicalia movement. The concept of the movement was to modernize Brazilian popular culture and, through creative music and poetry, reflect the Brazilian society as it appeared at the time. This kind of wild cultural and musical cannibalism was found to be very controversial by many elements of the Brazilian society, both to the left and to the right of the political spectrum, and would ultimately lead to the arrest and forced exile in 1969. But at look at the album from today’s perspective: This debut was a unique 12-track gem. In retrospect Caetano called it „amateurish and confused“, but artists are not always the best critics of their own works. Confusion, maybe as a gateway to the new. In addition to the often bewildering nature and uniquely inventive music on the album, what strikes the listener is the excellent standard of the lyrics. More often than not, the lyrics could easily stand alone as poems. For all its artistic quality, and its position as the first tropicalia album, this is a classic and one of the most important albums of Brazilian popular music history. Now we have 2019, and the new government sings its praise of the old era of Brazilian fascism. The new fascists seek for new brothers in the world, and one of their first allies became the repressive government of Israel’s Netanjahu. Very often artists thought that Brazil would be the future. A big illusion, this future only arrived once, in the early years of Tropicalia. You got it, the future was a dream. On his debut Caetano was firing on all cylinders. Except, he‘s not rock’n’rolling the boat. Years ago, the album had got its remastered cd version, now (at least) a first reissue on vinyl on „Third Man Records“ is ready for release.
(remixed from four different sources)