Néktar

Ava Rocha may be the daughter of legendary New wave filmmaker Glauber Rocha, but she offers her own idiosyncratic take on tropicália with her always exploratory releases. This is, after all, the woman who Caetano Veloso favourably compared to his sister Maria Bethânia. Co-produced by Jonas Sá, who also produced 2015’s Ava Patrya Yndia Yracema (her name in full, and another excellent excursion into modernist tropicália), this album continues her explorations into the feminine and transcendental. The arrangements, aided by Sá and Thiago Nassif, another artist pushing the boundaries of what can be classified as MPB, span from concrete to surreal, organic to electronic, and take in Brazilian, Latin American and global music genres sung in both Spanish and Portuguese. The production is full of delightful details, electronic pulses, a Candomblé drum pattern, Amazonian percussion and that’s to say nothing of her lyrics which can swing from sarcastic to romantic to irrational. For example, there’s the guitar squall that backgrounds the lowdown swing of ‘Lua Absurda’, while the drowsy samba of ‘Barco Nos Pés’, which suits her deep voice, is played relatively straight. A contemporary, totally accessible take on MPB, and she wraps up on a celebratory high, offering to kiss absolutely everyone.