Rodrigo Amarante

★★★★ Drama POLYVINYL. CD/DL/LP

Brazilian stadium-filler returns with a tale of love and deception.

Filled with meta-textual observations, Amarante’s second solo album is a delight of many layers, a story with a beginning, middle and end. He meets a dance partner and falls in love, but soon finds their fancy footwork disguises deceit. At times, the singer seems intimately involved, at others to be commentating from a distance, or perhaps these events take place on a stage – is he subject, actor, creator or critic? Lyrically, then,

Drama is deeply involving, but fans of Amarante’s earlier careers in rock bands and samba big bands will find much to delight them here: bossa nova (authentically Brazilian, yet imported wholesale from the US), tango, John Barry-like themes, Muscle Shoals-style funk. The author claims to be trying to run away from Brazil’s musical riches here, yet the result adds to them, a sublime blend of melancholy and desire.