Eva

An Algarve-born singer of Cape Verdean extraction and a founding member of the MTV award-winning group Nu Soul Family, Dino d’Santiago (aka Dino SoulMotion) is a well-known face on Portugal’s domestic scene, though the d’Santiago moniker was adopted after an apparently revelatory trip back to the old country. Alas, the resulting album isn’t quite so revelatory, though it is pleasant and inoffensive enough in the time-honoured Lusafrica mould. While it’s brimful with Creole lyrics and call-and-response harmonies, and flirting with Cape Verdean musical forms, there’s a singer-songwriterly slickness to the arrangements that gives d’Santiago’s background away, with his largely self-penned tunes taking a while to sink in.

The company of Paulo Flores and Livia Pereira on ‘Pensa na Oji’ and ‘Nos Amor’ respectively, brings some light and shade. And while there’s a decent attempt at experimentation amid the stark vocal harmonies, samples and percussion of ‘Heran^a de uma Cantadeira’, you can’t help wishing that more of Cape Verde’s younger generation might push the envelope in the manner of a Carmen Souza, or else look to the analogue rawness and politics of the island’s 70s recordings for inspiration, rather than playing it safe.