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Caetano Veloso :: "Outro"From Cê (Nonesuch; 2007)
Caetano Veloso’s new album is rather frustrating; it presents a series of dilemmas and contradictions that are not easily reconciled. When a 65-year-old titan of tropicalia decides to make an indie rock record with his son and a few buddies, how seriously are we supposed to take it? Perhaps more importantly, by which criteria are we meant to judge it? As a tropicalia record, the instrumental and especially percussive choices render it interesting as well as substantially unorthodox…I guess. Except, y’know, orthodoxy and tropicalia are already antithetical, so it’s only unorthodox if you haven’t heard tropicalia before. But other than those percussive tracks, as an indie rock album it takes few chances; it sticks to a pretty straight-forward line-up -- drums, bass, two guitars -- and, despite the Portuguese lyrics, isn’t anything extraordinary. I can’t see it much appealing to the dad-rock/world music crowd, and neither do I think it’s likely to get any hipsters too excited. Then again, what do I know? According to David Byrne, it’s “probably the best indie rock record to come out this year.” Has he already sold Neon Bible back?
For the most part, Cê just suffers from that notorious 40th-album slump: it’s pleasant, but there’s not much here to get really worked up over. Much of the album is down-tempo and dull, never really capturing the spark that has made Veloso such a musical force over the last forty years. And to put that in context, no matter what one’s opinion of Tom Ze’s madcap opera Estudando o Pagode, that album at the very least displayed impressive vivacity and creativity on par with anything in 2006.
Cê does have its moments, though, and one of the best kicks off the album. “Outro” opens up with a simple three-note guitar line and a stiff, punchy drum part. For the first forty seconds it seems like Veloso’s reedy tenor could ride along on this propulsive background just fine; then the band hits the chorus and it’s one of those perfect rock moments where a simple chord change and a little bit of piano make the world seem like a better place. The band plays on this formula -- switching back and forth from the punkish verses to the perfect pop choruses -- for the first half of the song, and then draws back for a nasty little guitar solo, only to pull the whole thing back together for one last run through the chorus. It’s a quick three minutes on a fifty minute disc, but if the album spent more time on tracks like this it’d be a lot easier to overlook the flaws.
Peter Hepburn :: 12 March 2007 |
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