It Crawled From The Crawlspace Dept. - Rodrigo Amarante [Added Content Advisory]

GOOD TO SEE THIS REPEAT POST IS GETTING A LOAD OF HITS - A BEAUTIFUL "KEEPER" ALBUM YOU DON'T SEE OFTEN!

Fans of the Netflix series Narcos may remember the theme song; it sounded like the oldest and saddest song in the world, sung by the world's oldest and saddest man. It was written and sung by Rodrigo Amarante, whose first solo album, Cavalo, 2013, didn't include it. The album also had no cover, just a plain sleeve with functional lyric inserts. Sometimes, less is less. It seemed like Amarante was going out of his way to keep his work a secret. It worked. I hope he was happy selling five copies, in spite of being Rolling Stone's sixth best album of that year.

There's one hurdle you have to overcome before you listen to this. It's sung in a mix of Portugese, French, English, and Japanese, and you may be allergic to songs you don't understand. Like, you know, about fifty percent of pop and rock songs sung in English. Louie Louie? What's that about?

Musically, it has an idiosyncratic genius that reminds me - some - of Brian Wilson's Smiley Smile/Friends/Wild Honey period. There's that spare clarity, that same hallucinogenic use of instrumental texture, that same feeling of being conceived in a crystal bubble floating above our world. And the songs, like Wilson's, are very much his own, and couldn't be anyone else's. One listen might make you a fan for life. A frustrated fan wanting more.

I added the missing Narcos song, Tuyo, and done did him a sleeve design what which I like to think reflects the chromatic brilliance of his music. This is gorgeous stuff.

 

More, sorta, came with a second solo album, Drama, a scant eight years later, and at least he got a cover together this time [left - Ed.]. It sounds a little less magic than the first, you ax me, but your mileage may differ. Since then, disregarding a soundtrack for Entebbe, a movie dubbed "dull" and "pointless" in the most charitable reviews, nada.

Dude, where are you?