Hatched

While she is not widely known in the UK, Badi Assad is one of the most popular Brazilian artists in the US, where she is rightly celebrated as a consummate guitarist, composer and singer. She comes from Brazilian musical royalty. Her brothers Sergio and Odair are internationally respected classical guitarists and her nieces Clarice and Carolina well-known singers. Badi herself has performed with some of the most respected names on the US jazz fusion scene including Larry Coryell and John Abercrombie.

On Hatched she further explores territory she first ventured into on Wonderland – taking some of the songs that are most important to her, re-recording them in her own style and interlacing these covers with her own compositions. The result is a mixed bag. Songs like Hozier's ‘Sedated’ and Alt-J's ‘Hunger of the Pine’ work beautifully – Assad's inventive, jazzy arrangements, impassioned Brazilian-tinged English singing and masterful guitar perfectly complementing the reflective wistfulness of the lyrics. Others like Mumford & Sons ‘Little Lion Man’ – whose gentle, sweet bossa nova rhythm grates with the bitter, melancholy lyrics – are less satisfactory. But, as ever, Assad is best of all on songs she has composed in part or full: the CD leaves you longing for an album of her own work. ‘Spirit Dog’ (co-written with brother Sergio and David Levitan) and the closing track ‘Vejo Você Aqui’ (co-written with Zelia Duncan, and the only song sung in Portuguese) are the best tracks here by some way.