Zii E Zie

Zii E Zie

Brazilian legend Caetano Veloso's 41st album, 'Zii e Zie,' released last year in South America and Europe, had already earned him a Latin Grammy for 2009 Best Singer-Songwriter album. The Times of London recently declared, 'The Brazilian master remains in a league of his own. Forty years after injecting a rock beat into Brazilian pop (and earning the disapproval of the country's military rulers in the process), Veloso has returned to similar territory... longtime fans won't be<br>disappointed.' The 67 year-old Veloso conjures an air of mischief and even a little mystery starting with the title, an Italian phrase for 'uncles and aunts' that he espied in a book and chose because he likes the way the simple words sound and look. Listeners may feel the same way about the music of 'Zii e Zie': the sheer sound of Veloso's ageless voice offers tremendous pleasure even before one delves into the translations of his at times eyebrow-raising lyrics, which range from the bluntly political to the boldly sexual, or begins to savor his playfully inventive arrangements.<br>Veloso, produced by Pedro Sa and son Moreno Veloso, is joined on 'Zii e Zie' by the same youthful trio he employed on the brash and beautiful 'Cê,' an album that upended expectations with its set of rock-oriented tracks boasting an almost punk-like immediacy. As David Byrne described 'Cê' in Artforum, 'Veloso has found a sparse, post-rock beauty in which strange yet simple rock instrumentation is juxtaposed with softly seething vocals.' On 'Zii e Zie,' Veloso reverses the equation. Here, samba is the foundation, filtered through a rock sensibility with an undercurrent of funk. Veloso himself has taken to calling this approach 'trans-samba' or 'trans-rock' - like 'transsexual,' he pointedly joked in an interview. His subject matter can still be intensely personal but he also takes a broader view of the world at large. At times he's like a camera, surveying the beaches of Rio, where he contemplates a dark-skinned girl in a bright bikini or scrutinizes with a<br>wizened eye Rio's most exclusive hilltop neighborhood. He exposes his lust as frankly as Iggy Pop on 'Tarado ni Voce'/'Horny For You' and expresses his rancor about the Bush years with equal candor on 'A Base de Guantanamo.'<br>Says London's Guardian, 'The songs are intimate and surprising, with sudden bursts of electric guitar transforming the easy-going 'Falso Leblon,' and hand-claps and funk guitar lines matched against the laid-back vocals on 'A Cor Amarela.'<br>Best of all, there's the half-spoken 'A Base de Guantánamo,' which sounds like a classic and angry protest song even if you can't speak Portuguese.'