Garrincha – Estrela Solitária OST

Brazilians have an expansive metaphor for their football team’s enduring 50s icon. Wing legend Manuel Francisco dos Santos, aka Garrincha, is known as ‘Alegria do Povo’ (Joy of the People), and with a World Cup on the cusp of kick-off, this timely reissue is the soundtrack to the movie of his story. The narrative thread – flawed genius burns up the turf before succumbing to the bottle – is hardly unfamiliar and, at 26 tracks, the music is somewhat fractured. But saxophonist/composer Leo Gandelman’s score stands up well against Garrincha’s teammate Pelé’s own, Sergio Mendes and Gerry Mulligan assisted equivalent from the late 70s.

Unlike Pelé, Garrincha didn't ever try his hand at songwriting. But Gandelman claims him to be ‘the Coltrane of soccer’, and takes at least some of the man's maverick spirit into the studio, bobbing and weaving between cuica-cheeky terrace incidentals, braying big-band samba and – disguised as ‘Bloco de Rua’ – even a ramshackle lope through Jararaca's carnival standard, ‘Mamáe Eu Quero’

But it's the intimations of Garrincha's demise that beg fuller treatments: the brilliant, Som Livre-like grind of ‘Despedida do Garrincha, the livid cello of ‘Hospital, and the mesmeric ‘Na Floresta’, an Egberto Gismonti-esque jungle vision all the more ominous for its percussive restraint. The trumpet fragments of ‘Decadente Psicodelico’ epitomise Gandelman's less-is-more maxim, and suggest a talent capable of bending it like Beckham all the way to Hollywood.