O Paraíso

Bahian artist Lucas Santtana read David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth, yet remains largely upbeat. Paradise is potentially here and now, his ninth album suggests. On the lilting ‘Vamos Ficar Na Terra’, redolent of fellow Brazilian songsmith, Rodrigo Amarante, he questions why we should want to go to Mars when it should be possible to live on ‘the only inhabitable planet in the solar system.’ The multi-layered ‘La Biosphère’, performed in French with the band Les Petits Chanteurs, however, lays down the stark choice we now face: to live or die. For all this, Santtana manages to create a gentle, very beautiful album.

Radiant self-penned songs like ‘A Transmissão’, ‘Sobre la Mémoria’ and ‘No Interior de Tudo’, with its acoustic guitar, tinkling marimba and plaintive sax wrapped in an arrangement recalling the High Llamas, are found alongside two sumptuously melodic covers: Paul McCartney's ‘The Fool On The Hill’, sung with Flore Benguigui, and Jorge Ben's glorious ‘Errare Humanum Est’. Like both songwriters, Santtana seems to possess a similar innate facility with a tune. Recorded in Paris with musicians such as percussionist Zé Luis Nascimento and cellist Vincent Ségal, O Paraíso is a moving ecological statement and arguably Santtana's most satisfying album yet.